Matalon v. Hynnes

• Decision Date: 18 November 2015
• Docket Number: No. 15–1372.,15–1372.
• Citation: 806 F.3d 627
• Parties: Scott MATALON, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. Joseph HYNNES and Mary Ann O'Neill, Defendants, Appellants, City of Boston, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

806 F.3d 627

Scott MATALON, Plaintiff, Appellee,

v. Joseph HYNNES and Mary Ann O'Neill, Defendants, Appellants,City of Boston, Defendant.

No. 15–1372.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Nov. 18, 2015.

Nicole M. O'Connor, Assistant Corporation Counsel, City of Boston Law Department, with whom Eugene L. O'Flaherty, Corporation Counsel, and Katherine N. Galle, Assistant Corporation Counsel, were on brief, for appellants.

Robert S. Sinsheimer, with whom Wesley B. Stoker and Sinsheimer & Associates were on brief, for appellee.

Opinion

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This case requires us to inspect the topography of the seldom-used exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement for warrantless searches by police officers exercising community caretaking functions. The case arises in the context of a warrantless entry by the appellants (Boston police officers) into a dwelling in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The police lacked probable cause; the jury found that their intrusion into the dwelling was not justified either by exigent circumstances or by any other constitutionally acceptable rationale; and an award of damages against the officer who had spearheaded the entry into the house ensued.

The affected appellant, relying on the doctrine of qualified immunity and the community caretaking exception, invites us to set aside this verdict. After careful consideration, we decline her invitation. We also reject the appellants' contention that the district court's award of attorneys' fees is infirm because the court failed to distinguish between “core” and “non-core” work performed by the prevailing party's lawyers. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment below.

I. BACKGROUND

On September 29, 2010, the Boston police received a report of a robbery from Felix Augusto–Perez, the manager of a restaurant located at 48 Harvard Avenue. Officer Elvin Aviles responded, and Augusto–Perez recounted that he had discovered a black male removing money from a safe in the basement of the restaurant. Augusto–Perez told Aviles that he had chased the thief out of the back door of the restaurant and along Farrington Avenue (which runs perpendicular to Harvard Avenue). The robber turned left on Highgate Street (which runs roughly parallel to Harvard Avenue) and then turned right, running into the back yard of a house at 14 Farrington Avenue. Aviles radioed to other officers that the suspect was last seen in the area of Farrington Avenue and Highgate Street.

The appellants—Sergeant Mary Ann O'Neill and Officer Joseph Hynnes—were among the officers who responded. Hynnes testified that when he arrived at Farrington Avenue, an unidentified witness reported seeing a black male running down a walkway between 14 Farrington Avenue and 16 Farrington Avenue. After receiving this information, Hynnes and his partner proceeded down the walkway between the houses. They encountered O'Neill.

Though O'Neill's recollection at trial was hazy, she recalled “a victim” pointing in the direction of 16 Farrington Avenue and Hynnes telling her about what he had learned. O'Neill then mounted the porch of the dwelling at 16 Farrington Avenue (which faced the walkway). Looking through a glass pane on the closed exterior door, she could see two open doors, the first leading into the main living area and the second apparently leading into the cellar. O'Neill tried the knob of the exterior door and found it unlocked. She then rang the bell, knocked on the door, and called into the house, all to no avail. Hynnes told O'Neill that he thought that he heard footsteps emanating from the second floor of the dwelling.¹

O'Neill called for a canine unit. After a wait of at least ten minutes, the canine unit arrived and a search of the residence ensued. The only person inside was the owner, plaintiff-appellee Scott Matalon, who had been sleeping in an upstairs bedroom. Displeased by the intrusion, the plaintiff had words with the officers and was eventually arrested by Hynnes.

After the plaintiff's acquittal on criminal charges resulting from his arrest, he invoked 42 U.S.C. § 1983and sued O'Neill, Hynnes, and the City of Boston in the federal district court. As relevant here, he charged O'Neill with violating his civil rights through an unreasonable search and charged Hynnes with violating his civil rights through the use of excessive force. Following a four-day trial, the jury found for the plaintiff on both of these claims and awarded him $50,000 in damages.²

At the close of all the evidence, O'Neill moved for judgment as a matter of law based on qualified immunity and the community caretaking exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. The court reserved decision and O'Neill renewed the motion post-verdict. She also moved for a new trial, positing instructional error. The district court denied both of her motions. See Matalon v. O'Neill(Matalon I), No. 13–10001, 2015 WL 1137808, at *8 (D.Mass. Mar. 13, 2015). Having prevailed, the plaintiff moved for attorneys' fees and costs. See42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). The district court granted the motion, awarding the plaintiff the sum of $134,642.35. See Matalon v. O'Neill(Matalon II), No. 13–10001, 2015 WL 1206343 (D.Mass. Mar. 17, 2015). This timely appeal ensued.

II. ANALYSIS

O'Neill attacks the denial of both her motion for judgment as a matter of law and her motion for a new trial. O'Neill and Hynnes jointly attack the amount of the fee award. We discuss these claims of error sequentially.

A. Judgment as a Matter of Law.

We review the denial of a motion for judgment as a matter of law de novo, viewing the evidence in the light most hospitable to the jury's verdict and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of that verdict. See Fresenius Med. Care Holds., Inc. v. United States,763 F.3d 64, 67–68 (1st Cir.2014). In conducting this review, we are not bound by the lower court's conclusions of law but, rather, may affirm on any basis made manifest by the record. See Peguero–Moronta v. Santiago,464 F.3d 29, 34 (1st Cir.2006); see also InterGen N.V. v. Grina,344 F.3d 134, 141 (1st Cir.2003).

At its core, qualified immunity is a judge-made doctrine that maintains a delicate equilibrium between “two important interests—the need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably.” Pearson v. Callahan,555 U.S. 223, 231, 129 S.Ct. 808, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009). To that end, qualified immunity shields government officials “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, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). This construct “gives government officials breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions,” Ashcroft v. al–Kidd,563 U.S. 731, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 2085, 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (2011), while simultaneously exposing to liability officials who—from an objective standpoint—should have known that their actions violated the law, see Pagán v. Calderón,448 F.3d 16, 31 (1st Cir.2006).

Examining a claim of qualified immunity typically requires a two-step analysis. At the first step, an inquiring court must explore “whether the facts that a plaintiff has alleged or shown make out a violation of a constitutional right.” Pearson, 555 U.S. at 232, 129 S.Ct. 808(citations omitted). At the second step, the court must determine “whether the right at issue was ‘clearly established’ at the time of defendant's alleged misconduct.” Id.(quoting Saucier v. Katz,533 U.S. 194, 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001)); see Haley v. City of Boston,657 F.3d 39, 47 (1st Cir.2011). The court need not engage in this two-step pavane sequentially, but may alter the choreography in the interests of efficiency. See Pearson,555 U.S. at 236, 129 S.Ct. 808; Haley,657 F.3d at 47. This point is salient here, as O'Neill confines her appeal of the verdict to the question of whether the governing law was clearly established at the time of the search.³

This inquiry demands its own two-part analysis. First, we must focus “on the clarity of the law at the time of the alleged civil rights violation.” Maldonado v. Fontanes,568 F.3d 263, 269 (1st Cir.2009). Such an assessment “turns on whether the contours of the relevant right were clear enough to signal to a reasonable official that his conduct would infringe that right.” MacDonald v. Town of Eastham,745 F.3d 8, 12 (1st Cir.2014). Once that half of the inquiry is complete, we must appraise the facts of the case to determine “whether a reasonable defendant would have understood that his conduct violated the plaintiff['s] constitutional rights.” Maldonado,568 F.3d at 269. In making this appraisal, it is not necessary that the particular factual scenario has previously been addressed and found unconstitutional: “officials can still be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual circumstances.” Hope v. Pelzer,536 U.S. 730, 741, 122 S.Ct. 2508, 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002).

In the case at hand, the background principle of law is the Fourth Amendment, which shields individuals from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. It is common ground that a man's home is his castle and, as such, the home is shielded by the highest level of Fourth Amendment protection. See United States v. Martins,413 F.3d 139, 146 (1st Cir.2005). Thus the law, at the time of the search, was clearly established that “[a] warrantless police entry into a residence is presumptively unreasonable unless it falls within the compass of one of a few well-delineated exceptions” to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. United States v. Romain,393 F.3d 63, 68 (1st Cir.2004).

O'Neill attempts to seek refuge in one of the lesser known of these exceptions: the community...