Iacobucci v. Boulter

• Decision Date: 02 August 1999
• Docket Number: Nos. 97-1485,97-1585,s. 97-1485
• Citation: 193 F.3d 14
• Parties: (1st Cir. 1999) RICHARD IACOBUCCI, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. WILLARD BOULTER, Defendant, Appellant. RICHARD IACOBUCCI, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. WILLARD BOULTER,Defendant, Appellee. , and 97-1586. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 14

193 F.3d 14 (1st Cir. 1999)

RICHARD IACOBUCCI, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. WILLARD BOULTER, Defendant, Appellant.

RICHARD IACOBUCCI, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. WILLARD BOULTER,Defendant, Appellee.

Nos. 97-1485, 97-1585, and 97-1586.

United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Heard Aug. 2, 1999.

Decided Oct. 4, 1999.

APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] J. Russell Hodgdon, with whom Petze & Hodgdon was on brief, for plaintiff.

Stephen C. Pfaff, with whom Douglas I. Louison and Merrick, Louison & Costello were on brief, for defendant.

Before Selya, Circuit Judge, Cyr, Senior Circuit Judge, and Lipez, Circuit Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court decided Kolstad v. American Dental Ass'n, 119 S. Ct. 2118 (1999), affording a fresh perspective on the circumstances under which juries may award punitive damages in federal civil rights cases. These cross-appeals require us to revisit the punitive damages threshold in light of Kolstad. After acquitting this responsibility and addressing other pertinent issues, we affirm the judgment below.

I. BACKGROUND

On the evening of March 26, 1991, Richard Iacobucci, the plaintiff herein, visited the Pembroke Town Hall to videotape a scheduled meeting of the Pembroke Historic District Commission (the Commission). Such forays were mother's milk to Iacobucci, who intermittently filmed sessions of local boards, including the Commission, for a weekly news program that he produced and broadcast via a cable television outlet.

On the evening in question, the Commission's stated purpose was to review building applications. The commissioners sat along three sides of a four-sided conference table. As he had done in the past, Iacobucci positioned his tripod at the unoccupied end of the table. Soon after the meeting commenced, the chairman, Otis Hathon, twice asked Iacobucci to move his equipment across the room. Iacobucci declined, explaining that his view of the commissioners' and applicants' faces would be obstructed. Hathon did not suffer rejection gladly; at one point, he extinguished the lights, remarking: "I hope your camera can see in the dark." When this petulance failed to sway Iacobucci, Hathon warned him of the possibility of arrest should he fail to move. That warning, too, fell on deaf ears, prompting a commissioner to alert the local constabulary.

Two Pembroke police officers, Flannery and Jenness, responded. They asked Iacobucci to turn off the camera and talk with them in the corridor. Iacobucci replied that he had a right to record the proceedings, that he intended to exercise it, and that he would not converse until the meeting ended. The stalemated officers called their superior, Sergeant Willard Boulter (the principal defendant herein).

The meeting adjourned before Sgt. Boulter arrived, presumably because the last applicant had not appeared. Iacobucci packed his gear. He then noticed the commissioners speaking in the hallway with a man carrying a set of plans. Believing that man to be the tardy applicant, Iacobucci retrieved his camera and began filming the group on the assumption that he was witnessing a de facto resumption of the adjourned meeting. Iacobucci persisted despite importunings from some of the commissioners to stop.

Sgt. Boulter arrived at that juncture, stepped in front of the lens, and demanded that Iacobucci cease and desist. Iacobucci demurred, sidestepped adroitly, and resumed his journalistic endeavor. This pas de deux continued until Sgt. Boulter gave Iacobucci an ultimatum: sit down or be arrested. When Iacobucci kept filming, Boulter took the camera from him, grabbed his elbow, led him into another room, handcuffed him, and placed him under arrest.

The police transported Iacobucci to the station house and charged him with disorderly conduct and disrupting a public assembly. Iacobucci spent about four hours in custody before the authorities released him. When he reclaimed his camera, he discovered that the videotape no longer contained any images and that the sound track was barely audible.

The criminal charges eventually were dismissed, but Iacobucci (a law school graduate, although not a practicing attorney) filed a pro se civil action that asserted a golconda of claims against numerous defendants. We need not dwell on the details, because pretrial proceedings winnowed the trialworthy issues to three claims pressed by Iacobucci against Boulter. These included claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 premised on false arrest and excessive force, respectively, and a state-law claim premised on intentional infliction of emotional distress. The three claims were tried to a jury, which found for Boulter on two of them. On the section 1983 false arrest claim, however, the jury sided with Iacobucci and awarded him $75,000 in compensatory damages and $135,000 in punitive damages.

The verdict did not please Boulter. He renewed his earlier motion for judgment as a matter of law and asked, alternatively, for a new trial or for a remittitur. The district court struck the punitive damages, but otherwise denied Boulter's post-trial motions. Both parties now appeal.

II. BOULTER'S APPEAL

Like all Gaul, Boulter's appeal is divided into three parts. He assails the district court's handling of the section 1983 false arrest claim because the court (1) should not have permitted the claim, if ever properly in the case, to go to trial; (2) improvidently admitted evidence that was both irrelevant and prejudicial; and (3) erred in rejecting a qualified immunity defense. We examine these asseverations seriatim.

A. The Status of the Section 1983 False Arrest Claim.

The wrangling over this issue breaks down into two subsidiary questions: Was the section 1983 false arrest claim properly pled? If so, did it survive summary judgment? The district court answered both questions affirmatively. So do we.

In narrowing the issues immediately prior to trial, a dispute arose concerning what claims were outstanding. Boulter considered only two claims to be zoetic: a section 1983 excessive force claim and a state-law claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. In contrast, Iacobucci took the position that a section 1983 false arrest claim also remained in the case. After reviewing the complaint and the summary judgment record, the lower court concluded that Iacobucci had adequately pled a section 1983 false arrest claim, and that this claim had not been addressed (let alone terminated) at the summary judgment stage. Consequently, the court allowed Iacobucci to litigate the claim.

Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2) requires that a complaint contain a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." The complaint in this case satisfied that undemanding criterion vis-a-vis the section 1983 false arrest claim: it specifically alleged that Boulter, while acting under color of state law, violated Iacobucci's constitutional "right to be secure in his person" and "wrongfully deprived him of his liberty." This language, coupled with a prayer for money damages, adequately stated a section 1983 false arrest claim.

To be sure, the claim could have been pled more clearly. Here, however, Boulter has not identified a scintilla of prejudice that may have resulted from any obscurity in the wording of the plaintiff's complaint, nor is any such prejudice readily apparent. The section 1983 false arrest claim arises out of the same nucleus of operative fact as the other two tried claims (both of which Boulter acknowledges were in the case all along), and the parties' discussions with the court immediately before the start of trial clarified any uncertainty about whether the section 1983 false arrest claim was to be litigated. The sockdolager is this: had prejudice loomed, Boulter could have asked the court for a continuance. His failure to do so leads ineluctably to the conclusion that any claim of unfairness that he now might assert is nothing more than a post hoc rationalization sparked by a verdict that was not to his liking. See Faigin v. Kelly, 184 F.3d 67, 85 (1st Cir. 1999) (explaining that "a reviewing court may attribute special significance to the party's eschewal of a continuance and assume that the party did not require additional time to adjust his litigation strategy").

We likewise reject Boulter's plaint that the section 1983 false arrest claim, even if pled, did not survive the district court's summary judgment order. In hawking this proposition, Boulter points to the concluding passage in the trial court's summary judgment ruling, in which Judge Saris stated: "With respect to Sergeant Boulter, the motion is DENIED on the excessive force claim pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim. Otherwise it is ALLOWED." Boulter maintains that these final four words laid to rest any incipient section 1983 false arrest claim.

This argument is too cute by half. It overlooks that Boulter's motion, which set the stage for the court's summary judgment ruling, never sought brevis disposition as to the section 1983 false arrest claim. Thus, when Boulter made this very argument below, the district court rejected it, explaining that the "otherwise" language spoke only to the claims that had been debated in the summary judgment papers -- and that the section 1983 false arrest claim was not among that number. A trial court ordinarily is the best expositor of its own orders, see United States v. Podolsky, 158 F.3d 12, 17 (1st Cir. 1998); Martha's Vineyard Scuba Headquarters, Inc. v. Unidentified, Wrecked and Abandoned Steam Vessel, 833 F.2d 1059, 1066-67 (1st Cir. 1987), and Boulter offers no convincing reason why we should ignore this salutary principle here. Because the district court reasonably interpreted its own order as not terminating the section 1983 false...