City of Montgomery v. Vaughn
Decision Date | 16 August 2013 |
Docket Number | 2110872. |
Citation | 138 So.3d 996 |
Parties | CITY OF MONTGOMERY v. Sylvester VAUGHN and Terrance Caffey. |
Court | Alabama Court of Civil Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Alabama Supreme Court 1121138.
Jason C. Paulk, Montgomery, for appellant.
Joe M. Reed of Joe M. Reed & Associates, LLC, Montgomery, for appellees.
The City of Montgomery (“the City”) appeals from a summary judgment in a quasi in rem action, ordering it to return to Sylvester Vaughn and Terrance Caffey cash that had been seized from them by officers of the Montgomery Police Department (“the MPD”). We reverse.
On February 2, 2007, Caffey was stopped by an MPD officer for a traffic violation. A warrantless search of Caffey's vehicle revealed approximately $8,800 in cash and a controlled substance. Caffey was arrested and charged with trafficking in drugs, a violation of § 13A–12–213, Ala.Code 1975. On February 7, 2007, Montgomery police officers obtained a warrant from the Montgomery Municipal Court to search Caffey's residence. Upon execution of the warrant, MPD officers seized $17,875 in cash from the residence and $3,500 from a vehicle in the driveway.
On August 6, 2008, Vaughn was arrested by an MPD officer for distribution of a controlled substance, a violation of § 13A–12–211, Ala.Code 1975. During a search incident to Vaughn's arrest, the officer seized $6,207 in cash from Vaughn.
On August 17, 2010, Vaughn filed an action against the City in the Montgomery Circuit Court, alleging that, after the seizure of his cash, the MPD had failed to notify state officials to institute prompt proceedings to forfeit the property to the State as required by § 20–2–93(c), Ala.Code 1975; that, instead, the MPD had transferred the property to the Drug Enforcement Administration (“the DEA”) to commence federal forfeiture proceedings; and that, at the conclusion of the federal forfeiture proceedings, the DEA had returned 80 to 90 percent of the forfeited cash to the MPD and had kept the remainder as an administrative fee. Vaughn further alleged that, because a municipality has no standing to institute a forfeiture proceeding under state law, the MPD had conspired with the DEA to have the property forfeited to the United States, thereby bypassing state law and “fil[ling its] own coffers with the spoils.” Based on those allegations, Vaughn brought claims individually and on behalf of a putative class of “all individuals whose property was seized by any MPD officer acting in his capacity as such and subsequently turned over to the DEA, U.S. Customs, or Federal Bureau of Investigation for forfeiture purposes.”
Vaughn amended the complaint several times. On December 2, 2010, Vaughn added Caffey's claim against the City, based on allegations similar to those that Vaughn had previously made—i.e., that the MPD had seized Caffey's cash and turned it over to the DEA to commence federal forfeiture proceedings and that, at the conclusion of the federal forfeiture proceedings, the DEA had returned the majority of the cash to the MPD and had kept the remainder as an administrative fee. Vaughn also added the claims of Ronald Kidd and TeodosioArroyo Martinez against defendants F.A. “Bubba” Bingham, the director of the Alabama Department of Public Safety (“the DPS”), and Alabama State Trooper Darrell Seymour (Bingham and Seymour are hereinafter referred to collectively as “the DPS defendants”).1
The City moved to dismiss the claims of Vaughn and Caffey, insisting that the claimants had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted and arguing, among other things, that this court's decision in Green v. City of Montgomery, 55 So.3d 256 (Ala.Civ.App.2009) ( ), barred the relief sought by the claimants because their state-court action seeking return of the cash had been filed after the claimants' cash had been transferred to the DEA and federal forfeiture proceedings had been commenced. The circuit court denied the City's motion to dismiss, and the City answered the complaint, asserting as to the claims of Vaughn and Caffey, among other defenses, collateral estoppel.
The parties filed cross-motions for a summary judgment. In a brief supporting its motion as to Vaughn's claim, the City asserted that Vaughn had “already argued to no avail before the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama that the state court and not the federal court had exclusive jurisdiction over the currency seized from him,” citing United States v. Six Thousand Two Hundred Seven Dollars ($6,207.00) in United States Currency, (No. 2:08–CV–999–MEF, July 20, 2009) (M.D.Ala.2009) (not reported in F.Supp.2d). On April 24, 2012, the circuit court granted Vaughn and Caffey's summary-judgment motion and denied the City's motion. The judgment states: The court concluded that the Montgomery Circuit Court had exclusive in rem jurisdiction over Vaughn's and Caffey's property by virtue of its having been seized pursuant to § 20–2–93(b), Ala.Code 1975.
On appeal, the City argues that the circuit court erred in ordering it to return the property seized from Vaughn and Caffey because, it asserts, “the DEA had already gained control over the currency and completed administrative forfeiture proceedings before this action was filed by Vaughn and Caffey in [Montgomery] Circuit Court on August 17, 2010, and December 2, 2010, respectively.”
Vaughn and Caffey take issue with that assertion, contending that the circuit court was correct in stating that it had been presented with no facts indicating that property seized from Vaughn and Caffey had been transferred to a federal agency for federal forfeiture proceedings before Vaughn and Caffey had filed their action in state court seeking return of the property. Vaughn and Caffey insist that the City's assertion is based only upon the allegations of their complaint and the City's response to the complaint, but, they maintain, “[a]llegations are not facts.”
Facts alleged in a complaint and not denied in the answer are taken as true. See Woods v. Wood, 219 Ala. 523, 524, 122 So. 835, 836 (1929). Moreover, the City did more than simply fail to refute the factual allegations of the complaint; it affirmatively acknowledged the truth of those allegations. There was, in the present case, simply no dispute as to the fact that, before Caffey brought a state-court action for return of the cash seized from him, the cash had been transferred to the DEA for federal forfeiture proceedings and that, at the conclusion of those proceedings, the DEA had returned the majority of the cash to the MPD and had kept the remainder as an administrative fee.
The “equitable sharing” of forfeited funds between federal and state or local entities to which Caffey referred in his pleadings does not occur until after a federal court has entered a final judgment forfeiting the property to the United States. See De Santis v. State, 384 Md. 656, 657, 866 A.2d 143, 144 (2005). The applicable statute, 21 U.S.C. § 881(e)(1)(A), provides:
“(e) Disposition of forfeited property
“(1) Whenever property is civilly or criminally forfeited under this subchapter the Attorney General may—
“(A) ... transfer the property to any Federal agency or to any State or local law enforcement agency which participated directly in the seizure or forfeiture of the property.”
In the present case, the parties' disagreement was not as to the existence of the underlying facts, but as to the legal import of those facts, namely: whether the MPD's transferring the property seized from Caffey to a federal agency for federal forfeiture proceedings barred Caffey's later state-court action seeking return of the property. The Supreme Court of Alabama definitively answered that question in Ervin v. City of Birmingham, 137 So.3d 901 (Ala.2013).
In Ervin, our supreme court held that a state-court action seeking the return of property that had previously been seized by municipal police officers, transferred to the DEA, and forfeited to the United States 137 So.3d at 905.
Caffey contends that the forfeiture of his property to the United States was not authorized because (a) the Montgomery Circuit Court had exercised preexisting in rem jurisdiction over the property by virtue of the Montgomery Municipal Court's issuance of the warrant for the search whose execution resulted in the seizure...
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