Thomas v. Rhode Island

• Decision Date: 24 September 2008
• Docket Number: No. 07-1985.,07-1985.
• Citation: 542 F.3d 944
• Parties: Matthew THOMAS, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. State of RHODE ISLAND, et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

542 F.3d 944

Matthew THOMAS, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. State of RHODE ISLAND, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 07-1985.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard February 5, 2008.

Decided September 24, 2008.

John F. Killoy for appellants.

Neil F.X. Kelly, Assistant Attorney General, for appellees State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations; Patrick C. Lynch, Attorney General; Rhode Island State Police, Colonel Steven M. Pare; State Police Trooper Badge #37; State Police Detective Timothy Sanzi; State Police Detective Joseph Philibin, and State Police Detective Michael Casey.

Claire Richards, Special Counsel, for appellee Governor Donald L. Carcieri.

Rebecca Tedford Partington, Assistant Attorney General, for appellees State Police Detectives Ken Barry and Ken Bell.

Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, TASHIMA^* and LIPEZ, Circuit Judges.

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge.

Appellants are seven members of the Narragansett Indian Tribe ("the Tribe")¹ who brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claiming that Rhode Island state officials, including state police officers, violated their constitutional rights by arresting them "without lawful authority" on tribal lands. Relying on our earlier ruling that the state police had jurisdiction to make arrests on Narragansett tribal lands, see Narragansett Indian Tribe v. Rhode Island, 449 F.3d 16, 30-31 (1st Cir.2006)(en banc), the district court dismissed appellants' complaint for failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). The court also denied appellants' request for leave to amend their complaint.

Appellants challenge both of these rulings. They argue that the court construed their allegations too narrowly, thereby ignoring a viable Fourth Amendment claim based on the lack of probable cause for arrest. Alternatively, they claim that the court wrongly denied their request to amend the complaint, thereby denying them the opportunity to remedy any deficiencies. We affirm.

I.

We have previously described at great length the events associated with the July 14, 2003 raid of the Narragansett Indian Smoke Shop by the police. See Jennings v. Jones, 499 F.3d 2, 4-5 (1st Cir.2007);² Narragansett Indian Tribe, 449 F.3d at 18-21. We recount here only the facts most pertinent to the case at hand.

The State of Rhode Island imposed an excise tax on all cigarettes sold, distributed, or held for sale or distribution within its borders. To enhance collection of this tax, it required cigarette dealers to affix to their merchandise stamps furnished by the State. Id. Failure to comply with these rules was a misdemeanor and subjected the cigarettes to seizure. The Tribe believed that the State had no jurisdiction over tribal lands and that the State's tax regime, therefore, did not apply to cigarette sales on its property. The Tribe opened a smoke shop on tribal land located in Charleston, Rhode Island, and sold cigarettes without the stamps affixed and without collecting the state sales tax. Consequently, the cigarettes were priced significantly below the prevailing market rate.

After securing a search warrant, the police entered the smoke shop on July 14, 2003 to seize the unstamped cigarettes. The officers' entry "sparked an altercation" and resulted in eight arrests. Id.

The Tribe then brought suit against the State arguing that under the Rhode Island Indian Claims Settlement Act, 25 U.S.C. §§ 1701-16, Rhode Island officials did not have the authority to enter tribal land for the purpose of enforcing state laws. We considered this issue en banc, and a majority of the court held that state officers could execute a search warrant on tribal lands and arrest members of the Tribe in order to enforce the State's laws. Narragansett Indian Tribe, 449 F.3d at 24. The Tribe petitioned for certiorari, which was denied on November 27, 2006. Narragansett Indian Tribe v. Rhode Island, ___ U.S. ___, 127 S.Ct. 673, 166 L.Ed.2d 516 (2006).

On July 13, 2006, while the petition for certiorari was still pending, appellants initiated this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the State, the officers who conducted the raid, and several state officials.³ In their complaint, they stated:

Defendants individually and in concert with the others acted under the color of state law and in their official capacities, but said acts are illegal, and each defendant individually and in concert with the others acted deprived [sic] the plaintiffs of their constitutional rights.

The transportation, detention and prosecution of the plaintiffs without lawful authority or jurisdiction constituted a seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment and deprived plaintiffs of their liberty. This seizure and deprivation of liberty were unreasonable in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

On February 2, 2007, after the Supreme Court denied certiorari, the defendants filed a Motion to Dismiss pursuant to Fed. R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), arguing that appellants had failed to state a claim on which relief could be granted because the Narragansett case had resolved the question of state authority. In their response to the motion, appellants indicated that they would be seeking leave to amend their complaint, but did not specify the content of the proposed changes, or explain why they were necessary. Appellants never filed a written motion to amend the complaint.

At a hearing on the dismissal motion, appellants argued that the Narragansett case was not dispositive because the complaint concerned the claims of "individual tribal members for violations of their own individual civil rights," and not the State's "jurisdiction and authority in taxation" over the Tribe. When asked by the court what had occurred during the raid that "could possibly give rise to" a § 1983 claim, counsel for appellants pointed to three alleged incidents of excessive force: (1) an appellant was bitten by a state police dog, (2) a pregnant appellant was forced to the ground by the police with a knee to her back, and (3) an appellant received a "chest bump." None of these incidents, however, were alleged in the complaint. Appellants further asserted at the hearing that they needed time for discovery so they could determine whether other episodes of excessive force had occurred, and they requested leave to amend their complaint after such discovery had been completed. Appellants never suggested at this hearing that the police lacked probable cause for the arrests.

The district court concluded in a written opinion that the complaint "fail[ed] to state any viable cause of action." The court found that the notion that the complaint contained an excessive force claim, which had been "weakly suggested" by appellants at the hearing, was not supported by the contents of the complaint itself. The district court also held that appellants' "passing references in their memorandum to their desire to amend their pleading," unaccompanied by a motion, were "patently inadequate" as a motion to amend. The court rejected appellants' argument that they needed discovery to properly allege their excessive force claim, concluding that "[t]here is nothing more to be learned [because the appellants] were there; they knew what happened."

In the district court's view, the complaint "was conceived as a placeholder of sorts for claims sounding in false arrest, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution which might possibly become viable if, or when, the Supreme Court reversed the First Circuit's en banc decision." However, in light of the Supreme Court's denial of the petition for certiorari, the district court concluded that there is "no doubt that the raid was carried out with lawful authority and jurisdiction." Because appellants' claims were "all predicated on the assertion that the raid was unlawful," the court ruled that the complaint was "legally insufficient and on its face plainly fails to state a claim." It granted the State's motion to dismiss.

On appeal, appellants argue that the district court erred when it "narrowly interpreted `lawful authority' in the Complaint to mean solely that the State had lawful authority and jurisdiction to carry out the Smoke Shop Raid," and that the district court should have interpreted the allegation of lack of authority to encompass the absence of probable cause. They contend that the failure to do so was inconsistent with the district court's obligation under Rule 12(b)(6) to broadly construe their complaint and to deny the motion to dismiss only if no set of facts could support their claim for relief. Appellants also contend that the district court erred in denying their request for leave to amend their complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15. They argue that they should be permitted additional time to engage in discovery prior to amending their complaint.

We review de novo the district court's dismissal of the complaint under Rule 12(b)(6). Clark v. Boscher, 514 F.3d 107, 112 (2008). In doing so, we must assume the truth of all well-pleaded facts and give the plaintiff the benefit of all reasonable inferences therefrom. Id. We review for abuse of discretion the denial of appellants' purported motion to amend. Aponte-Torres v. Univ. of P.R., 445 F.3d 50, 58 (1st Cir.2006).

II.

In Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, the Supreme Court explained that "[w]hile a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion does not need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do." ___ U.S. ___, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 1964-65, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007)(internal citations and quotations omitted). The complaint must allege "a plausible entitlement to relief" in order to survive a motion to dismiss. Id. at 1965. Subsequently, the Supreme Court reiterated that "[s]pecific facts...