Harrington v. City Of Nashua

• Decision Date: 29 June 2010
• Docket Number: No. 09-2275.,09-2275.
• Citation: 610 F.3d 24
• Parties: Monique J. HARRINGTON, Plaintiff, Appellant,v.CITY OF NASHUA et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

610 F.3d 24

Monique J. HARRINGTON, Plaintiff, Appellant,v.CITY OF NASHUA et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 09-2275.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

Heard May 7, 2010.

Decided June 29, 2010.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Gordon R. Blakeney, Jr., for appellant.

Brian J.S. Cullen, with whom CullenCollimore, PLLC was on brief, for appellees.

Before TORRUELLA, SELYA and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This appeal involves the timing and elements of causes of action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for alleged Fourth Amendment violations in the nature of false imprisonment and malicious prosecution. In the course of addressing those matters, however, we must iron out a wrinkle concerning the scope and effect of a judicial admission. Ruling at the summary judgment stage, the district court found for the defendants. The court concluded in substance that the claim of false imprisonment was time-barred and that the claim of malicious prosecution lacked the necessary showing of a predicate Fourth Amendment violation. The court, however, failed to confront the effect of the judicial admission.

We hold that the admission is not controlling because, in pertinent part, the admitted allegation is unclear and, in any event, concerns a matter of law rather than a matter of fact. And, after separating wheat from chaff on the arguments anent the timing and elements of the asserted causes of action, we affirm the judgment below.

I. BACKGROUND

Consistent with the summary judgment standard, we rehearse the facts in the light most flattering to the plaintiff, drawing all reasonable inferences in her favor. Houlton Citizens' Coal. v. Town of Houlton, 175 F.3d 178, 184 (1st Cir.1999).

On June 26, 2003, the plaintiff, Monique J. Harrington, went for a ride with a co-worker and then repaired to his apartment in Nashua, New Hampshire. A sexual encounter ensued. The plaintiff alleges that, during this encounter, her co-worker raped her.

Over two months later, the plaintiff told her fiancé about the incident. He pressed her to report it to the authorities, and she went to the police station for that purpose on September 3, 2003. Unbeknownst to her, the co-worker, shortly before, had complained to the police that he had received a menacing telephone call. In it, the caller reportedly accused him of having raped the plaintiff.

Once the plaintiff arrived at the police station, two officers interviewed her for more than an hour, starting at 9:30 p.m. At 10:52 p.m., they turned her over to Detective Mark Schaaf. The plaintiff alleges that, during the ensuing interrogation, Detective Schaaf refused her repeated requests to go home, denied her entreaty for the presence of a female victim/witness advocate, and lied profusely (telling her, for example, that her co-worker had videotaped their sexual encounter and that officers in another room were watching the video).

The interrogation lasted until 12:22 a.m. At the conclusion of the session, the plaintiff waived her Miranda rights see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 478-79, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and retracted her allegations of rape. Detective Schaaf then arrested the plaintiff without a warrant and swore out a criminal complaint, charging her with making a false report to law enforcement personnel (a misdemeanor). See N.H.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 641:4.

The plaintiff was arraigned and released on personal recognizance at approximately 2:00 a.m. on September 4.¹ The conditions of her release required her to appear in court, notify the court of any change in address, forbear from committing any crimes, and refrain from using either controlled substances or excessive amounts of alcohol. On September 23, 2004, following a bench trial in state court, a judge acquitted the plaintiff on the false reporting charge.

On September 22, 2007, the plaintiff repaired to the federal district court and sued the City of Nashua, its police department, and Detective Schaaf. Her complaint contained both federal claims and supplemental state-law claims. Although she lumped her federal claims together under the rubric of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the district court broke them down into two separate claims. The court noted that the plaintiff alleged that the defendants had violated her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures by (i) restricting her liberty without reasonable suspicion (false imprisonment) and (ii) wrongfully instituting criminal process against her (malicious prosecution).

Following the completion of pretrial discovery, the defendants moved for summary judgment. The district court granted the motion as to the plaintiff's federal claims and simultaneously dismissed without prejudice the supplemental state-law claims. Harrington v. City of Nashua, No. 07-cv-299, 2009 WL 1744569 (D.N.H. June 19, 2009). The court held that the false imprisonment claim was time-barred because the plaintiff had sued more than three years after the claim accrued. Id. at *4. The court held that the malicious prosecution claim, though timely, failed to show a cognizable Fourth Amendment violation. Id. at *4-6.

The plaintiff moved to alter or amend the judgment, Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e), but to no avail. See Harrington v. City of Nashua, No. 07-cv-299, 2009 WL 2462274 (D.N.H. Aug. 12, 2009). This timely appeal followed.

II. ANALYSIS

A district court's grant of summary judgment is reviewed de novo. Estate of Hevia v. Portrio Corp., 602 F.3d 34, 40 (1st Cir.2010); Houlton Citizens' Coal., 175 F.3d at 184. We will uphold the entry of summary judgment if the record, evaluated in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, shows that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c)(2).

On appeal, the plaintiff does not challenge the dismissal of her supplemental state-law claims. Instead she takes dead aim at the district court's handling of her false imprisonment and malicious prosecution claims. She also criticizes the district court's denial of her motion to alter or amend the judgment.

As said, each of the plaintiff's federal claims falls under the carapace of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Section 1983 provides a private right of action against a person who, under color of state law, deprives another of rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States. Evans v. Avery, 100 F.3d 1033, 1036 (1st Cir.1996). To satisfy the statute's “injury” requirement, the plaintiff must show a deprivation of a federally secured right. Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 103, 112, 113 S.Ct. 566, 121 L.Ed.2d 494 (1992). Against this backdrop, we address the plaintiff's claims of error one by one.

A. False Imprisonment.

Although section 1983 provides a federal cause of action, the length of the limitations period is drawn from state law. Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 387, 127 S.Ct. 1091, 166 L.Ed.2d 973 (2007); Centro Medico del Turabo, Inc. v. Feliciano de Melecio, 406 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir.2005). The federal court must borrow the limitations period from the forum state. Owens v. Okure, 488 U.S. 235, 239, 109 S.Ct. 573, 102 L.Ed.2d 594 (1989); Centro Medico, 406 F.3d at 6.

In this instance, the parties agree that the section 1983 claims are governed, temporally, by New Hampshire's three-year statute of limitations for personal injury tort claims. See N.H.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 508:4. Because the plaintiff commenced her action on September 22, 2007, her false imprisonment claim is time-barred if it accrued more than three years prior to that date.

Unlike the limitations period itself, the accrual date of a section 1983 claim is a matter of federal law and, therefore, is “governed by federal rules conforming in general to common-law tort principles.” Wallace, 549 U.S. at 388, 127 S.Ct. 1091. The limitations period for a Fourth Amendment claim of false imprisonment begins to run when the false imprisonment ends; that is, when the putative plaintiff is either released or detained pursuant to legal process. See id. at 389, 127 S.Ct. 1091; Mondragón v. Thompson, 519 F.3d 1078, 1082-83 (10th Cir.2008).

In this case, Detective Schaaf arrested the plaintiff without a warrant and swore out a criminal complaint against her. These actions occurred in the early morning hours of September 4, 2003, and the plaintiff was immediately arraigned and released on personal recognizance. The clustering of these events on a single date leads unerringly to the conclusion that the plaintiff's claim accrued at that time. Because the plaintiff did not file suit until more than three years later-on September 22, 2007-her false imprisonment claim is barred by the statute of limitations.

The plaintiff does not go quietly into this dark night. She suggests that the accrual of her false imprisonment claim should not be measured by the usual metrics for such claims but, rather, by the metrics applicable to malicious prosecution claims. In service of this suggestion, she argues that, from the officers' point of view, the main objective of her detention was to supply probable cause for the ensuing prosecution and, therefore, that malicious prosecution furnishes the most appropriate model from which to determine an accrual date. If that argument prevails, her false imprisonment claim would not have accrued until her acquittal on September 23, 2004, see Nieves v. McSweeney, 241 F.3d 46, 53 (1st Cir.2001), making that claim timely.

This suggestion is clever, but it ignores a critical distinction between false imprisonment and malicious prosecution. The Supreme Court has held that when a plaintiff's claim arises out of “detention without legal process,” the tort of false imprisonment provides the appropriate analogy from which to ascertain the accrual date of a cause of action under section 1983. Wallace, 549 U.S. at 389, 127 S.Ct. 1091 (emphasis in original). The Court explained that when the period of false imprisonment ends, any unlawful detention thereafter “forms...