Clark v. Link

• Decision Date: 16 August 1988
• Docket Number: No. 87-2155,87-2155
• Parties: Arthur CLARK; Melissa Clark, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Earl LINK; R.E. Combs, Defendants-Appellants, and Charles Britt; Fredrickia Britt; Frank Stanley, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 156

855 F.2d 156

Arthur CLARK; Melissa Clark, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Earl LINK; R.E. Combs, Defendants-Appellants and Charles Britt; Fredrickia Britt; Frank Stanley, Defendants.

No. 87-2155.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued May 4, 1988.

Decided Aug. 16, 1988.

Nancy R. Hatch (Richard T. Rice, Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice, Winston-Salem, N.C., on brief), for defendants-appellants.

Lacy H. Thornburg, Atty. Gen., Joan Herre Byers, Sp. Deputy Atty. Gen., Dept. of Justice, Raleigh, N.C., on brief for amicus curiae.

George Daly, for plaintiffs-appellees.

Before RUSSELL and WILKINS, Circuit Judges, and BUTZNER, Senior Circuit Judge.

DONALD RUSSELL, Circuit Judge:

This section 1983, 42 U.S.C. conspiracy action was begun by the plaintiffs against certain private individuals and two county deputy sheriffs. The two officers filed a defense denying participation in any conspiracy to violate plaintiffs' constitutional rights and pleading specially qualified immunity. The district judge heard the qualified immunity defense and the claim of insufficiency of evidence of an actionable conspiracy on a motion for summary judgment by the two officer defendants. The motion was denied on both grounds and the officer defendants have appealed. We reverse.

I.

The suit herein arose out of a contest over the custody of an infant, at the time fifteen months of age, between the family of an aunt (the defendants Fredrickia Britt and her husband Charles Britt) and the family of a paternal first cousin (the plaintiff Melissa Clark and her husband Arthur Clark) of the infant. The mother of the infant had been killed by the infant's father and the infant has been committed to the custody and control of the Department of Social Services in Columbus County (North Carolina), the residence of the parents at the time of the unfortunate tragedy. The ultimate custody proceedings were within the jurisdiction of the District Court of The arrest warrant for the Clarks was filed with the Sheriff's Office of Columbus County and, in turn, was transmitted in the customary manner by it to the Sheriff's Office in Mecklenburg County (North Carolina), the county of the residence of the Clarks, for service. The warrant was received in regular course, "by the luck of the draw" by the defendant Combs, a deputy who was on duty in the Sheriff's Office at the time. On March 5, 1984, Mr. Daly, counsel for the Clarks learned of the outstanding arrest warrant and called the Mecklenburg Sheriff's Office; he talked to Combs. He asked that Arthur Clark be allowed to appear on March 7 at the office of the Magistrate in Charlotte to respond to the arrest warrant. Combs agreed to this arrangement. Mr. Daly inquired whether at the time of his appearance Clark could make bond before the Mecklenburg magistrate. Combs replied: "When we first talked [on March 5], I told you he [Clark] could make bond here, the magistrate would set bond here in this county; if he would make it, he could get out, in that first conversation."

Columbus County, over which Judge William C. Gore, Jr. presided. For purposes of this appeal it is unnecessary to review the proceedings before Judge Gore leading up to the entry of an order by Judge Gore granting custody to the Britts. At the time the infant was with the Clarks. When the Britts sought delivery of the infant by the Clarks pursuant to the order of Judge Gore, they were told the infant had been taken to Georgia and would not return until some days later. The Britts at that point swore out a warrant for the Clarks before the magistrate in Columbus County. This warrant charged the Clarks with the violation of N.C.G.S. Sec. 14-320.1, which makes it a crime for any person, in violation of a custody order issued by a state or federal court, to transport and keep the infant involved in the order without the limits of the state for a period in excess of 72 hours.

The next day [March 6] the Columbus County Sheriff's Department, at the instance of Judge Gore, transmitted over the North Carolina Police Information Network (PIN) addressed to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Department a message, advising whoever in the Mecklenburg Department was responsible for serving the warrant herein "that if Mr. Clark was picked up--to have him transported to Columbus County for sitting [sic] of the bond." ¹ This message was duly referred to Combs, since he had the warrant for service. Combs took the message to his superior, Major Link, and, after recounting what he had earlier told Mr. Daly, asked Link what he should do. Link suggested, "Well, let's just let the magistrate worry about that and about setting the bond." He and Link decided to follow that course. The next day [March 7] Daly telephoned Combs requesting a delay of Clark's appearance until March 9 because of his [Clark's] illness. The request was granted. Daly then asked again whether Clark could make bond before the Mecklenburg magistrate. Combs, as summarized by him in his testimony and not disputed in the record, answered at this time: "I told you that [the setting of the bond] would be up to the magistrate, and I think when we talked, I told you that's the magistrate's decision, not mine."

Clark, accompanied by his attorney, presented himself at the magistrate's office on Friday, March 9, as agreed. The arrest warrant was served upon him by Combs. Combs then presented, without comment to the magistrate in the presence of Clark and his attorney, the PIN message the Sheriff's Office had received on Tuesday, March 6. Clark, by his attorney, requested the right to make bond then and there. The magistrate, after according Clark's counsel an opportunity to be heard, decided not to fix bond then and there but to transfer the proceedings back to the Columbus County judicial officer who had issued the arrest warrant for the fixing of bond. Clark's counsel promptly appealed the denial of the application to the presiding judge of the

Mecklenburg County Court, and the presiding judge of that court reviewed the magistrate's order and granted bond. Clark was released under this decision of the judge of the Mecklenburg Court within three hours after the hearing before the magistrate. Following various proceedings later in the prosecution of Clark under the Columbus County warrant, that prosecution was dismissed.

II.

Immediately after the dismissal of the criminal prosecution, the Clarks filed the present section 1983 suit. The jurisdictional basis for such suit was frankly stated by Clark's counsel in the hearing in the district court:

But the nub of this case and the reason we got in the Federal court was that Mr. Link and Mr. Combs, in participation with these other people, denied Mr. Clark his right to have bond set in Mecklenburg County and that's enough to sustain jurisdiction here. (Italics added)

In their complaint, the plaintiffs were more expansive. They charged, with some extravagance of language, that all the defendants "acted in concert and conspiracy under the color of law to deprive Plaintiffs of these constitutional rights":

Mr. and Mrs. Britt sought Erica for some malevolent purpose inimical to Erica's welfare: either to obtain Erica's estate, or to assuage Mrs. Britt's guilt about the murder, or out of some other such dark secret of the heart. They so drew Judge Gore into complicity with their evil purpose and into hostility against the Clarks, by their ex parte communications, by their malicious innuendoes against the Clarks, and by the religious pressures they brought to bear upon him, that he acceded to their designs and became personally enmeshed in the controversy and departed from judicial neutrality, even to the extent of repeatedly denying the Clarks due process of law and finally stepping outside his subject matter jurisdiction to seek to cause Mr. Clark to spend gratuitous time in the Columbus County jail. ² Defendants Link and Combs and Stanley were willing participants in these deprivations of Plaintiffs Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The Clarks named as defendants in this conspiracy suit the Britts, Stanley (the attorney for the Britts), and Link and Combs. They did not name Judge Gore a defendant "because," as the plaintiffs declare in their brief in this court, "of his possible judicial immunity." Nor was the Mecklenburg magistrate who refused to fix bond named a defendant presumably for the same reason but without the slightest evidence to support the charge, the plaintiffs in their brief in this court declared that "she (the magistrate) turned out to be a willing participant in the scheme and did not exercise the authority which the statutes mandatorily require that she exercise."

The defendants have filed various defenses. On this appeal we are only concerned with the defense asserted by Combs and Link. In their answer, these defendants denied any knowledge or participation in a conspiracy or "scheme" in the matters alleged and pled the defense of qualified immunity. These defenses were heard by the district court on the motion of Combs and Link for a summary judgment. The hearing was based by agreement on certain depositions. The district court dismissed the defenses on that record. Combs and Link challenge that dismissal which presents the issue on appeal.

III.

We begin our inquiry by reviewing the decision of the district judge dismissing the plea of qualified immunity by the deputies. ³ ... Judge Gore, through the Police Information Network, conspired with Deputies Link and Combs to abuse the North Carolina criminal process, to violate the North Carolina bail law, and to deprive Mr. Clark of his right under the 14th Amendment to due process of law.

The district judge summarized his ruling in these words:

Conceding that the United States Constitution and laws "do not specifically prohibit certain behavior by state officials" (apparently assuming that the deputies had not violated the Constitutional or statutory...