Horn v. City of Seat Pleasant, Md.

57 F.Supp.2d 219

Therese HORN, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF SEAT PLEASANT, Maryland, et al., Defendants.

No. CIV. A. AW 98-1591.

United States District Court, D. Maryland, Southern Division.

July 20, 1999.

Richard L. Jaklitsch, Upper Marlboro, MD, for plaintiffs.

Daniel Karp, Baltimore, MD, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

WILLIAMS, District Judge.

I.

Presently before the Court is Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment. A hearing was held on this motion. In ruling on the motion, the Court has considered the briefs of the parties, the arguments of counsel at the hearing in open court, and the entire record. For the reasons that will follow the Court will grant in part and deny in part Defendants' motion.

II.

Plaintiffs, Therese and John Horn, originally filed this suit in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County, seeking damages which they claim arose from an April 24, 1997 incident. Defendants are the City of Seat Pleasant, Maryland ("Seat Pleasant"), and Officer John Morris ("Officer Morris"), a Seat Pleasant police officer. Plaintiffs allege that on April 24, 1997, around 11:00 a.m., Therese Horn ("Mrs.Horn") was traveling northbound on Route 301 near Bowie, Maryland when she noticed a "dark-colored vehicle keeping pace beside" her. Answer to Interrogatory No. 3. She claims that eventually the car got behind her and began to follow her. She stated that "[t]he dark colored vehicle began flashing a light on its dash while the driver held something in his windshield." Id. Because she doubted that the driver was a police officer, and because she was on a "desolate part of Rt. [sic] 301," she did not pull over. Id. She alleges that when she reached a traffic light near a service station, the driver of the vehicle came to the side of her car, wearing a uniform which she did not recognize. When he asked for her driver's license and registration, she told him that he needed to call the Prince George's County Police. She alleges that he replied "`I already did', in an angry tone." Id. She alleges that she pulled into the service station and attempted to make a phone call to a day-care provider. She states that, in return, the driver of the vehicle started walking towards her "with his hand on his weapon," yelling for her to return to her car. Id. She claims that she returned to the car, rolled up her windows, and stayed there until the Police George's County Police arrived.

The first Prince George's County Police Officers to arrive at the scene were in an unmarked car, and were wearing civilian clothes. However, Plaintiff knew the lieutenant who was in that car, and was cooperative with him. The lieutenant brought Mrs. Horn's license and registration to Officer Morris. Then a marked Prince George's County Police car arrived.

Officer Morris told the Prince George's County Police officers that he was issuing Mrs. Horn a citation for speeding. In his deposition, Officer Morris stated that he had paced her speed at around 75 miles an hour in a 55 speed zone. Morris claimed that he pulled along side her to tell her to slow down, but she would not make eye contact with him. At his request, a uniform Prince George's County Police Officer stood by Officer Morris while he gave the ticket to Mrs. Horn. Mrs. Horn claims that when he gave her the ticket he said to her, "I am a real police officer giving you a real ticket." Answer to Interrogatory No. 3.

In his deposition, Officer Morris testified that a few days later he was told that Mrs. Horn was the sister and sister-in-law of Prince George's County Police officers, and that Mrs. Horn had been raped by someone who posed as a police officer before this incident occurred. He tried to void the ticket, and did not appear in court on the traffic charges.

The basic gist of Plaintiffs claims is that Officer Morris had no authority to stop Mrs. Horn because he was not within the City of Seat Pleasant, but was at least five miles outside of his jurisdiction. Plaintiffs allege that this incident has traumatized Therese Horn, and thus affected John Horn, because of her previous rape. Plaintiffs have filed a twenty-eight count Complaint stemming from this event. Plaintiff concedes that summary judgment on behalf of the Defendants should be granted on counts 1, 2, 15, and 16, the negligence, and negligent infliction of emotional distress counts, and counts 7 and 8, the battery counts. Most of the other counts are claims against Officer Morris directly, and claims based on the theory of respondeat superior against Seat Pleasant. These dual counts include abuse of process, assault, defamation, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy by false light, invasion of privacy by intrusion upon seclusion, and malicious prosecution. Plaintiffs also have brought claims of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 violations against the Defendants, on the basis of unlawful detention and malicious prosecution as to Officer Morris, and on the basis of unconstitutional policies and procedures as to Seat Pleasant. Plaintiffs' other claims, brought against both Defendants, include allegations of violations of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, and loss of consortium.

Because Plaintiffs had asserted federal claims, Defendants properly removed the case from the Circuit Court for Prince George's County to this Court on May 19, 1998. Defendants now move for summary judgment on all counts.

III.

Summary judgment is appropriate when there is no genuine dispute of material fact and when the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R.Civ.P. 56(c); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 250, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). The evidence of the nonmovant is to be believed and all justifiable inferences drawn in her favor, but a party cannot create a genuine dispute of material fact through mere speculation or compilation of inferences. Runnebaum v. NationsBank of Md., N.A., 123 F.3d 156, 164 (4th Cir.1997) (citing Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986); Beale v. Hardy, 769 F.2d 213, 214 (4th Cir.1985)). "Summary judgment procedure is properly regarded not as a disfavored procedural shortcut, but rather as an integral part of the Federal Rules as a whole, which are designed `to secure the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of every action.'" Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 327, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986) (citations omitted).

Defendants maintain that Plaintiffs' federal claims brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 are subject to summary judgment because Officer Morris did not violate a clearly established right of Mrs. Horn. According to Defendants, Plaintiffs are asserting a federal right to not be stopped by an officer outside of his jurisdiction. Defendants claim that, at most, the fact that Officer Morris acted outside of his jurisdiction would be a violation of Md. Ann.Code of 1957, Article 27, § 594B, which states that police officers cannot use that subsection to enforce the provisions of the Maryland Vehicle Law outside of their jurisdiction.¹

Defendants state that even if Plaintiffs could establish a constitutional right not to be stopped by a police officer outside of his jurisdiction, Officer Morris would be protected by the doctrine of qualified immunity. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has recently stated that "[i]t is a well settled proposition that government officials performing discretionary functions are entitled to qualified immunity from liability for civil damages to the extent that `their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.'" S.P. v. City of Takoma Park, 134 F.3d 260, 265 (4th Cir. 1998) (citing Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). Further, "[w]hen determining whether law enforcement officers are entitled to qualified immunity," the Court must "(1) identify the right allegedly violated, (2) determine whether the constitutional right violated was clearly established at the time of the incident, and (3) evaluate whether a reasonable [official] would have understood that the conduct at issue violated the clearly established right." Id. "`If the right was not clearly established at the relevant time or if a reasonable [official] might not have known that his or her conduct violated that right, the [official] is entitled to immunity.'" Id. (citing Smith v. Reddy, 101 F.3d 351, 355 (4th Cir.1996)).

Although Defendants try to frame the right in terms of the conduct, the right relied upon by Plaintiffs' is a clearly established right: the right not to be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures established by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Thus the true questions are whether Defendants' conduct violated that right, and whether a reasonable official in Officer Morris' place, would have understood that this conduct violated the right.

"The law is clearly established such that an [official's] conduct transgresses a bright line when the law has `been authoritatively decided by the Supreme Court, the appropriate United States Court of Appeals, or the highest court of the state.'" Wilson v. Layne, et al., 141 F.3d 111, 114 (4th Cir. 1998) (citing Wallace v. King, 626 F.2d 1157, 1161 (4th Cir.1980)). Independent research by the Court revealed that there are no cases from the Supreme Court of the United States, the Fourth Circuit, or the Court of Appeals of Maryland, which directly discuss whether a traffic stop conducted by a police officer outside of his jurisdiction, in violation of a state statute, necessarily violates the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, the circuits which have addressed the issue of whether an arrest in violation of state law violated a federal right have produced cases with differing results.

The Tenth Circuit has held that such conduct is a per se constitutional...