Gooden v. Howard County, Md.

• Decision Date: 09 November 1990
• Docket Number: No. 89-2470,89-2470
• Parties: Theresa K. GOODEN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. HOWARD COUNTY, MARYLAND, c/o Elizabeth Bobo, County Executive; Nancy Yeager, individually and in her capacity as a police officer of the Howard County Police Department; Frank N. Salter, individually and in his capacity as a police officer of the Howard County Police Department; William J. Pollack, individually and in his capacity as a police officer of the Howard County Police Department, Defendants-Appellants, and Frederick W. Chaney, in his capacity as Chief of Police of the Howard County Police Department; Unknown and Unidentified Police Officers of the Howard County Police Department, hereinafter referred to as John Doe I, John Doe II, John Doe III, John Doe IV and John Doe V, who were present at and involved in the incidents complained of herein, individually and in their capacity as Police Officers of the Howard County Police Department, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 1355

917 F.2d 1355

Theresa K. GOODEN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. HOWARD COUNTY, MARYLAND, c/o Elizabeth Bobo, County Executive; Nancy Yeager, individually and in her capacity as a police officer of the Howard County Police Department Frank N. Salter, individually and in his capacity as a police officer of the Howard County Police Department William J. Pollack, individually and in his capacity as a police officer of the Howard County Police Department Defendants-Appellants and Frederick W. Chaney, in his capacity as Chief of Police of the Howard County Police Department; Unknown and Unidentified Police Officers of the Howard County Police Department, hereinafter referred to as John Doe I, John Doe II, John Doe III, John Doe IV and John Doe V, who were present at and involved in the incidents complained of herein, individually and in their capacity as Police Officers of the Howard County Police Department, Defendants.

No. 89-2470.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued April 6, 1990.

Decided Nov. 9, 1990.

Wilkinson, Circuit Judge, filed dissenting opinion.

Marna Lynn McLendon, Sr. Asst. County Sol., argued (Barbara M. Cook, Howard County Sol., Ellicott City, Md., on brief), for defendants-appellants.

Cheryl Lynn Ziegler, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, argued (William L. Gardner, Howard T. Weir, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Roderick V.O. Boggs, Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civ. Rights Under Law, Washington, D.C., on brief), for plaintiff-appellee.

Before PHILLIPS and WILKINSON, Circuit Judges, and BUTZNER, Senior Circuit Judge.

PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge:

Howard County, Maryland, Police Officers William Pollack, Frank Salter, and Nancy Yeager appeal the district court's interlocutory order denying them summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds in Theresa Gooden's claim against them under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. ¹ Gooden brought this action against the officers, the county, and the county police chief after the officers seized her from her apartment and took her to a hospital for an emergency psychiatric evaluation. Because the record discloses genuine issues of fact about the information the arresting officers reasonably had available, materially bearing on the ultimate legal question of whether they reasonably could have believed their actions lawful in light of clearly established law, we affirm the district court's order.

I

The nature of our inquiry on this appeal necessitates a rather detailed summary of the summary judgment record.

Denise Beck (now Denise Beck Stephens) has asserted by affidavit that in early 1987 she began hearing loud noises coming from the apartment above hers at the Chase Clary apartment complex in Columbia, Maryland. These noises, Beck stated in her affidavit, included loud screaming, yelling, and "general commotion." J.A. at 47. Uneasy about confronting the occupant of the apartment above her, J.A. at 47, Beck, a white woman, complained to the apartment manager, who in turn wrote a letter to Theresa Gooden, the black woman who occupied the apartment directly above Beck's, asking that she keep the noise level to a minimum. J.A. at 130. Gooden, a 28-year old employee of the CIGNA Health Plan, had recently moved to Columbia from Michigan.

At 8:30 a.m. on February 21, 1987, Beck called the police, asking them to respond to what Beck said she took to be a violent domestic dispute occurring in the overhead apartment. She claims to have heard loud screaming and a female voice telling a male that her life had been ruined and that she would kill him. Howard County Police Officers Nancy Yeager and William Pollack, both white, responded to the call, first checking with Beck, then visiting Gooden's apartment overhead. Beck claims that the noises stopped once the officers made contact with Gooden. J.A. at 48. Upstairs, Officers Yeager and Pollack spoke briefly with Gooden. Gooden told them that she had been asleep and was awakened only by their loud knocking and that she neither caused nor even heard any disturbance. J.A. at 30, 37, 51. Gooden claims that she consented to a search of her apartment, after which the officers, finding no one but her there, said that "obviously the screams were not coming from her apartment." J.A. at 51. According to Gooden, Officer Pollack left, but Yeager stayed behind to question her, using an "accusatory and rude" tone. J.A. at 51. Yeager states that Gooden, though apparently cooperative, was "evasive and hesitant" in her answers. J.A. at 30. Based on Beck's certainty about having heard two voices, Yeager checked with the apartment manager and confirmed that, in fact, Gooden lived alone in the apartment. Gooden felt at the time that she was being targeted for racial harassment by someone in the apartment complex, and two days later reported the police's visit to Officer David Steves of the Howard County Police.

At about 10:30 p.m. on March 2, Beck again called the police complaining of noises from the apartment above. Officer Yeager, then on patrol with Officer Frank Salter, responded at 10:47 p.m. to the "woman screaming" call initiated by Beck. Officers Yeager and Salter claim to have heard a loud "blood-chilling" scream upon entering the first level of the apartment building where Beck and Gooden lived, convincing them that someone was being harmed. J.A. at 30, 41. The officers went immediately to the third floor hallway and stood outside Gooden's apartment. There, they claim to have heard another scream, this coming from within Gooden's apartment. J.A. at 31, 42.

Gooden answered the officers' knock at her door. The police officers and Gooden give quite different accounts of the ensuing encounter. According to Yeager, Gooden, when first asked about the screaming, denied having made any noise, but then admitted that she had just burned herself ironing, and had screamed. J.A. at 31. Yeager states that she then asked to see the iron and ironing board, and discovered that there were no clothes on the ironing board and that the iron itself was cold to the touch. Yeager also states that she asked to see Gooden's burn, and that Gooden "just replied that it didn't matter and finally totally refused to have me look at the burn." J.A. at 31. Yeager did not find the apartment disorderly, though she comments that it struck her as odd that Gooden, who had described herself as a "loner" during the February 21 encounter, had "an inordinate number of cards and letters" displayed. J.A. at 31. Yeager stated in affidavit that she still believed that Gooden was not being candid and that in fact Gooden was at risk of harm from herself or someone else. J.A. at 31-32.

Gooden's description of this encounter contrasts markedly with Yeager's. She explained that she had washed her laundry that evening until about 9:00 p.m. and was in her apartment for the next couple of hours, putting clothes away and ironing, most of the time talking on her cordless phone. While on the phone to a Marc Brogdon, some hot water from the iron splashed onto her arm, causing her to "yelp for a moment." J.A. at 52. She then heard a loud knock on the door and, opening it, saw Yeager and Salter "crouching with billy clubs in hand." She told Brogdon the officers were there and hung up. ² According to Gooden, the officers accused her of screaming for the last two weeks, then unsuccessfully searched the apartment for another person. Upon questioning, Gooden explained that she had just yelped from an ironing spill, but that she did not think it loud enough to justify police intervention. In contrast to Yeager's story, Gooden said that she showed the officers a blouse on the ironing board and a plugged-in iron, and moreover that she pointed out the wet spot on the blouse where water had spilled and the red mark on her arm, but that Yeager ignored them, demanding instead to see "a burn." J.A. at 54. Gooden states that as the officers were leaving, Salter said, "Next time we come, we'll stay longer," to which Gooden replied that they better have a warrant then. J.A. at 54. Yeager and Salter deny that Salter made any such comment.

The officers went back downstairs to speak to Beck in her apartment. Soon thereafter, they heard and felt, it is claimed, the same noises and commotion from the apartment above that Beck had described: a male and female shouting at each other (but the two voices never shouting simultaneously), and "loud thuds" that caused even the chandelier in Beck's apartment to shake. J.A. at 32. Based on what she heard, Yeager thought that Gooden might have a "multiple personality," talking back and forth in alternating male and female voices, and that she might be hurling herself against the walls. Gooden, however, claims that during the time just after the officers left she called her mother in Michigan and spoke for ten minutes. Her long-distance bill corroborates this. She then called Officer Denise Carter at the Howard County Police Department to inquire about registering a complaint concerning the officers' visit. J.A. at 54. Officer Carter stated in deposition testimony that she and Gooden had "a very calm conversation." J.A. at 218.

Assertedly because of what they had heard, Yeager and Salter returned to Gooden's apartment "after contacting all residents that were present in the building and failing to find any other source of the violence." J.A. at 32. According to Yeager, Gooden appeared to be crying when she answered the door and asked, "Why are you doing this to me?" Yeager pressed Gooden on her emotional state, but Gooden was "unresponsive," offering no explanation for the screaming Yeager had heard and looking "nervous as well as uncomfortable" to Yeager. J.A. at 33. Sergeant Pollack and other backup officers had by then arrived on the scene and were in the hallway. Yeager and Salter told Pollack that what they perceived as Gooden's bizarre behavior--the possibility of a "split personality" with two voices talking to each other, the banging against the...