Reid Mach. Inc v. Lanzer, 09-3665
| Decision Date | 18 November 2010 |
| Docket Number | No. 09-3665,09-3665 |
| Parties | REID MACHINERY INC.; HOWARD DOUGLAS ROBINSON, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. NICHOLAS LANZER; JEFFEREY ROMES; DENNIS M. BELL; KEVIN A. BECK, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 10a0719n.06
ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO
Before: MOORE, SUTTON, and FRIEDMAN, Circuit Judges.*
KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge. Plaintiffs Reid Machinery Inc. and Howard Douglas Robinson appeal the district court's grant of summary judgment on their claims brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, in favor of defendants Nicholas Lanzer, Jefferey Romes, Dennis Bell, and Kevin Beck. The plaintiffs argue that the defendants violated their constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment when Williams County Deputies Lanzer and Romes stopped a truck owned by Reid Machinery and driven by Robinson, issued Robinson citations under Ohio law regulating the weight and size of vehicles and loads, and escorted the truck to the Williams County Highway Department garage pursuant to anunwritten policy of Williams County Engineer Bell and Williams County Sheriff Beck. Because Deputies Lanzer and Romes neither violated the plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment rights nor caused the alleged due-process violations, and because Bell and Beck's escort policy did not violate Reid Machinery's Fourth Amendment and due-process rights, we AFFIRM the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants.
On April 26, 2007, Robinson was traveling east on U.S. Route 20 in a truck owned by Reid Machinery. Reid Machinery had obtained a special hauling permit ("SHP") for the truck to weigh up to 165, 000 pounds, including up to 95, 000 pounds for its load (a crane), for transit from Pioneer, Ohio, to the Michigan/Ohio state line. Robinson was stopped by defendants Lanzer and Romes, who are in the "weight enforcement division" of the Williams County Sheriff's Office, at 11:16 a.m. in Williams County, Ohio. The deputies asked Robinson to see the registration, proof of insurance, permit, and his driver's license. After approximately twenty-five minutes, the deputies asked Robinson to move the truck to a side road so that it could be weighed and measured. The truck weighed 140, 850 pounds.
After weighing, measuring, and otherwise inspecting the truck and reviewing the SHP, the deputies concluded that the permit did not accurately describe the load, that the load was improperlysecured, and that the vehicle/load exceeded the legal width. Because of these alleged permit violations, the deputies concluded that the permit was void.2 The deputies issued Robinson a traffic citation for four violations of the Ohio Revised Code: § 5577.04 (weight violation)3; § 4513.02 (); § 5577.05 (width violation); and § 4513.34 ().4 Appendix ("App.") at 1080 (citation); id. at 1124 (statement of Romes and Lanzer).
Pursuant to an unwritten Williams County policy—decided collectively at a meeting attended by defendants Bell and Beck, as well as City of Bryan attorney Rhonda Fisher and Deputies Lanzer and Romes—vehicles over 120, 000 pounds are escorted to the county's Highway Department garage facility, where they must remain until a new permit is issued. After waiting to receive routing instructions from the Ohio Department of Transportation ("ODOT"), Deputies Lanzer and Romes departed the scene at 3:47 p.m. and escorted the truck, driven by Robinson, to the Williams County garage. On April 27, 2007, Reid Machinery sought a replacement permit from ODOT. Areplacement SHP was issued at 12:39 p.m. on April 30, 2007, with the effective date of May 1, 2007. Ed Reid, owner of Reid Machinery, went to the Williams County garage on May 1, 2007, and departed with the truck.
Reid Machinery and Robinson allege claims against defendants Lanzer and Romes, and Reid Machinery alleges claims against defendants Bell and Beck, all under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. "'To state a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a plaintiff must set forth facts that, when construed favorably, establish (1) the deprivation of a right secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States (2) caused by a person acting under the color of state law.'" Miller v. Sanilac Cnty., 606 F.3d 240, 247 (6th Cir. 2010) (quoting Sigley v. City of Parma Heights, 437 F.3d 527, 533 (6th Cir. 2006)). Reid Machinery and Robinson allege that Deputies Lanzer and Romes violated their rights under the Fourth Amendment, and Reid Machinery alleges that Deputies Lanzer and Romes violated its rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Reid Machinery also alleges that county officials Bell and Beck violated its rights under the Fourth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.5 The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on all of the plaintiffs' § 1983 claims.
We "review[] the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo." Id. at 246. Summary judgment is appropriate when "the pleadings, the discovery and disclosure materials on file, and any affidavits show 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). "We must view all the facts and the inferences in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and uphold a grant of summary judgment only where the record as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the non[]moving party." Miller, 606 F.3d at 247.
Reid Machinery and Robinson sued Deputies Lanzer and Romes in their individual capacities, and the deputies argue that they are entitled to qualified immunity. "Under the doctrine of qualified immunity, 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." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Qualified immunity is a two-prong inquiry: (1) whether the plaintiff has shown a violation of a constitutional right, and (2) whether the constitutional right was "clearly established" at the time of the violation. Pearson v. Callahan, — U.S. —, 129 S. Ct. 808, 815-16 (2009). This court may "exercise [its] sound discretion in deciding which of the two prongs of the qualified immunity analysis should be addressed first in light of the circumstances in the particular case at hand." Id. at 818.
The Fourth Amendment protects "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...." U.S. Const. amend. IV. This court has concluded that, under the Fourth Amendment, police officers may stop a vehicle if they have reasonable suspicion of an ongoing crime. United States v. Hughes, 606 F.3d 311, 316 n.8 (6th Cir. 2010). Reasonable suspicion requires less proof than probable cause, but it must be "'more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch.'" United States v. Garrido, 467 F.3d 971, 981 (6th Cir. 2006) (quoting United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989)). We "'must look at the totality of the circumstances of each case to see whether the detaining officer has a particularized and objective basis for suspecting legal wrongdoing.'" Id. (quoting United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273 (2002)). Officers are permitted "to draw on their own experience and specialized training to make inferences from and deductions about the cumulative information available to them that might well elude an untrained person." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
The plaintiffs first argue that the deputies needed probable cause to effectuate the stop and detain the truck because the stop was not investigatory but rather "the first step in executing a plan calculated to detain and impound the vehicle at the County Engineers' Garage." Appellants Br. at 32. They rely on a phone call between Deputy Romes and a Pioneer, Ohio police officer that occurred in the morning before the deputies stopped Robinson to argue that the deputies had already decided, at the time of the stop, to impound it at the garage. This argument fails, however, because "the permissibility of a traffic stop turns not on subjective intent, but rather on objective fact."
Hughes, 606 F.3d at 315 (citing Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996)). The court "'may not look at the officer's ordinary routine, or his conduct or conversations that occurred before or after the stop to invalidate the stop as pretextual.'" Id. at 317 (emphasis added) (quoting United States v. Ferguson, 8 F.3d 385, 391 (6th Cir. 1993) (en banc), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 828 (1994)).
The plaintiffs also argue that the deputies have offered what they term "post hoc rationalizations" to justify the stop of the truck, including that the deputies had conducted research on the truck's SHP prior to initiating the stop. Appellants Br. at 23, 35. The plaintiffs, however, offer no evidence to contradict the evidence in the record that the deputies, experienced in weight enforcement, observed the truck impeding traffic and observed that it had a visible load, bulging tires, and sluggish movement. App. at 1124 (statement of Romes and Lanzer); id. at 1126 (citation report). The deputies' on-the-scene observations alone gave them reasonable suspicion that the truck was traveling in violation of Ohio law, and thus justified the stop of the truck. Cf. Brierley v. Schoenfeld, 781 F.2d 838, 841 (10th Cir. 1986) (...
To continue reading
Request your trial