Rivera-Ramos v. Roman
| Decision Date | 03 June 1998 |
| Docket Number | 98-1022,RIVERA-RAMOS,98-1023,Nos. 98-1021,s. 98-1021 |
| Citation | 156 F.3d 276 |
| Parties | Carlos, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Julio Cesar ROMAN, et al., Defendants, Appellants. Cesar Soto, Defendant, Appellant. Carlos, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Julio Cesar ROMAN, et al., Defendants, Appellants. Luis Torres-Massa, Defendant, Appellant. Carlos, et al. Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. Julio Cesar ROMAN, Defendant, Appellant. . Heard |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Orlando Fernandez with whom Garcia & Fernandez was on brief for appellant Cesar Soto.
Orlando Duran-Medero with whom Ricardo Rodriguez-Padilla Law Offices was on brief for appellant Julio Cesar Roman.
Robert Ruiz Comas with whom Gaztambide & Plaza was on brief for appellant Luis Torres-Massa.
Charles S. Hey-Maestre with whom Peter Berkowitz was on consolidated brief for appellees.
Before BOUDIN, Circuit Judge, KEETON, * District Judge, and MCAULIFFE, ** District Judge.
This is an interlocutory appeal arising out of a civil action brought in the district court. The individual defendants, present or former Puerto Rico officials, moved to dismiss on grounds of qualified immunity, and the district court denied their request. These appeals followed.
The present suit was brought in October 1993 by two individual plaintiffs--Carlos Rivera Ramos and Armando Rivera Tirado--and their company, Rivera & Rivera, Inc., which was in turn owned by both of them and by their fathers (who were brothers). According to the complaint, Rivera & Rivera owned a hardware store in the municipality of Aguada, Puerto Rico, which was licensed in 1969 by the Puerto Rico Treasury Department to deal in firearms.
Named as defendants, among others, were the municipality of Aguada; Julio Cesar Roman, mayor of Aguada in 1969; Lieutenant Cesar Soto, then a police officer and the director for the western area of Puerto Rico of the Office of Intelligence of the Puerto Rico Police Department; Commander Juan del Valle, then director and in overall charge of the same intelligence division; and Luis Torres Massa, then superintendent of the Puerto Rico Police Department. Other defendants were named but were later dismissed.
The gravamen of the complaint was that before and during 1969-70, the Puerto Rico Police Department's intelligence division engaged in a practice, later held unlawful under Puerto Rico law, of spying on and keeping dossiers on citizens of Puerto Rico who supported independence for Puerto Rico; that during 1969, an investigation of the two individual plaintiffs was conducted by the intelligence division; that following the investigation the Treasury Department revoked Rivera & Rivera's license to sell firearms and refused an application for a new license; that the police, in late 1969 or early 1970, raided the hardware store and confiscated firearms and ammunition; and that the defendants were responsible for these events (in different ways which are shortly to be described).
As a first cause of action, plaintiffs sought relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, urging that the conduct alleged violated plaintiffs' federal constitutional rights of free speech and free association and due process of law. In the second cause of action, the same conduct was described as a violation of the Puerto Rico Constitution and the Puerto Rico Civil Code. The plaintiffs sought compensatory damages for loss of income and emotional pain and suffering "in excess" of $2 million and punitive damages "in excess" of $1 million. Plaintiffs demanded a jury trial.
Considerable discovery was conducted, and in February and March 1997, the four individual defendants previously named filed motions to dismiss on grounds of qualified immunity. Somewhat later, motions for summary judgment were also filed by defendants, asserting inter alia a statute of limitations defense. By order dated August 29 and entered on September 5, 1997, the district court denied the motions to dismiss and for summary judgment by the individual defendants.
In its 25-page order, the district court ruled that plaintiffs had made out a potential claim for violation of their First Amendment rights. The court concluded that the facts were contested, but that there was admissible evidence that, if believed by a jury, could persuade it that the defendants had conducted investigations and kept records of plaintiffs' activities "solely because of their political affiliation" and had used the information to shut down Rivera & Rivera's firearms business based on the individual plaintiffs' political affiliation.
Addressing the roles of the individual defendants in this episode, the district court said that if the plaintiffs' evidence were accepted, a jury could find that Roman had requested the cancellation of the license; that Soto had adopted an investigatory memorandum relating to the plaintiffs' beliefs and affiliations that was forwarded to del Valle; and that del Valle and his superior, Torres Massa, "knew of the illegal conduct of their employees and failed to take corrective measures, thus, exhibiting 'deliberate or callous indifference' to plaintiffs' constitutional rights."
The district court then briskly rejected the defendants' qualified immunity claim, saying that freedom of association for the advancement of beliefs had been established at least since NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 460, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958), well before the license revocation. The court dismissed the claim against the municipality of Aguada on the ground that it could only be liable for its own policy or customs, that it had no authority whatever regarding the issuance and revocation of dealer licenses, and that Roman had no authority in this area and could not be acting on behalf of the municipality. Finally, the court said that disputed factual issues precluded resolution of the statute of limitations defense on summary judgment.
Three of the four individual defendants (all except del Valle) have brought this appeal asserting qualified immunity. Qualified immunity shields state officials from civil damage liability under section 1983, insofar as their conduct does not violate "clearly established" rights of which "a reasonable person would have known" at the time of the conduct in question. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). With exceptions not here relevant, an order rejecting a claim of qualified immunity is immediately appealable, and this court reviews de novo, as a question of law, the question whether a set of assumed facts constitutes a violation of "clearly established law," taking the law as it stood at the time of the conduct in question. Harlow, 457 U.S. at 815, 102 S.Ct. 2727; Souza v. Pina, 53 F.3d 423, 425 (1st Cir.1995).
In its discussion of qualified immunity, the district court took the defendants to be arguing that the creation of dossiers could not have abridged a federal constitutional right in 1969-70 because the Puerto Rico decisions holding the collection program unlawful were not rendered until 1988. The district court responded that by 1969-70 "it was already settled that 'freedom' to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas" was an aspect of free speech protected against state intrusion by the due process clause, and cited NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 460, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958). The district court then concluded rather cryptically that plaintiffs' "version of the facts," if proved, would demonstrate a violation of free association rights that were by 1969-70 protected under substantive due process concepts.
This court has made it crystal clear, on a number of occasions, that identifying some abstract constitutional right extant at the time of the alleged violation does not itself show that the conduct alleged is a violation of "clearly established" law. Instead, the focus must be upon the particular conduct engaged in by (or attributed to) the defendants; immunity is forfeited only if a reasonable official would clearly understand that conduct to be a violation of the Constitution. The need to focus on specific facts is so well-settled that the issue need not be discussed further. 1
This brings us back to the vexing question of what facts should be assumed in this case. On motions to dismiss, the facts to be assumed are normally those alleged in the complaint. But here the complaint contained merely bare bones allegations that the actions taken by the defendants were based on the individual plaintiffs' beliefs and associational affiliations; the complaint offered virtually no facts pertaining to individual defendants on which to make a reasoned judgment about qualified immunity.
Nevertheless, Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(c) provides that a motion for judgment on the pleadings is to be treated as one for summary judgment where "matters outside the pleadings are presented to and not excluded by the court...." In this instance, both the motions to dismiss filed by the individual defendants and the plaintiffs' opposition relied copiously on documents, depositions or both adduced through discovery. Far from excluding these "matters," the district court itself drew on some of the same materials in other portions of its order.
One important piece of evidence cited by both sides is a police report dated July 22, 1969, summarizing the views of various witnesses about the character of each of the two individual plaintiffs. Among the witnesses, some appear to have deemed the plaintiffs of good character; others, like the mayor, expressed their opposition to the gun dealer license in terms that could be taken to reflect little more than the view that such licenses should not be in the hands of political enemies; and still others indicated that at least one of the plaintiffs not only held views favoring independence for Puerto Rico but was closely associated...
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Alberti v. Univ. of Puerto Rico
...only if a reasonable official would clearly understand that conduct to be a violation of the Constitution.” Rivera–Ramos v. Roman, 156 F.3d 276, 280 (1st Cir.1998). As the qualified immunity defense has evolved, the Supreme Court stated that “it provides ample protection to all but the plai......
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