Davila v. N. Reg'l Joint Police Bd.

• Decision Date: 31 March 2016
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 2:13-cv-070
• Parties: ANGELICA DAVILA, Plaintiff, v. NORTHERN REGIONAL JOINT POLICE BOARD, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Pennsylvania

ANGELICA DAVILA, Plaintiff, v. NORTHERN REGIONAL JOINT POLICE BOARD, et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No. 2:13-cv-070

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA

March 31, 2016

Judge Mark R. Hornak

OPINION

Mark R. Hornak, United States District Judge

This case is before the Court again on a Motion to Dismiss the Third Amended Complaint by Defendant Officer Bienemann in Dkt.No. 13-070.The Motion to Dismissat 13-070 will be granted in part and denied in part.

The facts underlying the matters in this case have been laid out in detail in two prior Opinions of the Court, ECF No. 84, Davila v. N. Reg'l Joint Police Bd., 979 F. Supp. 2d 612(W.D. Pa.2013)opinion vacated in part on reconsideration, No. 13-70, 2014 WL 3735631(W.D. Pa.July 28, 2014)(Davila I);ECF No. 136, Davila v. N. Reg'l Joint Police Bd., No. 13-00070, 2014 WL 3735631(W.D. Pa.July 28, 2014)(Davila II), and will not be repeated here.This case focuses on the detention of the Plaintiff in a road side parking lot and then at the Allegheny County Jail on January 22, 2011.The only Defendant involved in these Motions is Officer Bienemann.I.Officer Bienemann's Motion to Dismiss the Third Amended Complaint and Application of the Qualified Immunity Doctrine

Officer Bienemann moves to dismiss all five (5) claims asserted against him in the Third Amended Complaint ("TAC") on the basis that they do not plausibly state claims for relief, or that their assertion is barred by qualified immunity.To sustain a motion to dismiss, the Court has to conclude as a matter of law that the claims as stated, or as may be reasonably supported by discovery, do not state plausible claims for relief under the applicable substantive legal rules.Thompson v. Real Estate Mortg. Network, 748 F.3d 142, 147(3d Cir.2014).As to the assertion of qualified immunity, the Court is to dismiss Section 1983 damage claims against a local government official unless it can be said that his conduct as alleged violated a settled constitutional right.Estate of Lagano v. Bergen Cnty. Prosecutor's Office, 769 F.3d 850, 858(3d Cir.2014)(citingPearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231(2009)).As the Supreme Court has stated, the doctrine of qualified immunity is intended to give such governmental actors a wide berth, and it protects from damage suits "all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate" a constitutional right of a plaintiff.Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2085(2011)(internal quotation marks and citations omitted).This Court has previously applied precedent from our Court of Appeals to conclude that the qualified immunity "inquiry focuses not on a 'fact-by-fact' match up, but instead on whether the alleged facts fairly fall within the contours of a substantive doctrine of law that itself is clearly established at the time of the alleged conduct.Doe v. Cnty. of Fayette, No. 14-0196, 2014 WL 5493814, at *6(W.D. Pa.Oct. 30, 2014)(citingLagano, 769 F.3d at 859).That said, both the Supreme Court and our Court of Appeals have cautioned against defining the right at issue broadly, rather than specifically in the context of a given case.City & Cnty. of San Francisco, Calif. v. Sheehan, 135 S. Ct. 1765, 1776(2015)(quotingal-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 2084);Estep v. Mackey, No. 15-1943, 2016 WL 574029, *3(3d Cir.Feb. 12, 2016);Spady v. Bethlehem Area Sch. Dist., 800 F.3d 633, 639(3d Cir.2015).

In short, a right is clearly established if every reasonable similarly-situated official would understand that his conduct violates that right.Reichle v. Howards, 132 S. Ct. 2088, 2093(2012).A case directly on point is not required, but then-existing precedent must have placed the question beyond debate.Mullenix v. Luna, 136 S. Ct. 305, 308(2015).

A.Count I

Taking them in order as to Officer Bienemann, Count I alleges that he violated the Plaintiff's Fourth Amendment right against a seizure made without probable cause when he"seized" her at the roadside.¹He contends that based on the facts alleged in the TAC, there was not and could not be an impermissible seizure, but only an appropriately reasonable roadside investigative stop.

Here is the situation as the Court sees it: if Ms. Davila's traffic stop morphed into an arrest, then that arrest allegedly occurred without probable cause; similarly, if Officer Bienemann prolonged the traffic stop without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, that stop was unreasonable.On the other hand, if the facts in the TAC do not plausibly plead that Ms. Davila was "arrested," or that Officer Bienemann had reasonable suspicion to believe Ms. Davila was committing a crime when he detained her beyond the time required for the initial stop, then there was no constitutional violation, meaning the TAC does not state a claim (and the first prong of the qualified immunity analysis is not fulfilled).

If the former is adequately pled, however, the act of arresting someone without probable cause violates the clearly established right that there must be, at the moment of arrest, "facts and circumstances within [law enforcement's] knowledge and of which they had reasonablytrustworthy information [] sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the [arrestee] had committed or was committing an offense."Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91(1964).The contours of this right can be further narrowed, in that it is clearly established that an occupant of a car cannot be arrested and searched, even if another occupant of the car admits to a violation of the law, unless there is something more to establish probable cause as to each individual occupant.United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 592-94(1948);²see alsoYbarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 91(1979)("Where the standard is probable cause, a search or seizure of a person must be supported by probable cause particularized with respect to that person.This requirement cannot be undercut or avoided by simply pointing to the fact that coincidentally there exists probable cause to search or seize another or to search the premises where the person may happen to be.");Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 62-63(1968)(explaining that no probable cause to arrest and search existed although an officer had seen the defendant"talking to a number of known narcotics addicts over a period of eight hours" when he knew nothing of the conversation's content, nor did he see anything pass between them).Again, these clearly established rights would only have been violated in Ms. Davila's case if the traffic stop became an arrest.

It is also clearly established that short of arrest, people are "seized" when pulled over for traffic stops, Illinois v. Caballes, 543 U.S. 405, 407(2005), and that "the reasonableness of such seizures depends on a balance between the public interest and the individual's right to personal security free from arbitrary interference by law officers."United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 878(1975).It is clearly established that once a stop has occurred, "the stop and inquirymust be reasonably related in scope to the justification for their initiation."Id. at 881(internal quotation marks and citation omitted).A lawful roadside seizure "can become unlawful if it is prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete that mission."Caballes, 543 U.S. at 407;see alsoArizona v. Johnson, 555 U.S. 323, 333(2009)("An officer's inquiries into matters unrelated to the justification for the traffic stop . . . do not convert the encounter into something other than a lawful seizure, so long as those inquiries do not measurably extend the duration of the stop.").

The facts in the TAC plausibly plead that the traffic stop, initially justified based on the fact that Ms. Davila did not turn on her car's headlights, became unlawful when it was "prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete that mission."Caballes, 543 U.S. at 407.As pled in the TAC, there are no facts which would have given Officer Bienemann either probable cause, or reasonable suspicion, to believe that Ms. Davila was violating immigration (or any other) laws such that he could lawfully continue detaining her while he investigated her immigration status.SeeUnited States v. De La Cruz, 703 F.3d 1193, 1198(10th Cir.2013)("When the agents apprehended [a vehicle's passenger], they discovered he was illegally in the United States.That is a status crime, which would not necessarily suggest that the driver of the vehicle from which he fled was also involved in criminal activity.").While either standard may have been satisfied as to her passenger, whose direct response to Defendant Beinemann's question was that he was not legally present in the United States, ECF No. 138, at ¶¶ 42-43, wrongdoing by one person does not automatically impute wrongdoing to another—that law is clearly established.

The facts alleged support a reasonable inference that Ms. Davila was under de facto arrest based on less than probable cause or any reasonable suspicion to believe she violated any law (other than that requiring the use of headlights) include that (1) Ms. Davila provided OfficerBienemann with her license, proof of registration, and insurance when asked, id.¶ 32-33;(2) Officer Bienemann instructed Ms. Davila to move her car to a specific location and told her he was waiting for a return phone call from ICE, id.¶¶ 51-52;(3) Ms. Davila did not believe she was free to leave at any time after Officer Bienemann pulled her over, id.¶ 61;(4)"[Ms.] Davila asked the officers several times if she could use the restroom but her requests were refused,"id.¶ 62; and (5) it was at least longer than twenty (20) minutes after Officer Bienemann initially pulled Ms. Davila over that he actually spoke with an ICE agent to ask that ICE investigate Ms. Davila, and (6) the entire traffic stop took approximately two (2) hours (although that includes the seemingly short time...