Lewis v. City of Boston

• Decision Date: 03 August 1993
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 91-10093-T.
• Citation: 829 F. Supp. 471
• Parties: Richard D. LEWIS, Plaintiff, v. The CITY OF BOSTON, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

829 F. Supp. 471

Richard D. LEWIS, Plaintiff, v. The CITY OF BOSTON, et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 91-10093-T.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

August 3, 1993.

Jeffrey C. Coniaris, Boston, MA, for plaintiff.

Stephen C. Pfaff, Merrick & Louison, William J. Walsh, Asst. Corp. Counsel, City of Boston Law Dept., Boston, MA, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM

TAURO, Chief Judge.

This civil rights action arises out of the arrest and eight-day detention of plaintiff, Richard D. Lewis. Presently before the court are plaintiff's motion to amend his complaint and dispositive motions filed by defendants.

I. BACKGROUND

In the early-morning hours of January 12, 1988, Boston Police Officers Patrick Butler and Paul Donovan received a call over their radio that an individual suspected of illegally possessing a handgun had been observed fleeing on foot from Washington Street toward Tremont Street. The suspect was described as a black male, approximately six feet tall, wearing dark clothing. Officers Butler and Donovan responded to the call by driving their police cruiser toward the area in question.

Shortly thereafter, the officers spotted plaintiff, Richard D. Lewis, proceeding on foot into Sparrow Park. Determining that Lewis fit the description of the suspect they were pursuing, they approached him, got out of the cruiser and informed him of the reason he was being stopped. A frisk conducted by Officer Butler revealed that Lewis was carrying a spring-loaded bludgeon (a retractable billy club) in a holder attached to his belt, but no handgun. Lewis, who lived nearby on West Newton Street, told the officers that he was returning home from work at Independent Taxi Operators Association.

Cooperating fully with the investigation, Lewis produced his driver's license. The officers then radioed Lewis' name, date of birth and race into the station. They were subsequently told that Lewis was wanted on two outstanding default warrants. Relying on this information, the officers placed Lewis under arrest and brought him back to the Area D Police Station. A telephone call to the warrant unit confirmed the existence of two outstanding warrants for an individual by the name of Richard Lewis. Despite his insistence that a mistake had been made, Lewis was booked, placed in a cell and held overnight.

In the morning, Lewis appeared (without counsel) before a Boston Municipal Court judge. Satisfied that Lewis was the same Richard Lewis named in the default warrants, the judge ordered him held for ten days without bail. Lewis was then brought to the Charles Street Jail, where he was incarcerated for one week before being released on personal recognizance.

During three subsequent appearances before the West Roxbury District Court, Lewis was unable to convince the authorities that he was not the same Richard Lewis described in the warrants. Finally, a fingerprint comparison was conducted and Lewis' claim of mistaken identity was vindicated. All charges against him were dropped.

In January of 1991, Lewis commenced this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that his arrest and eight-day detention had violated his constitutional rights. His complaint names the following defendants: Patrick Butler, the arresting officer; Donald Holland, the arraigning officer; the City of Boston; Mayor Raymond L. Flynn; and Police Commissioner Francis M. Roache.¹

Officers Butler and Holland have moved for the entry of summary judgment in their favor. The City of Boston, Mayor Flynn and Commissioner Roache have moved to dismiss Lewis' complaint for failure to state a claim against them. Lewis has filed a motion to amend his complaint. The court will address these motions seriatim.

II. THE MOTION TO AMEND

Plaintiff seeks leave to amend his complaint in order to add a claim of negligence under the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act (the "Act"), Mass.Gen.L. ch. 258, § 2.² Defendants oppose this motion, claiming that plaintiff failed to comply with the Act's presentment requirement.

In relevant part, the Act provides:

A civil action shall not be instituted against a public employer on a claim for damages ... unless the claimant shall have first presented his claim in writing to the executive officer of such public employer within two years after the date upon which the cause of action arose, and such claim shall have been finally denied by such executive officer in writing....

Mass.Gen.L. ch. 258, § 4 (emphasis added).³ Massachusetts courts have required strict compliance with this statute, rejecting notions of constructive notice. See, e.g., Pickett v. Commonwealth, 33 Mass.App.Ct. 645, 604 N.E.2d 43 (1992), review denied, 414 Mass. 1103, 609 N.E.2d 88 (1993). See also Fearon v. Commonwealth, 394 Mass. 50, 53, 474 N.E.2d 162, 165 (1985) ("Unless exempted from the requirements of G.L. c. 258 by statute ..., we believe all actions based on such claims should be subject to the presentment requirement as stated in § 4.").

Faced with conflicting affidavits submitted by the parties, the court held an evidentiary hearing to determine whether plaintiff's claim had, in fact, been presented as required by the Act. The testimony proffered at that hearing,⁴ coupled with the withdrawal of the affidavit of plaintiff's former attorney, leads the court to conclude that no claim, timely or otherwise, was presented to the City of Boston by or on behalf of plaintiff. Accordingly, plaintiff's motion to amend his complaint must be denied.

III. THE MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

Officers Butler and Holland move for summary judgment on the ground that they are entitled to the defense of qualified immunity. Notwithstanding the potential of this defense to "create strange procedural configurations," Amsden v. Moran, 904 F.2d 748, 752 (1st Cir.1990), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 1041, 111 S.Ct. 713, 112 L.Ed.2d 702 (1991), its invocation does not warrant abandonment of the usual summary judgment framework. Nereida-Gonzalez v. Tirado-Delgado, 990 F.2d 701, 703 (1st Cir.1993). Accordingly, brevis disposition is appropriate here if "the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c).

Under the general rule of qualified immunity announced by the Supreme Court,

government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.

Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982).⁵ "This ... standard `gives ample room for mistaken judgments' by protecting `all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.'" Hunter v. Bryant, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 112 S.Ct. 534, 537, 116 L.Ed.2d 589 (1991) (per curiam) (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 343, 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 1097, 1096, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986)).

In analyzing the defense of qualified immunity in this case, the court's first task is to ascertain whether plaintiff has alleged, with sufficient particularity, that Officers Butler and Holland violated his clearly established constitutional rights. See Siegert v. Gilley, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 111 S.Ct. 1789, 1793, 114 L.Ed.2d 277 (1991) (clarifying analytical structure under which qualified immunity claims should be addressed). A right is deemed "clearly established" if its contours are "sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right." Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3039, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987).

Although plaintiff makes reference to a number of constitutional provisions in his complaint,⁶ the court understands his central claims to implicate the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures, which has been made applicable to the States by reason of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 171, 81 S.Ct. 473, 476, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961). It cannot be gainsaid that this guarantee was well established at the time of plaintiff's arrest and detention. See, e.g., Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 87 S.Ct. 1213, 18 L.Ed.2d 288 (1967). See also Wagenmann v. Adams, 829 F.2d 196, 209 (1st Cir.1987) ("The right to be free from unreasonable seizures of the person was well established long before 1976."); Blackburn v. Snow, 771 F.2d 556, 569 (1st Cir. 1985) ("It can hardly be debated that plaintiff had, in 1977, a `clearly established' Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches."). It remains to determine whether Officers Butler and Holland reasonably should have known that their treatment of plaintiff violated these clearly established rights.

A. The Stop and Search

The question of whether a police officer has reasonable grounds to stop and search an individual "falls directly within the Fourth Amendment's proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures." United States v. Walker, 924 F.2d 1, 3 (1st Cir.1991). To justify a particular intrusion, the officer "must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion." Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1880, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). In assessing the reasonableness of a Terry stop, "the court must first consider whether the officer's action was justified at its inception; and, second, whether the action taken was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place." United States v. Stanley, 915 F.2d 54, 55 (1st Cir.1990) (citations omitted).

Determining whether a police officer's action "was justified at its inception depends on the totality of the...