Lippay v. Christos
| Decision Date | 02 June 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. 92-7461,92-7461 |
| Citation | 996 F.2d 1490 |
| Parties | 37 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 625 Richard M. LIPPAY v. Dean C. CHRISTOS; Commonwealth of Pa. Dean C. Christos, Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
Michael R. Lynn (argued), Law Office of Michael R. Lynn, Bloomsburg, PA, for appellee.
Ernest D. Preate, Jr., Atty. Gen., Michael L. Harvey (argued), Deputy Atty. Gen., Kate L. Mershimer, Sr. Deputy Atty. Gen., John G. Knorr, III, Chief Deputy Atty. Gen., Chief, Litigation Section, Harrisburg, PA, for appellant.
Before: BECKER, GREENBERG, and WEIS, Circuit Judges.
Appellant Dean C. Christos appeals from a district court order entered July 31, 1992, denying his motion for judgment as a matter of law or, in the alternative, for a new trial as well as from a judgment of February 14, 1992, entered on a jury verdict for $150,000 in favor of the appellee Richard M. Lippay. Lippay brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claiming that Christos violated his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by initiating criminal proceedings against him maliciously and without probable cause and by unlawfully causing his arrest. 1 On appeal, Christos challenges the sufficiency of the evidence, and argues that the district court committed reversible error by admitting hearsay testimony, submitting Lippay's Fourth Amendment seizure claim to the jury, and refusing to allow the jury to consider whether Christos was entitled to qualified immunity. Because we conclude that the district court should not have permitted introduction of the hearsay testimony and that this error prejudiced Christos, we will vacate the order denying Christos' motion for a judgment as a matter of law and will remand the matter to the district court to reconsider that motion without the hearsay testimony. In the event that the court again denies that motion, the district court will grant a new trial limited to the Fourth Amendment seizure claim. 2
The germane facts as developed at the trial are as follows. In November 1986, the Bureau of Narcotics Investigation of the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office initiated an investigation into suspected drug sales in Haddock's Bar, located in Coal Township, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. In this investigation, Christos, an undercover agent for the bureau, worked with an informant, Darryl Philbin. Lippay was not an initial target of the investigation.
On August 5, 1987, Christos and Philbin went to Haddock's to make a drug purchase. Christos sat at the bar while Philbin met with several persons in the back. Soon Philbin reported to Christos that he had purchased a packet of drugs from an individual referred to as "Dick." Philbin described Dick as being approximately six feet tall, 190 pounds, with dirty blond hair, a beard and glasses. Although Christos saw Philbin speaking with Dick he did not witness the drug purchase.
Detective Richard Higgins of the Coal Township Police Department, who was working with Christos, joined Philbin and Christos outside of Haddock's. Higgins had driven past the bar, recording the license plate numbers of the cars parked in the lot across from it. Philbin told the two officers he thought that Dick was actually Mark "Stone" Stevens, who Philbin vaguely knew from earlier drug transactions. Higgins disputed this identification, and stated that Dick's physical description fit Lippay, who was both a corrections officer at the state correctional institution at Frackville, Pennsylvania, and a member of the local school board. Higgins also stated that he recognized Lippay's car in the lot.
The next day Higgins checked the license plates that he had recorded and found that none was registered to Stevens, and that only two were registered to persons with male names, one being Lippay. Higgins informed Christos of this, who then confirmed Higgins' results by checking himself. Some time later, Higgins informed Philbin of the plate check and showed him a photograph of the local school board in a high school yearbook. Philbin picked out Lippay in the photograph as the person from whom he had purchased drugs on August 5, 1987, even though in the yearbook photograph Lippay did not have a beard and was not wearing glasses. Later that same day, while Christos was working undercover at Haddock's, he heard someone ask Dick how was everything on the school board. Subsequently, Marlin Haddock, the bar owner, informed Philbin that Dick was Richard Lippay.
On October 15, 1987, Philbin claimed he purchased drugs from Dick at a home in Lowhill Township, Lehigh County. Christos drove Philbin to these premises but was not inside during the purchase. After leaving the house, Philbin produced a small bag of cocaine which he said he had purchased from Dick.
Based upon all this information, Christos filed criminal complaints against Lippay in Northumberland and Lehigh Counties. The courts issued arrest warrants on which Lippay was arrested on February 27, 1989. But both sets of charges were dismissed without trial. At a preliminary hearing in Northumberland County, Philbin testified that at that time he could not positively identify Lippay as the person from whom he made the drug purchases, in part because at the hearing Lippay looked different from Dick as he did not have a beard and was not wearing glasses. Consequently, the district justice dismissed the charges. Philbin did not testify at the Lehigh County hearing, and the charges in that county subsequently were terminated by a nolle prosequi on motion of the district attorney. Despite the fact that the charges were dismissed in both prosecutions, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections terminated Lippay from his job as a corrections officer, and he resigned from the school board.
Lippay filed suit against Christos in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania on January 7, 1991. 3 His complaint asserted three claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983: (1) that Christos' filing of the complaints, which led to Lippay's subsequent arrest on the warrants, effectuated an unreasonable seizure of Lippay's person in violation of the Fourth Amendment; (2) that Christos, by causing the warrants to be issued and Lippay to be arrested, maliciously prosecuted Lippay thus depriving him of due process in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; and (3) that Christos violated Lippay's equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The case was tried before a jury from February 10 through February 14, 1992. During the trial, Lippay's mother testified that Philbin had stated to her in a conversation on September 21, 1990, that he told "his superiors all along" that he could not identify her son, but that they nevertheless brought the charges. According to Mrs. Lippay, Philbin, in the same conversation, said that he and Christos had been "set up" and led to believe that Lippay was involved in drug dealing. Christos objected to this testimony on hearsay grounds, but the district court admitted it under Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2)(D)--as an admission against interest made by an agent of a party-opponent. 4 In his testimony Philbin confirmed that he had a conversation with Lippay's mother, but denied making any of these comments. Furthermore, Philbin testified that he did not warn Christos prior to Lippay's arrest that he was uncertain as to his identification.
Christos moved, both after Lippay rested and at the close of all the evidence, for a judgment as matter of law, pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a). 5 Upon Christos' motion at the close of all the evidence, in a ruling which Lippay does not contest, the district court dismissed the malicious prosecution claim because Lippay failed to show malice, which the court defined as requiring "some personal animosity, revenge, vendetta, on the part of the defendant toward the plaintiff." The court ruled that Lippay could not satisfy this element because "[Christos] never knew [Lippay] before, certainly not before August 5, 1987, the date of the first offense for which he was charged, and subsequent thereto never had any social contact, personal knowledge of his family." The court also dismissed Lippay's equal protection claim, a ruling which Lippay similarly does not challenge.
The district court, however, submitted to the jury Lippay's Fourth Amendment claim for unreasonable seizure predicated on his allegation that Christos caused the criminal proceedings to be initiated, which resulted in Lippay's arrest, either in reckless disregard for the truth or with knowledge that the allegations identifying Lippay as the perpetrator of the offenses were false. The jury returned a verdict for Lippay and, in response to an interrogatory, indicated that Christos acted with reckless disregard for the truth or on the basis of false allegations when he identified Lippay as the perpetrator of the crimes.
Following the trial, Christos again moved for judgment as a matter of law pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(b) and moved, in the alternative, for a new trial pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(a). Christos' motion challenged the sufficiency of the evidence and argued that the district court committed errors in: (1) permitting Mrs. Lippay to testify as to what Philbin told her; (2) submitting Lippay's Fourth Amendment seizure claim to the jury after the court had dismissed the malicious prosecution claim; and (3) refusing to allow the jury to consider whether qualified immunity shielded Christos from Lippay's civil suit. The district court denied the motion by an opinion dated July 31, 1992. Christos then appealed.
Usually when an appellant seeks a new trial by reason of a district court's alleged error on a ruling on the admissibility of evidence, we review the ruling on an abuse of discretion basis. Link v. Mercedes-Benz, 788 F.2d 918, 921-22 (3d Cir.1986). But here...
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