Washington v. County of Rockland

• Decision Date: 25 June 2004
• Docket Number: No. 02-7929.,02-7929.
• Citation: 373 F.3d 310
• Parties: Evan WASHINGTON, Howard Pierson, IV and Secunda Crump, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. COUNTY OF ROCKLAND, James F. Kralik, in his individual capacity, Defendants-Appellees, Thomas Guthrie, in his individual capacity, Dennis Thorton, in his individual capacity, Kim Saucier, Det.,in his individual capacity, Nicholas Salfaro, in his individual capacity, and William J. Clark, Cpt.,in his individual capacity, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

373 F.3d 310

Evan WASHINGTON, Howard Pierson, IV and Secunda Crump, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. COUNTY OF ROCKLAND, James F. Kralik, in his individual capacity, Defendants-Appellees Thomas Guthrie, in his individual capacity, Dennis Thorton, in his individual capacity, Kim Saucier, Det.,in his individual capacity, Nicholas Salfaro, in his individual capacity, and William J. Clark, Cpt.,in his individual capacity, Defendants.

No. 02-7929.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: September 2, 2003.

Decided: June 25, 2004.

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Stephen Bergstein, Thornton, Bergstein & Ullrich, LLP, Chester, NY, for plaintiffs-appellants.

Jeffrey S. Rovins, New York, NY, for defendants-appellees.

Before: SOTOMAYOR and WESLEY, Circuit Judges, and POLLACK,^* District Judge.

SOTOMAYOR, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs-appellants Evan Washington, Howard Pierson IV and Secunda Crump (collectively, "plaintiffs"), African-American correction officers employed by the Rockland County Sheriff's Department ("RCSD" or "the Department") brought suit, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983, against the County of Rockland ("the County") and Rockland County Sheriff James F. Kralik, in his individual capacity (collectively, "defendants").¹ Plaintiffs claimed that defendants engaged in malicious prosecution by bringing meritless disciplinary charges against plaintiffs because of plaintiffs' race and in retaliation for plaintiffs' decision to speak out against defendants' allegedly discriminatory policies and practices. Plaintiffs further allege that defendants selectively maintained meritless disciplinary proceedings against them because of their race and prior opposition to defendants' allegedly discriminatory practices. The district court (Conner, J.) granted summary judgment in favor of defendants on all of plaintiffs' claims.

On appeal, we hold that: (1) plaintiffs' malicious prosecution claims fail because a § 1983 malicious prosecution claim may not be premised on a civil administrative proceeding of the type at issue here; (2) plaintiffs' discrimination claims accrued at the time the disciplinary charges were filed, and thus, plaintiffs' filing of the claims more than three years after they accrued rendered them untimely; and (3) although plaintiffs suffered an adverse employment action, their retaliation claim fails nonetheless because they did not demonstrate a causal connection between the adverse employment action and the protected speech.

BACKGROUND

In August 1996, RCSD initiated an investigation to determine whether corrections officers were distributing contraband materials to inmates in the Rockland County jail. Information obtained from inmate interviews suggested that Washington gave an inmate a cigarette, that Pierson gave food and beer to an inmate, and that Crump knew that cigarettes were stored in the jail. Because this information was obtained through uncorroborated inmate testimony, RCSD investigators declined to pursue criminal charges against the three officers and instead referred the matter to Joseph Suarez, Counsel to the Sheriff of Rockland County, to determine if internal administrative charges should be filed.

Although subordinates expressed reservations about the reliability of inmate testimony and suggested that the matter be addressed in an internal conference, Suarez ultimately recommended that Sheriff Kralik proceed with administrative disciplinary charges against plaintiffs.

On October 28, 1996, Washington was charged with Promoting Prison Contraband. On July 7, 1997 and August 26, 1997, respectively, Pierson and Crump also were charged with Promoting Prison Contraband.² Plaintiffs were suspended without pay for thirty days, pursuant to N.Y. Civ. Serv. L. § 75(3). Pierson and Crump were given administrative hearings before a hearing officer, while the disciplinary charges against Washington were resolved in arbitration proceedings. Each plaintiff was found not guilty of Promoting Prison Contraband. The disciplinary charges against Crump and Washington, respectively, were dismissed on February 9, 1998 and July 21, 1998. Although the contraband charge against Pierson was dismissed on February 8, 1998, Pierson was found guilty on a separate charge of permitting two inmates to fight and was discharged by the Sheriff.

On September 18, 2000, plaintiffs filed this suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that: (1) RCSD's decision to file administrative disciplinary charges against them constituted malicious prosecution because of the evidentiary infirmities undermining the charges; (2) RCSD's decision to pursue administrative disciplinary charges against them was motivated by racial discrimination; and (3) in pursuing administrative disciplinary charges against plaintiffs, RCSD was retaliating against plaintiffs' exercise of their First Amendment rights in speaking out against RCSD's allegedly discriminatory policies and practices.

On July 22, 2002, the district court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment. See Washington v. County of Rockland, 211 F.Supp.2d 507 (S.D.N.Y.2002). The district court concluded that because the crux of plaintiffs' §§ 1981 and 1983 discrimination claims was that defendants selectively maintained disciplinary proceedings against them on account of race, the claims accrued at the time plaintiffs knew, or had reason to know, of the charges, and thus were untimely. See id. at 511. The district court further held that although plaintiffs' malicious prosecution claims were timely, they failed on the merits because a malicious prosecution claim brought under § 1983 could not be maintained where the alleged prosecution occurred in a civil administrative proceeding. See id. at 513. Finally, the district court held that plaintiffs' claims of First Amendment retaliation could not be maintained because plaintiffs failed to establish that they suffered an adverse employment action. See id. at 514.

Plaintiffs subsequently filed this timely appeal.

DISCUSSION

I. Standard of Review

We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo. See Lombard v. Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Inc., 280 F.3d 209, 214 (2d Cir.2002). Summary judgment is appropriate if there are no genuine issues of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Oneida Indian Nation of New York v. City of Sherrill, 337 F.3d 139, 152 (2d Cir.2003). When there are no disputed issues of material fact, "our task is to determine whether the district court correctly applied the law." Mario v. P & C Food Mkts., Inc., 313 F.3d 758, 763 (2d Cir.2002) (internal quotation marks omitted).

II. Malicious Prosecution Claims

The district court concluded that a malicious prosecution claim brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 may not be premised on an administrative disciplinary proceeding. Washington, 211 F.Supp.2d at 512-13. Section 1983 authorizes a court to grant relief when a party's constitutional rights have been violated by a state or local official or other person acting under color of state law. Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 535, 101 S.Ct. 1908, 68 L.Ed.2d 420 (1981); Eagleston v. Guido, 41 F.3d 865, 875 (2d Cir.1994). To establish a constitutional violation under § 1983, plaintiffs must demonstrate that (1) defendants were acting under color of state law at the time of the alleged malicious prosecution; and (2) the action was a deprivation of a constitutional or federal statutory right. Hayut v. State Univ. of New York, 352 F.3d 733, 743-44 (2d Cir.2003). It is undisputed that defendants were Rockland County officials acting under color of state law. The remaining question is whether the initiation and pursuit of the administrative disciplinary charges constituted a deprivation of plaintiffs' federally protected rights for purposes of § 1983.

Although § 1983 provides plaintiffs with a federal cause of action, generally we borrow the elements of the underlying malicious prosecution from state law. Cook v. Sheldon, 41 F.3d 73, 79 (2d Cir.1994). Plaintiffs argue that because New York recognizes the tort of civil malicious prosecution, they may base their § 1983 claim on a civil malicious prosecution arising out of administrative disciplinary proceedings. In concluding that administrative disciplinary proceedings were inadequate to support a § 1983 claim for malicious prosecution, the district court relied on Easton v. Sundram, 947 F.2d 1011, 1017 (2d Cir.1991). Washington, 211 F.Supp.2d at 513-14. In Easton, this court noted that because civil proceedings do not implicate the same constitutional rights as criminal proceedings, the mere fact that New York state law recognizes a civil tort of malicious prosecution did not transform plaintiff's claim of civil malicious prosecution "into a constitutional cause of action" redressable under § 1983. Easton, 947 F.2d at 1017. Plaintiffs argue that although Easton suggests that it is unlikely that a civil proceeding could be the basis for a § 1983 claim for malicious prosecution, it did not expressly foreclose such claims. We disagree as fully explained below.

The issues presented in Easton are similar to those in the instant case. In Easton, the plaintiff brought suit, pursuant to § 1983, claiming malicious prosecution in the context of a civil proceeding. We noted that "we have never determined whether a state law tort for civil as opposed to criminal malicious prosecution gives rise to a cause of action under § 1983." Id. We further recognized that "[a]lthough we ha[d] previously held that the state tort of malicious criminal prosecution gives rise to a cause of action under § 1983," criminal malicious prosecution generally implicated constitutional rights "not automatically implicated in a malicious [prosecution] civil suit." Id. While we did not foreclose the possibility that "civil prosecution [could] give rise to a cause of...