Carradine v. State, C5-92-1070

• Decision Date: 04 February 1994
• Docket Number: No. C5-92-1070,C5-92-1070
• Citation: 511 N.W.2d 733
• Parties: Robert Reed CARRADINE, Respondent, v. STATE of Minnesota, et al., Petitioner, Appellants.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 733

511 N.W.2d 733

Robert Reed CARRADINE, Respondent, v. STATE of Minnesota, et al., Petitioner, Appellants.

No. C5-92-1070.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Feb. 4, 1994.

Syllabus by the Court

Arresting officer has absolute immunity from civil suit for allegedly defamatory statements made by officer about arrestee in arrest report, but only has qualified immunity from suit for any statements made to reporter that differed significantly from statements made in written report.

Hubert H. Humphrey, III, Atty. Gen., Peter M. Ackerberg, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., St. Paul, for appellants.

Peter H. Grills, O'Neill, Burke, O'Neill, Leonard & O'Brien, Ltd., St. Paul, for respondent.

Mark R. Anfinson, Lake Calhoun Professional Bldg., Minneapolis, for amicus curiae, MN Newspaper Assoc.

Heard, considered, and decided by the court en banc.

COYNE, Justice.

We agreed to review this case, which has not yet been tried, in order to address whether a state trooper enjoys an absolute privilege that affords him or her absolute immunity from a defamation suit for anything said in preparing an arrest report or in responding to press inquiries about the arrest. ¹

On July 9, 1987, plaintiff, Robert Reed Carradine, was stopped and arrested by a state trooper, defendant Patrick Chase, as he was driving to the airport to catch a flight. In his arrest report and in statements to jail personnel, to prosecutors and to a reporter, Chase said that Carradine's conduct involved speeding, reckless driving, fleeing an officer, and impersonating an officer. Carradine was booked, finger printed, strip-searched and held in custody for 10 hours before being released. News accounts of Carradine's alleged conduct appeared in newspapers throughout the county and on television because Carradine, in addition to "racing" cars professionally, is an actor who has appeared in a number of movies, the most well-known being "Revenge of the Nerds."

The more serious criminal charges against Carradine were eventually dropped in exchange for his pleading guilty to speeding, a petty misdemeanor.

Carradine then filed suit against Chase and his employer, the State of Minnesota, claiming unreasonable search and seizure, denial of due process, assault and battery, false imprisonment, excessive use of force, negligent infliction of emotional distress, defamation, malicious prosecution, negligence, trespass to personal property, conversion, and vicarious liability.

Defendants moved for summary judgment, claiming official, absolute, sovereign, and qualified immunity.

The trial court granted summary judgment to the defendants on all of Carradine's federal claims and all of his state claims except for three: negligent infliction of emotional distress, defamation and vicarious liability. Defendants appealed from the denial of summary judgment as to those three claims. Carradine noticed review of the award of partial summary judgment.

The court of appeals, in affirming, said, inter alia, that Chase lacked an absolute privilege to make defamatory statements in preparing the arrest report and in subsequently talking with the press about the arrest. Carradine v. State, 494 N.W.2d 77, 81 (Minn.App.1992).

The history of absolute privilege for defamatory statements made by public officials in the course of duty is "a story of uneven development." Barr v. Matteo, 360 U.S. 564, 579, 79 S.Ct. 1335, 1343, 3 L.Ed.2d 1434 (1959) (Warren, C.J., dissenting). Absolute legislative privilege "dates back to at least 1399." Id., citing Van Vechten Veeder, Absolute Immunity in Defamation: Legislative and Executive Proceedings, 10 Colum.L.Rev. 131, 132 (1910). "[T]he Constitution itself gives an absolute privilege to members of both Houses of Congress in respect to any speech, debate, vote, report, or action done in session." Barr v. Matteo, 360 U.S. at 569, 79 S.Ct. at 1338 (Harlan, J.), citing U.S. Const., Art. I, Sec. 6. Moreover, the privilege is given by our state constitution to the legislative branch. Minn. Const., Art. IV, Sec. 10.

Absolute immunity for defamatory statements made by participants in the course of a judicial proceeding dates back at least to the sixteenth century. Van Vechten Veeder, Absolute Immunity in Defamation: Judicial Proceedings, 9 Colum.L.Rev. 463, 474 (1909). The United States Supreme Court "early held that judges of courts of superior or general authority are absolutely privileged as respects civil suits to recover for actions taken by them in the exercise of their judicial functions, irrespective of the motives with which those acts are alleged to have been performed, Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. (13 Wall) 335, 20 L.Ed. 646 and that a like immunity extends to other officers of government whose duties are related to the judicial process. Yaselli v. Goff, 12 F.2d 396, aff'd per curiam, 275 U.S. 503, 48 S.Ct. 155, 72 L.Ed. 395 involving a Special Assistant to the Attorney General." Barr v. Matteo, 360 U.S. at 569, 79 S.Ct. at 1338. For a summary of the cases, see Lawrence H. Eldredge, The Law of Defamation Sec. 73 (1978).

Barr v. Matteo, 360 U.S. 564, 79 S.Ct. 1335, 3 L.Ed.2d 1434 is the leading case recognizing absolute privilege in the executive branch. The officer there, Acting Director of the Office of Rent Stabilization, issued a press release announcing his intention to suspend certain employees because of the part they had played in formulating a controversial plan for the use of certain agency funds. The employees sued the Acting Director for libel, alleging malice. The United States Supreme Court, by a split decision, held that the statements in the press release were absolutely privileged.

There is now considerable agreement among state courts that "high level" executive officers have absolute immunity from suit for defamatory statements made in the course of their duties. In Johnson v. Dirkswager, 315 N.W.2d 215 (Minn.1982), we held, unanimously, that the Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Welfare--who is obviously a high level executive officer--enjoys such immunity.

As we expressly noted in Dirkswager, we did "not have before us the nature or extent of any privilege for inferior governmental officers." Id. at 221. We are now presented with such a case.

It is no answer to the question whether an executive branch employee has absolute immunity to say that the employee is not a "high level" employee but a "low level" employee. Immunity "is not a badge or emolument of exalted office, but an expression of a policy designed to aid in the effective functioning of government. The complexities and magnitude of governmental activity have become so great that there must of necessity be a delegation and redelegation of authority as to many functions, and we cannot say that these functions become less important simply because they are exercised by officers of lower rank in the executive hierarchy." Barr v. Matteo, 360 U.S. at 572-73, 79 S.Ct. at 1340.

In other words, the purpose of extending absolute immunity to an officer performing a certain governmental function is not primarily to protect the officer personally from civil liability (although that is the effect of absolute immunity). Rather, the rationale is that unless the officer in question is absolutely immune from suit, the officer will timorously, instead of fearlessly, perform the function in question and, as a result, government--that is, the public--will be the ultimate loser. Barr v. Matteo, 360 U.S. at 571, 79 S.Ct. at 1339. As stated by Judge Learned Hand:

It does indeed go without saying that an official, who is in fact guilty of using his powers to vent his spleen upon others, or for any other personal motive not connected with the public good, should not escape liability for the injuries he may so cause; and, if it were possible in practice to confine such complaints to the guilty, it would be monstrous to deny recovery. The justification for doing so is that it is impossible to know whether the claim is well founded until the case has been tried, and that to submit all officials, the innocent as well as the guilty, to the burden of a trial and to the inevitable danger of its outcome, would dampen the ardor of all but the most resolute, or the most irresponsible, in the unflinching discharge of their duties. Again and again the public interest calls for action which may turn out to be founded on a mistake, in the face of which an official may later find himself hard put to it to satisfy a jury of his good faith. There must indeed be means of punishing public officers who have been truant to their duties; but that is quite another matter from exposing such as have been honestly mistaken to suit by anyone who has suffered from their errors. As is so often the case, the answer must be found in a balance between the evils inevitable in either alternative. In this instance it has been thought in the end better to leave unredressed the wrongs done by dishonest officers than to subject those who try to do their duty to the constant dread of retaliation. * * *

The decisions have, indeed, always imposed as a limitation upon the immunity that the official's act must have been within the scope of his powers; and it can be argued that official powers, since they exist...