Rodríguez-Tirado v. Bonds

• Decision Date: 29 September 2020
• Docket Number: Civil No. 13-1671 (BJM)
• Parties: RICARDO RODRÍGUEZ-TIRADO, ANGELICA TIRADO-VELÁZQUEZ, Plaintiffs, v. SPEEDY BAIL BONDS, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico

RICARDO RODRÍGUEZ-TIRADO,ANGELICA TIRADO-VELÁZQUEZ, Plaintiffs, v. SPEEDY BAIL BONDS, Defendant.

Civil No. 13-1671 (BJM)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

September 29, 2020

OPINION & ORDER

This matter is before me on remand from the First Circuit. Dkt. 133. Ricardo Rodríguez-Tirado ("Rodríguez") and Angelica Tirado Velázquez ("Tirado") (collectively "plaintiffs") sued Speedy Bail Bonds ("Speedy") for damages related to the seizure and detention of Rodríguez after he skipped bail. Docket No. ("Dkt.") 1. Speedy counterclaimed for breach of contract. Dkt. 12. After a four-day trial, a jury awarded a verdict in favor of Speedy. Dkt. 106. Plaintiffs appealed. Dkt. 122. The First Circuit remanded "for further proceedings on the question of whether the jury instructions as to the tort claims accurately reflected Puerto Rico law." Dkt. 133 at 7. Parties filed memoranda, disputing the extent to which Puerto Rico has adopted the bail bondsman's common law powers. Dkts. 169, 172. As explained below, Puerto Rico does not recognize the bail bondsman's privilege to arrest as it existed at common law, and the jury instructions accurately reflected Puerto Rico law.

BACKGROUND

As the court and parties are familiar with this case, I recite the facts here only in brief.

In 2010, Ricardo Rodríguez-Tirado ("Rodríguez") was charged with a criminal offense in New Jersey. He was released on bail, relying on Speedy and American Reliable Insurance as sureties. Rodríguez left New Jersey for Puerto Rico and missed a court date. Accordingly, the bail bond was forfeited. Speedy hired agents ("the bounty hunters") to find Rodríguez with the hope of recovering the forfeited bail.

The bounty hunters traveled to Puerto Rico and found Rodríguez near his home in Aguadilla. They seized him, handcuffed him, shackled him, and took him to a hotel near the airport while they awaited a flight to New Jersey.

Meanwhile, Rodríguez's mother, who had witnessed the seizure, sought the advice of an attorney and made a complaint with the police. A warrant was issued for arrest of the bounty hunters, who surrendered at the police station. The bounty hunters were criminally charged, but the charges were ultimately dismissed.

Rodríguez filed suit in federal court seeking damages related to his seizure and detention, and his mother sought damages for mental anguish. Speedy counterclaimed for breach of the bail agreement.

At trial, parties disputed that law governing out-of-state bounty hunters, and the court ultimately adopted the following jury instructions:

IX. BAIL BOND

Now, in this case you heard about a bail bond. A bail bond is a civil contract between the government and a surety company to have a person charged with a crime released from incarceration while a trial is pending. The purpose of bail is to secure release of the accused while a charge is pending, and to assure his presence at the mandated court proceedings. The entity which signs such an agreement, a surety company, promises to pay an amount fixed by a court should the accused fail to appear in court for the designated criminal proceedings.

During the time the accused is released from incarceration after being granted bail, he is generally regarded as being in the custody of the court and the surety company, and the surety company's dominion over the accused is a continuance of the original incarceration.

X. FALSE IMPRISONMENT

Definition

False imprisonment is the unlawful restraint against his will of an individual's personal liberty or freedom of movement. The main idea of a false imprisonment claim is that the Plaintiff was unlawfully detained, and you should note that because the law protects a person's freedom of movement, a person need not be physically incarcerated or arrested for him to be falsely imprisoned.

Elements

Under the law, false imprisonment occurs when a person, whether that person is a law enforcement officer or not, by himself or through another person unlawfully detains or causes the unlawful detention of the plaintiff. To prove this claim, the evidence must show that four elements were established. First, that Plaintiff Ricardo Rodriguez-Tirado's liberty of movement was intentionally restricted. Second, that Plaintiff Ricardo Rodriguez-Tirado was conscious of the detention. Third, that Plaintiff Ricardo Rodriguez-Tirado had not given consent to be detained. And fourth, that the detention caused damages to Plaintiff Ricardo Rodriguez-Tirado.

XI. EXTRADITION: ARREST WITHOUT A WARRANT

Now, you heard evidence regarding efforts to return Plaintiff Ricardo Rodriguez-Tirado to New Jersey.

Extradition law says that the arrest of a person may be lawfully made by any peace officer or a private person, without a warrant, upon reasonable information that the accused stands charged in the courts of a state with a crime punishable by death or imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, but when so arrested the accused must be taken before a magistrate judge of a Puerto Rico court with all practicable speed and a complaint must be made against him under oath setting forth the grounds for the arrest.

Dkt. 111 at 10-12.

After the jury returned a verdict in favor of Speedy, Rodríguez and his mother appealed. On appeal, parties disputed the meaning of Taylor v. Taintor, 83 U.S. 366 (1873), which announced that at common law the authority of the bounty hunter to pursue, seize, and return the bail jumper was well established. As the First Circuit explained, however, the relevant question is not the United States Supreme Court's view of any common law doctrine. Rather, Puerto Rico law controls. Dkt. 133 at 5. Because parties had not briefed the question of Puerto Rico law governing out-of-state bounty hunters, the First Circuit remanded for consideration of that issue.

DISCUSSION

In their memorandum of law, plaintiffs contend that Puerto Rico has never adopted the rule of Taylor—that is, the bail bondsman's unbounded power to seize his principal. Dkt. 169 at 2. Rather, they maintain that the only Puerto Rico law applicable to out-of-state bounty hunters is Puerto Rico's Uniform Criminal Extradition Act, 34 L.P.R.A. § 1881 et seq. Speedy disagrees, contending that no law constrains a bailsman's ability to "perform[] his job in Puerto Rico." Dkt. 172 at 1.

As the question here implicates both the ancient common law of England as well as that law unique to Puerto Rico, I begin with some history. At common law, a bail bondsman—also called a "surety" or "bail"—had extensive power over his principal. See generally Jonathan Drimmer, When Man Hunts Man: The Rights and Duties of Bounty Hunters in the American Criminal Justice System, 33 Hous. L. Rev. 731, 744-47 (1996). Acting with the authority of the sheriff, "'the bail ha[d] the custody of the principal, and [could] take him at any time, and in any place.'" Id. (quoting Commonwealth v. Brickett, 25 Mass. (1 Pick.) 138, 139-40 (1829)).

In due course, this concept was recognized in the United States. As early as 1798, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held that a surety in one state could seize his principal in another state. See Respublica v. Gaoler, 2 Yeates 263, 264 (Pa. 1798). Various jurisdictions affirmed this view. See, e.g., Brickett, 25 Mass. at 144-46; Nicolls v. Ingersoll, 7 Johns. 145, 153-56 (N.Y. 1810). By 1872, the United States Supreme Court acknowledged the surety's extraordinary common law power:

When bail is given, the principal is regarded as delivered to the custody of his sureties. Their dominion is a continuance of the original imprisonment. Whenever they choose to do so, they may seize him and deliver him up in their discharge; and if that cannot be done at once, they may imprison him until it can be done. They may exercise their rights in person or by agent. They may pursue him into another State; may arrest him on the Sabbath; and, if necessary, may break and enter his house for that purpose. The seizure is not made by virtue of new process. None is needed. It is likened to the rearrest by the sheriff of an escaping prisoner. In 6 Modern 11 it is said: "The bail have their principal on a string, and may pull the string whenever they please, and render him in their discharge."

Taylor, 83 U.S. at 371-72 (internal citation omitted).

Although Taylor announced a rule that had been widely recognized throughout the several states, see Turner v. Wilson, 49 Ind. 581, 586 (Ind. 1875), that rule would not forever bind the states. The First Circuit explained why:

[T]he Supreme Court decided Taylor during the regime of Swift v. Tyson, 41 U.S. 1, 16 Pet. 1, 10 L.Ed. 865 (1842), in which courts conceived of the common law as a "brooding omnipresence in the sky," S. Pac. Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 222, 37 S.Ct. 524, 61 L.Ed. 1086 (1917) (Holmes, J., dissenting), to which federal and state courts alike accorded respect unless altered by statute or otherwise in a particular jurisdiction; and the Supreme Court was itself the final arbiter of disputes about the content of the common law.

This attitude persisted into the twentieth century until it was definitively and dramatically discarded by Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1938).

Rodriguez-Tirado v. Speedy Bail Bonds, 891 F.3d 38, 41 (1st Cir. 2018). After Erie, states would define the nature and extent of a surety's right to seize his principal, regardless of the U.S. Supreme Court's view. See id.

The great majority of jurisdictions within the United States had, of their own accord, adopted the rights and privileges of the English common law. See, e.g., Weishaupt v. Commonwealth, 315 S.E.2d 847, 852 (Va. 1984) (explaining that Virginia adopted the English common law except that which was "repugnant to the principles of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution" or where it is "altered by the General Assembly") (citation and internal quotation marks omitted); State v. Lingerfelt, 14 S.E. 75, 77 (N.C. 1891) ("[U]ntil the legislature sees fit to...