MacDonald v. Town of Eastham , 745 F.3d 8 ( 2014 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 13-1779
PHILIP MACDONALD,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
TOWN OF EASTHAM ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Richard G. Stearns, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella, Circuit Judge,
Souter,* Associate Justice,
and Selya, Circuit Judge.
Bruce T. Macdonald for appellant.
Thomas R. Donahue, with whom Leonard H. Kesten, Deidre Brennan
Regan, and Brody, Hardoon, Perkins & Kesten, LLP were on brief, for
appellees Town of Eastham, Sylvia, and Mungovan.
Matthew J. Murphy, General Counsel, Barnstable County
Sheriff's Office, for appellee Dinan.
March 12, 2014
*
Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the Supreme
Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
SELYA, Circuit Judge. This appeal poses the question of
whether police officers, responding to a call from a citizen
concerned that the door to her absent neighbor's home is standing
wide open, have a right to enter the home in pursuance of their
community caretaking function. While the answer to this question
is freighted with uncertainty, that uncertainty points the way to
the proper disposition of the case: because there is no clearly
established law that would deter reasonable police officers from
effecting such an entry, the individual defendants are entitled to
qualified immunity. Consequently, we affirm the district court's
dismissal of the action.
Inasmuch as this appeal follows the grant of a motion to
dismiss, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), we weed the facts from the
plaintiff's complaint. See Butler v. Balolia, 736 F.3d 609, 611
(1st Cir. 2013).
On the afternoon of November 7, 2009, plaintiff-appellant
Philip Macdonald, accompanied by his dog, left his home in Eastham,
Massachusetts, for coffee and clamming. His cat, being "[o]f all
God's creatures . . . [the] only one that cannot be made the slave
of the lash," Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Notebook 236 (1935),
remained out and about. To accommodate the feline's comings and
goings, the plaintiff left the door to his home wide open as he
embarked on his trip.
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That circumstance did not go unnoticed. Forty-five
minutes later, a neighbor relayed concerns to the local
constabulary about the wide open door at the plaintiff's vacant
home. Responding to that call, two Eastham police officers
(defendants-appellees Norman Sylvia and Kate Mungovan) interviewed
the neighbor. They then approached the plaintiff's house and
announced their presence. Receiving no response, they entered the
kitchen through the open door.
Finding nothing amiss in the kitchen, the officers
proceeded to search the rest of the house. That search revealed
the presence of a marijuana-growing operation.
When the plaintiff returned to his abode some 30 minutes
later, he was arrested. Following some procedural twists and turns
not relevant here, he was charged in state court with offenses
related to the manufacture and possession of marijuana. But when
a state-court judge suppressed the evidence found in his home, the
charges were dropped.
The matter did not end there. With the criminal case
laid to rest, the plaintiff's thoughts turned to civil liability.
He sued the Town of Eastham (the Town), Officers Sylvia and
Mungovan, and crime-scene investigator Terry Dinan (who had
assisted in the search) in the federal district court, alleging
that they had deprived him of his Fourth Amendment rights in
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violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. His complaint also advanced
supplemental state-law claims.
The defendants moved to dismiss, and the district court
granted the motion. The court held that the officers were entitled
to qualified immunity. See Macdonald v. Town of Eastham, 946 F.
Supp. 2d 235, 243 (D. Mass. 2013).1 This timely appeal ensued.
Our review of the grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to
dismiss is de novo. See Butler, 736 F.3d at 612. We are not bound
by the district court's reasoning but, rather, may affirm an order
of dismissal on any ground evident from the record. See Haley v.
City of Bos., 657 F.3d 39, 46 (1st Cir. 2011).
In this venue, the plaintiff challenges the district
court's application of the doctrine of qualified immunity.
Addressing that challenge requires us to explore the rudiments of
the doctrine and thereafter test the soundness of the district
court's decision.
"[Q]ualified immunity protects government officials from
liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not
violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of
which a reasonable person would have known." Pearson v. Callahan,
1
The district court also ruled that, on the facts alleged,
the Town could not be held liable. See Macdonald, 946 F. Supp. 2d
at 243. Additionally, it dismissed the state-law claims. See id.
at 244. On appeal, the plaintiff has abandoned his state-law
claims, and he does not challenge the ruling in favor of the Town
except to say that it should be reversed were we to vacate the
judgment entered in favor of the officers.
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555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted). The
doctrine "gives government officials breathing room to make
reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions."
Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2085 (2011). Thus, qualified
immunity protects "all but the plainly incompetent or those who
knowingly violate the law." Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341
(1986). However, the doctrine is not without limits. Despite the
breadth of its prophylactic sweep, "qualified immunity does not
shield public officials who, from an objective standpoint, should
have known that their conduct was unlawful." Haley, 657 F.3d at 47
(internal quotation marks omitted).
Qualified immunity is designed to confer protection from
the travails of suit as well as from the imposition of damages.
Hence, courts should evaluate claims of qualified immunity at the
earliest practicable stage of litigation. See Hunter v. Bryant,
502 U.S. 224, 227 (1991) (per curiam).
This evaluation entails a two-part inquiry. See Haley,
657 F.3d at 47. For one thing, the court must ask "whether the
facts that a plaintiff has alleged . . . make out a violation of a
constitutional right." Pearson, 555 U.S. at 232. For another
thing, the court must ask "whether the right at issue was 'clearly
established' at the time of defendant's alleged misconduct." Id.
(quoting Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001)). The court
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need not address these two questions in any particular sequence.
See id. at 242.
Here, the answer to the second question is sufficient to
resolve the plaintiff's appeal. Consequently, we train the lens of
our inquiry on whether, at the time of the intrusion, Fourth
Amendment jurisprudence plainly signaled to the individual
defendants in this case that their conduct overstepped
constitutional boundaries.
The requisite analysis presents a purely legal question.
See Walden v. City of Prov., 596 F.3d 38, 53 (1st Cir. 2010). It
has two elements. The first element "focuses on the clarity of the
law at the time of the alleged civil rights violation"; this
element turns on whether the contours of the relevant right were
clear enough to signal to a reasonable official that his conduct
would infringe that right. Maldonado v. Fontanes, 568 F.3d 263,
269 (1st Cir. 2009). The second element is more particularized; it
turns on "whether a reasonable defendant would have understood that
his conduct violated the plaintiff['s] constitutional rights." Id.
Moving to the specifics of this case, we start with first
principles. As a general matter, the Fourth Amendment requires
police officers to secure a warrant prior to effecting a non-
consensual entry into a person's residence. See Georgia v.
Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 109 (2006). Where, as here, officers enter
without a warrant and without consent, their actions must fall
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within some recognized exception to the warrant requirement. See
United States v. Romain, 393 F.3d 63, 68 (1st Cir. 2004).
In this instance, the defendant officers seek shelter in
the community caretaking exception. That exception traces its
roots to the Supreme Court's decision in Cady v. Dombrowski, 413
U.S. 433 (1973). The Cady Court, while upholding a warrantless
vehicle search, explained that police officers sometimes may
"engage in what . . . may be described as community caretaking
functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or
acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal
statute." Id. at 441.
As the law has developed, the community caretaking rubric
has become "a catchall for the wide range of responsibilities that
police officers must discharge aside from their criminal
enforcement activities." United States v. Rodriguez-Morales, 929
F.2d 780, 785 (1st Cir. 1991). In line with this evolving
principle, we have recognized (in the motor vehicle context) a
community caretaking exception to the warrant requirement. In
delineating this exception, we held that "[t]he imperatives of the
fourth amendment are satisfied in connection with the performance
of . . . community caretaker tasks [by police officers] so long as
the procedure employed (and its implementation) is reasonable."
Id.
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To be sure, the case at hand is not a motor vehicle case,
and the reach of the community caretaking doctrine is poorly
defined outside that milieu. This court has not decided whether
the community caretaking exception applies to police activities
involving a person's home. See United States v. Tibolt, 72 F.3d
965, 969 n.2 (1st Cir. 1995) (leaving question open). The courts
of appeals elsewhere are divided on that question. See Ray v. Twp.
of Warren, 626 F.3d 170, 175-76 (3d Cir. 2010) (collecting cases
and concluding that "[t]here is some confusion among the circuits
as to whether the community caretaking exception . . . applies to
warrantless searches of the home"). State appellate courts are
also split. Compare, e.g., State v. Vargas, 63 A.3d 175, 186 (N.J.
2013) (repudiating "language suggesting that the community-
caretaking doctrine permits the warrantless entry into or search of
a home in the absence of some form of exigent circumstances"),
with, e.g., State v. Deneui, 775 N.W.2d 221, 239 (S.D. 2009)
(holding that "homes cannot be arbitrarily isolated from the
community caretaking equation"); see also Commonwealth v.
Entwistle, 973 N.E.2d 115, 127 n.8 (Mass. 2012), cert. denied, 133
S. Ct. 945 (2013) (leaving question open).
The question is complicated because courts do not always
draw fine lines between the community caretaking exception and
other exceptions to the warrant requirement. See, e.g., Deneui,
775 N.W.2d at 232 (decrying the "contradictory and sometimes
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conflicting" way in which the community caretaking, emergency, and
emergency aid doctrines have been applied). The juxtaposition
between the community caretaking exception and the emergency aid
exception furnishes an apt illustration of this overlap.2 Some
courts have treated emergency aid as a freestanding exception to
the warrant requirement. See, e.g., Entwistle, 973 N.E.2d at 127
n.8. Others have classified emergency aid as "a subcategory of the
community caretaking exception." People v. Ray, 981 P.2d 928, 933
(Cal. 1999). Indeed, some courts have held that giving the
community caretaking exception a life in the home independent and
apart from the emergency aid exception "would render the emergency-
aid doctrine obsolete." Vargas, 63 A.3d at 189. The other side of
the coin is that some courts continue to insist on a sharp line of
demarcation between the emergency aid exception and the community
caretaking exception. See, e.g., State v. Pinkard, 785 N.W.2d 592,
600 n.8 (Wis. 2010).
The same sort of disarray is evident in the manner in
which courts have attempted to define the interface between the
exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement and the
community caretaking exception.3 For example, some courts "apply
2
Under the emergency aid exception, "law enforcement officers
may enter a home without a warrant to render emergency assistance
to an injured occupant or to protect an occupant from imminent
injury." Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403 (2006).
3
A warrantless entry into a residence "may be permitted if
'exigent circumstances' arise." United States v. Samboy, 433 F.3d
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what appears to be a modified exigent circumstances test, with
perhaps a lower threshold for exigency if the officer is acting in
a community caretaking role." Twp. of Warren, 626 F.3d at 176.
Other courts steadfastly maintain that the exceptions are not
congruent and must be analyzed and applied distinctly. See, e.g.,
Hunsberger v. Wood, 570 F.3d 546, 554 (4th Cir. 2009).
Given the profusion of cases pointing in different
directions, it is apparent that the scope and boundaries of the
community caretaking exception are nebulous. The plaintiff appears
to concede that this rampant uncertainty exists. Nevertheless, he
strives to convince us that, whatever the parameters of the
exception, the circumstances here fall outside of it. We are not
persuaded.
There is no real dispute about what the defendant
officers did: they responded to a call from a concerned neighbor,
saw the door to the plaintiff's house standing wide open, announced
their presence without receiving a reply, and proceeded to enter
the home to ensure that nothing was amiss. They conducted their
ensuing search in an unremarkable manner. These actions were at
least arguably within the scope of the officers' community
caretaking responsibilities — and, given the parade of horribles
154, 158 (1st Cir. 2005). "To show exigent circumstances, the
police must reasonably believe that there is such a compelling
necessity for immediate action as will not brook the delay of
obtaining a warrant," as "when delay would risk the destruction of
evidence." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
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that could easily be imagined had the officers simply turned tail,
a plausible argument can be made that the officers' actions were
reasonable under the circumstances. The plaintiff disagrees. He
contends that the officers' actions were well outside what the law
allows and that any reasonable officer should have known as much.
To evaluate the plaintiff's contention, we must examine
whether, at the time of the incident, there were either controlling
cases or a consensus of persuasive authorities such that reasonable
police officers could not have thought that their actions were
lawful. See Barton v. Clancy, 632 F.3d 9, 22 (1st Cir. 2011).
Manifestly, there is no directly controlling authority. The
question thus reduces to whether a consensus of persuasive judicial
decisions exists. We think not.
The plaintiff places heavy reliance on two intermediate
state appellate decisions. First, he cites the decision in State
v. Christenson, 45 P.3d 511 (Or. Ct. App. 2002), in which the court
concluded that "an open door on a summer morning is not, in and of
itself, a circumstance that could" justify a home entry under the
community caretaking exception. Id. at 513. Second, he cites Kyer
v. Commonwealth, 612 S.E.2d 213 (Va. Ct. App. 2005) (en banc), in
which the court refused to apply the community caretaking exception
based on "only one arguably suspicious circumstance: an open door
on an August night." Id. at 217.
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These decisions are admittedly helpful to the plaintiff's
position, but they are only two small islands in a sea of confusing
case law. Standing alone, they do not comprise the consensus of
persuasive authority needed to overcome the defendants' claims of
qualified immunity. Other state courts have upheld entries into a
dwelling by police officers in circumstances analogous to the
circumstances here. For instance, in State v. Alexander, 721 A.2d
275 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1998), an intermediate appellate court held
that a police entry into a home based upon a neighbor's report of
an open basement door and an absent owner was appropriate under the
community caretaking exception. See id. at 277, 286-87. So, too,
in Ray, the state supreme court employed the community caretaking
exception to uphold a home entry by police officers based largely
"on a neighbor's report that the front door had been open all day"
and that "no one was at home." 981 P.2d at 938 (internal quotation
mark omitted).
Even if the cases that run contrary to the plaintiff's
position were wrongly decided — a matter on which we take no view
— they serve to inject a substantial measure of doubt as to whether
the Fourth Amendment barred the officers' entry in this case. That
substantial measure of doubt undermines the putative consensus that
the plaintiff labors to construct and dooms his appeal. To render
a government official's claim of qualified immunity inert,
"existing precedent must have placed the statutory or
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constitutional question beyond debate." al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at
2083. The mixed bag that a canvass of the case law reveals simply
does not produce the requisite degree of clarity here.
The short of it is that neither the general dimensions of
the community caretaking exception nor the case law addressing the
application of that exception provides the sort of red flag that
would have semaphored to reasonable police officers that their
entry into the plaintiff's home was illegal. Qualified immunity is
meant to protect government officials where no such red flags are
flying, see Pearson, 555 U.S. at 231, and we discern no error in
the application of the doctrine to this case.
In a last-gasp effort to prevent his case from going up
in smoke, the plaintiff tries to change the trajectory of the
debate. Reminding us that "[t]he ultimate standard set forth in
the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness," Cady, 413 U.S. at 439, the
plaintiff urges that we employ this more general lens instead of
the specific filter of community caretaking. This exhortation has
little to commend it. The Supreme Court has made pellucid that
"[t]he general proposition . . . that an unreasonable search or
seizure violates the Fourth Amendment is of little help in
determining whether the violative nature of particular conduct is
clearly established." al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. at 2084.
That guidance is dispositive here. The generic rubric of
"reasonableness" furnishes us no clear indication as to whether a
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police officer confronted with a vacant house, an open door, and a
worried neighbor ought to know that entering the house is
proscribed by the Fourth Amendment.
Let us be perfectly clear. We do not decide today
whether or not the community caretaking exception can be applied so
as to render constitutional a warrantless and non-consensual police
entry into a residence. Nor do we decide whether or not the
circumstances that confronted the officers here come within the
compass of the community caretaking exception. These questions are
down-to-the-wire close — but the very closeness of the questions is
telling. Given the nature of the qualified immunity inquiry, it is
sufficient to hold — as we do in this opinion — that because these
questions are not resolved by clearly established law, the officers
who entered and searched the plaintiff's dwelling are entitled to
the shield of qualified immunity. We need go no further.
Affirmed.
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