Thomas v. City of Peoria

• Decision Date: 03 September 2009
• Docket Number: No. 08-2918.,08-2918.
• Citation: 580 F.3d 633
• Parties: Joseph THOMAS, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF PEORIA and Sonni Williams, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

580 F.3d 633

Joseph THOMAS, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF PEORIA and Sonni Williams, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 08-2918.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 13, 2009.

Decided September 3, 2009.

Richard L. Steagall, Attorney, Nicoara & Steagall, Peoria, IL, Sherman L. Cohn, Attorney (argued), Washington, DC, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Randall Ray, Attorney, City of Peoria, Peter R. Jennetten, Attorney (argued), Quinn, Johnston, Henderson & Pretorius, Peoria, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before CUDAHY, POSNER, and TINDER, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

The plaintiff brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the City of Peoria and a lawyer in the City counsel's office named Sonni Williams, complaining that he had been arrested in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights (made applicable to state action by interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment) and also deprived of his liberty without due process of law. He added state law claims for false arrest and abuse of process. The district judge dismissed the federal claims for failure to state a claim and having done so refused to certify a class of persons arrested in circumstances like the plaintiff's. He allowed the state law claims to proceed, but dismissed them on summary judgment; the plaintiff does not appeal that ruling.

First ruling on the merits of the federal claims, and then denying class certification on the basis of that ruling, puts the cart before the horse, as we have emphasized in previous cases. Wiesmueller v. Kosobucki, 513 F.3d 784, 786-87 (7th Cir.2008); Bertrand ex rel. Bertrand v. Maram, 495 F.3d 452, 455-56 (7th Cir.2007); Bieneman v. City of Chicago, 838 F.2d 962, 964 (7th Cir.1988) (per curiam); Premier Electrical Construction Co. v. National Electrical Contractors Association, Inc., 814 F.2d 358, 363 (7th Cir.1987); Watkins v. Blinzinger, 789 F.2d 474, 475-76 n. 3 (7th Cir.1986). Among other objections to that way of proceeding, it deprives the defendants of the benefit of res judicata should they be sued by other members of the class. But as is also all too common, the defendants in this case defend the denial of certification—perversely, because they are rightly confident that the plaintiff's claim, and therefore the claims of the other class members, have no merit, so that if the class had been certified the judgment for the defendants would spare them further suits by members of the class. But since neither side is challenging the denial of certification, we shall let it stand.

Joseph A. Thomas was stopped by a Peoria police officer for a traffic violation, and arrested by the officer when he learned that there was an outstanding arrest warrant for Joshua A. Thomas. Although the names were different and also the addresses, the arrest warrant listed the number of the plaintiff's driver's license rather than that of Joshua Thomas's, and the officer may have thought therefore that Joshua was pretending to be a different person. The plaintiff was booked, and released on a $100 bond; and several days later, when he appeared before a state court judge for a preliminary hearing, the charges against him were dismissed because he was indeed not Joshua Thomas. Cf. Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 140-41, 99 S.Ct. 2689, 61 L.Ed.2d 433 (1979); Hernandez v. Sheahan, 455 F.3d 772 (7th Cir.2006).

The warrant for Joshua Thomas's arrest had been issued by a state court judge upon a motion filed by defendant Williams charging that Thomas had nine unpaid parking tickets. The plaintiff argues that neither Illinois state law nor Peoria ordinances authorize a person to be arrested for having failed to pay parking tickets, and therefore his arrest was an unreasonable seizure. Ordinarily the defendant would be the arresting officer, since the prosecutor would have immunity (we discuss the issue of immunity later) and since the officer's employer could not be sued under the doctrine of respondeat superior because that doctrine is inapplicable to suits under section 1983. But the plaintiff claims that the City of Peoria has a policy of arresting people for not paying their parking tickets, a policy that he claims is unconstitutional; and if it does have such a policy and the policy is unconstitutional, the City would be a tortfeasor and not just a tortfeasor's employer, and therefore liable without reference to respondeat superior.

At the oral argument of the appeal, one of the judges raised the question whether the plaintiff lacks "standing" to challenge the legality of an arrest for unpaid parking tickets. Not standing in the constitutional sense, for he has suffered a harm that he would not have suffered had the defendants obeyed state law—in which event he would not have been arrested—and he could be made whole for that harm by being awarded damages. Rather, standing in the "zone of interests" sense, a requirement for maintaining a suit in federal court but one imposed by federal common law, rather than by the Constitution as a condition of federal jurisdiction.

The term "zone of interests" originated as a guide to determining who is a person "aggrieved" by an administrative ruling within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act and therefore entitled to challenge the ruling in court. Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 153-55, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970); United States ex rel. Hall v. Tribal Development Corp., 49 F.3d 1208, 1214 (7th Cir.1995); North Shore Gas Co. v. EPA, 930 F.2d 1239, 1243-44 (7th Cir.1991); Conte Bros. Automotive, Inc. v. Quaker State-Slick 50, Inc., 165 F.3d 221, 226 (3d Cir.1998); Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization v. City of Clearwater, 2 F.3d 1514, 1525-26 (11th Cir.1993). And it is found mainly in APA cases. But it expresses a broader principle, related to the tort concept of remoteness of injury.

Often the violation of a statute or a common law doctrine injures someone who is not an intended beneficiary of the statute or the doctrine. Consider Gorris v. Scott, 9 L.R.-Ex. 125 (1874), where a number of the plaintiff's sheep were swept overboard in a storm to their death while being transported on the defendant's ship. The defendant had failed to install pens in which to hold the animals on their journey, as required by statute. Had the pens been installed, the sheep would have been saved. But because the statute's purpose was merely to prevent infection, not to save animals from being drowned, the suit failed. An owner of animals killed not because of disease but because of the rolling of a ship during a storm was not within the class of persons intended to be protected by the statute under which he was suing.

In Gorris, as in many of the APA cases, the statute that created the right of action circumscribed the beneficiaries and thus the scope of liability. But in other cases the class of persons who are permitted to sue to enforce a statute or a common law doctrine is circumscribed in an exercise of judicial discretion guided by concerns with the administrative costs of liability relative to the benefits of the threat of liability in bringing about better compliance with law. We discussed this second type of "zone of interests" determination in MainStreet Organization of Realtors v. Calumet City, 505 F.3d 742, 747 (7th Cir.2007), where the question was whether real estate brokers could challenge an ordinance that reduced the salability of the homes in the area in which the brokers operated. The ordinance undoubtedly harmed the brokers by reducing the number of sales, but the primary injury was to homeowners who wanted to sell their homes, and we disapproved of "allowing a derivative victim to preempt the claims of the immediate victim." Id. Allowing remotely injured persons to sue would interfere with the primary victims and add more to the judiciary's burdens than to the deterrent effect of the law sued under.

This discussion exposes an ambiguity in what it means to be within the "zone of interests" and therefore entitled to sue. It can denote the class of persons injured by a violation who are the intended beneficiaries of the law that has been violated; but it can also denote a class of victims that excludes persons derivatively or peripherally injured by the violation. Our opinion in MainStreet illustrated that exclusion with "the rule of antitrust law that denies the right of a purchaser from a cartel's customers to sue the cartel for damages even if the customers passed on the cartel overcharge to their purchasers. Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U.S. 720, 97 S.Ct. 2061, 52 L.Ed.2d 707 (1977). There is Article III standing, but there is no right to sue—not because there is no antitrust violation, but because it is efficient to confine the right to sue to the immediate customer of the cartel rather than to multiply the number of plaintiffs and burden the court with having to apportion damages between the first and second tiers of purchasers." 505 F.3d at 747.

Remoteness of injury as a limitation on liability is a common law principle well illustrated in a number of famous opinions by Cardozo. E.g., Ultramares Corp. v. Touche, 255 N.Y. 170, 174 N.E. 441 (1931); Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R., 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (1928); H.R. Moch Co. v. Rensselaer Water Co., 247 N.Y. 160, 159 N.E. 896 (1928); Kerr S.S. Co. v. Radio Corp. of America, 245 N.Y. 284, 157 N.E. 140 (1927). It is securely a principle of federal common law, as illustrated by such cases as Clarke v. Securities Industry Association, 479 U.S. 388, 400-01 n. 16, 107 S.Ct. 750, 93 L.Ed.2d 757 (1987); Boston Stock Exchange v. State Tax Commission, 429 U.S. 318, 320-21 n. 3, 97 S.Ct. 599, 50 L.Ed.2d 514 (1977); Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co. v. Bridge, 477 F.3d 928, 932-33 (7th Cir.2007); Gale v. Hyde Park Bank, 384 F.3d 451, 452 (7th Cir.2004); Israel Travel Advisory Service, Inc. v....