Ford v. City of Boynton Beach
Decision Date | 05 May 2021 |
Docket Number | No. 4D19-3664,4D19-3664 |
Parties | SHARRON TASHA FORD, Appellant, v. CITY OF BOYNTON BEACH, a Florida municipal corporation, Appellee. |
Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, Palm Beach County; G. Joseph Curley, Jr., Judge; L.T. Case No. 50-2010-CA-016550-XXXX-MB.
Samuel Alexander of Alexander Appellate Law P.A., DeLand, for appellant.
Michael T. Burke and Jonathan H. Railey of Johnson, Anselmo, Murdoch, Burke, Piper & Hochman, P.A., Fort Lauderdale, for appellee.
The plaintiff appeals a final summary judgment on her false arrest claims. She argues that law enforcement did not have probable cause to arrest her for intercepting oral communications and obstruction without violence. We disagree and affirm.
Law enforcement arrested the plaintiff's minor son for trespassing at a theater. The officers called the plaintiff to come and pick him up. She drove to her son's location.
When she arrived, her son and the police officers were on a public sidewalk directly across the street from the movie theater entrance. The sidewalk bordered the edge of the parking lot. As pedestrians are going to and from the theater, they walk within feet of the location where the police officers were holding the plaintiff's son. At various times, twenty to fifty people milled around the theater entrance.
When the plaintiff arrived, the officers were standing on the sidewalk about twenty feet from where her son was being detained by shopping center security guards. She approached the officers with her cell phone on record. One officer told the plaintiff she needed his permission to videotape him. In response, she said, "[he] knew that when [she] came up here with the camera."
The lead officer asked for the plaintiff's identification. He then asked for her address, which she could not provide. She explained they had recently moved here and were staying with her mother. She did not know the address.
On multiple occasions, the officers asked the plaintiff to stop recording their statements and conversations. She ignored their requests and continued to video and audio record them as they processed her son and attempted to gather relevant information as part of their investigation.
The officers advised the plaintiff that she needed their consent to audio record them. At one point, one officer asked her if she was still recording him. She falsely told him that she was not recording him when in fact she was. The plaintiff admitted she never had the officers' consent to audio record them.
The plaintiff also recorded a citizen who stopped to speak to one of the officers. The citizen did not know the plaintiff, did not know he was being recorded, and never authorized her to audio record his conversation with the officer. The plaintiff also admitted she never obtained the citizen's consent to audio record him.
The officers made numerous requests to the plaintiff to stop recording them, which she ignored. The plaintiff was confrontational in her approach and refused to comply with the officers' instructions.
She was permitted to speak to her son, who told her that he had sneaked into the movie theater without paying, was caught, and ordered to leave. He was leaving when he was stopped. Believing the officer to be a security guard, the son asked the officer, "You're not the police so what is this necessary for?" He stated the officer then forcibly arrested him by slamming him against the hood of a car.
After the plaintiff finished speaking to her son, the lead officer began to explain the next steps. The plaintiff asked the officer why he arrested her son and why he "slammed" him on a car for trespassing when he had already left the premises. At this point, the interaction became a little more heated and another officer approached the plaintiff. She explained that she "[was] just asking questions" because she was "a mother and a concerned parent" and that she "ha[d] that right."
The lead officer explained why they had called her. She responded that she was "in shock" when they called and that "[the police officers] were aggressive towards [her]." She felt that they were ready to "throw [her] in handcuffs." The officer asked if she was ready to talk and asked if she was still filming. When she said nothing further, the lead officer proceeded to explain why they called her.
At this point, the plaintiff panned the camera around her, and a mall security guard or an officer off to the side put his hand up and said, "No ma'am, I don't want you to take my picture." She moved the frame away from him. Another officer asked her whether she was recording with audio. She responded, "Oh now you're gonna [sic] arrest me." The officer stated that "it was against the law" in the State of Florida to record police officers doing their job on audio and video. He told her that he did not mind her taking pictures, but that she should not continue recording with video and audio.
The plaintiff continued recording, and repeated again, The officer told her that he would tell her if he was going to arrest her. At that point, the video cuts off.
After a pause, the recording began again, showing an interaction between the plaintiff and an officer who told her again to turn the camera off. She continued to record and said: When ordered to turn the camera off again, she stated, "This is a public forum." The video then cuts off.
The video resumes once more with the plaintiff speaking to an officer as he explains how they were going to give her son a trespass warning, instead of arresting him. Because she chose however to disobey their requests to end the recording, they chose to go with a different option.
The plaintiff then interrupted the officer to indicate she was only asking questions. The officer responded that he approached her in a very polite manner and that she did not even give him the common courtesy to explain what was going on. She continued to express that she has the right to ask questions and the video ends.
The police took the plaintiff's camera and placed her under arrest. At the police station, she was booked for intercepting oral communications and obstruction without violence. No charges were ever filed.
The plaintiff filed a multi-count complaint against the City and the officers for false arrest, declaratory relief, and for violating her civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The City removed the case to federal court where the civil rights claims were dismissed. The state law claims were remanded back to state court.
There, the City moved for summary judgment, arguing the material facts were not in dispute and the police had probable cause to arrest the plaintiff for intercepting oral communications and for obstruction without violence. The plaintiff responded that the relevant parties lacked any expectation of privacy, so the wiretapping statute did not apply, and her arrest for obstruction without violence was based on the police officers' erroneous belief that she was illegally recording them.
The trial court granted the motion for summary judgment. In support of its decision, the court found the recorded parties had a subjective and reasonable expectation of privacy in their communications so that probable cause existed to arrest the plaintiff for violating the wiretapping statute. The trial court also found the plaintiff lied about recording them and obstructed them in their detention of her son, finding probable cause for her arrest for obstruction without violence. The trial court decided that its finding on the existence of probable cause mooted the declaratory judgment claim.
The standard of review for an order granting summary judgment is de novo. Volusia Cnty. v. Aberdeen at Ormond Beach, L.P., 760 So. 2d 126, 130 (Fla. 2000). Summary judgment is proper if there is no genuine issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Id. "Summary judgment may be granted only where the facts are so crystallized that nothing remains but questions of law." Vander Voort v. Universal Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co., 127 So. 3d 536, 538 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012) (citing McCabe v. Fla. Power & Light Co., 68 So. 3d 995, 997 (Fla. 4th DCA 2011)).
Probable cause is an affirmative defense to a claim of false arrest. Mailly v. Jenne, 867 So. 2d 1250, 1251 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006). We have held:
To show probable cause in a false arrest situation, it is not necessary that the arresting officer know facts that would absolutely prove beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of the person charged; probable cause exists when the circumstances are sufficient to cause a reasonably cautious person to believe that the person accused is guilty of the offense charged.
Id. (quoting Fla. Game & Freshwater Fish Comm'n v. Dockery, 676 So. 2d 471, 474 (Fla. 1st DCA 1996)). "Probable cause is judged by the facts and legal stateof affairs that existed at the time of the arrest." Id. It is a matter of law for the court; an appellate court is not bound by the trial court's legal conclusions. Dockery, 676 So. 2d at 474.
The issue then is whether law enforcement had probable cause to arrest the plaintiff for obstruction without violence under section 843.02, Florida Statutes (2019).
Section 843.02 provides: "Whoever shall resist, obstruct, or oppose any officer . . . in the execution of legal process or in the lawful execution of any legal duty, without offering or doing violence to the person of the officer shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. . . ." § 843.02, Fla. Stat. (emphasis added). The crime requires proof of two elements: (1) the officer was engaged in the lawful execution of a legal duty; and (2) the action...
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