Roberts v. Cnty. of Essex

• Docket Number: Civ. 15-7061 (KM)(JBC)
• Decision Date: 20 July 2023
• Parties: RODNEY R. ROBERTS, Plaintiff, v. COUNTY OF ESSEX, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey

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RODNEY R. ROBERTS, Plaintiff, v. COUNTY OF ESSEX, et al., Defendants.

Civ. No. 15-7061 (KM)(JBC)

United States District Court, D. New Jersey

July 20, 2023

OPINION

KEVIN McNULTY, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

This matter comes before the Court on supplemental briefing of a reconsideration motion filed by defendants Essex County Prosecutors Office (“ECPO”) and former Assistant Prosecutor Robert Laurino (together, the “ECPO defendants”). (DE 235.)^[1],^[2] In December 2022, the Court granted in part and denied in part a motion for summary judgment filed by the ECPO defendants, leaving intact a negligence claim against Laurino and a claim that the ECPO is vicariously liable for Laurino's alleged negligence. (DE 230, 231.) The ECPO defendants subsequently sought reconsideration of those rulings on the ground that Laurino is entitled to qualified immunity under the New Jersey Tort Claims Act (“NJTCA”). Although the ECPO defendants had raised this argument in their summary judgment reply brief, I declined to address the merits, as Roberts had not had a meaningful opportunity to respond. (DE 230 at 43, n.16.) On reconsideration, I granted the ECPO defendants' request to submit supplemental briefing on the merits of Laurino's claimed entitlement to state law qualified immunity. (DE 255 at 9, DE 256.)

The negligence claim against Laurino rests on his involvement in facilitating the DNA testing of a rape kit in 2005. At the time, Roberts was civilly confined as a result of having been deemed a sexually violent offender. His status was predicated on his 1996 arrest for the rape and kidnapping of Sheronda Atwell and his eventual plea of guilty to the kidnapping charge (but not the rape charge), for which he served a prison term of seven years. In late 2004, during the course of Roberts's civil commitment proceedings, he learned that a rape kit had been taken from Atwell in 1996 but never analyzed. He sought DNA testing of the rape kit in the hope of overturning his conviction and securing his release from civil confinement.

Defendant Laurino, who was then the director of the Sexual Assault Response Team at ECPO, facilitated the testing at Roberts's request. After arranging for the State lab to conduct the DNA analysis, Laurino informed Roberts that the results were inconclusive because the materials had degraded over time. The summary judgment record suggests, however that the lab reached out to Laurino several times to say that the vaginal swab tips were missing from the kit. As Laurino did not share this critical piece of information with Roberts, Roberts was led to believe that the kit was tested in its entirety. Roberts was not released from civil confinement until 2014, after the missing swab tips were located and tested, revealing that his DNA profile did not match that of Atwell's assailant.

In denying the ECPO defendants' motion for summary judgment on the negligence claim, I concluded that Laurino owed a duty of care to Roberts to accurately represent the scope of the DNA testing that was conducted in 2005. (DE 230 at 41.) While Laurino had no obligation, statutory or otherwise, to personally facilitate the testing for Roberts, he agreed to do so on a voluntary basis and created the appearance that he had done so. It was reasonably foreseeable that Roberts would rely on Laurino's representation that the results were inconclusive and would not think to consider whether any materials were missing from the kit. A reasonable jury could therefore find that Laurino breached a duty to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances. Thus far, I track the analysis of my December 2022 summary judgment opinion.

With the benefit of supplemental briefing, I now consider the argument of the ECPO defendants that Laurino is entitled to qualified good-faith immunity on the negligence claim. The defendants cite a provision of the NJTCA that immunizes public employees from liability for actions taken “in good faith in the execution or enforcement of any law.” See N.J. Stat. Ann. § 59:3-3. In addition, the defendants note that under the NJTCA, the ECPO cannot be held vicariously liable for Laurino's alleged negligence where Laurino himself is immune from liability. See N.J Stat. Ann. § 59:2-2(b)) (“A public entity is not liable for an injury resulting from an act or omission of a public employee where the public employee is not liable.).

Good faith immunity under § 59:3-3 “applies to acts constituting enforcement of the law.” Bombace v. City of Newark, 125 N.J. 361, 368 (1991). Decisions of the New Jersey Supreme Court and the Appellate Division make it clear that § 59:3-3 is only available to a public employee where that employee is acting in the course of enforcing a particular statute, ordinance, or regulation. See, e.g. Gonzalez by Gonzalez v. City of Jersey City, 247 N.J. 551, 579 (2021) (officers who left a motorist involved in a one-vehicle accident on a highway bridge after the motorist refused a ride were not entitled to immunity for good faith enforcement of the law because there was “no applicable law to enforce”); Caicedo v. Caicedo, 439 N.J.Super. 615, 626 (App. Div. 2015) (officer who hit a bicyclist with a police vehicle while transporting a prisoner to a precinct in a non-emergency situation was not entitled to good faith immunity because he was not acting in the “execution or enforcement of any law”); Frields v. St. Joseph's Hosp. & Med. Ctr., 305 N.J.Super. 244, 249 n.1 (App. Div. 1997) (emergency medical technician personnel were not entitled to good faith immunity in responding to a 9-1-1 call where the City “cited no law which City personnel were administering or enforcing at the time of their response”).

In this case, the summary judgment record would not support a finding that Laurino was executing or enforcing any law when he facilitated the testing of Atwell's rape kit. As I explained in the summary judgment opinion, Roberts's criminal case was closed by the time he requested testing, and he had already finished serving his criminal sentence. (DE 230 at 47.) While “[t]he case was in a sense reopened when Roberts sought post-conviction relief in 2007 . . . that occurred after Laurino assisted with the DNA testing, and Laurino was not involved in the eventual PCR prosecution.” Thus, the evidence suggests that Laurino was not investigating or enforcing New Jersey's criminal laws when he assisted with the requested testing in an allegedly negligent manner.

Nor was Laurino acting pursuant to New Jersey's post-conviction DNA...