Piccone v. McClain , 586 F. App'x 709 ( 2014 )

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 13-1627
LOUIS A. PICCONE, ET AL.,
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
v.
ANGELO MCCLAIN, in his official capacity, ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Mark L. Wolf, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Howard and Kayatta, Circuit Judges.
Louis A. Piccone on brief pro se.
Kerry D. Strayer, Assistant Attorney General and Martha
Coakley, Attorney General of Massachusetts, on brief for appellees,
Angelo McClain, Lynn Reber, Joan Mazzeo, Heather Nietsche, Irene
Woods, Lance LaPointe and Janet Rice.
Nancy Frankel Pelletier, David S. Lawless and Robinson
Donovan, P.C. on brief for appellees, John W. Bartels, Jr., John M.
Marley and Town of Dalton.
Austin M. Joyce and Reardon, Joyce & Akerson, P.C., on brief
for appellee, Richard Smith on brief or appellees.
October 20, 2014
Per Curiam. Louis and Elena Piccone filed a civil rights
lawsuit against various state and local officials. The suit
claimed a number of constitutional and state tort violations
arising out of a child abuse investigation by the Massachusetts
Department of Children & Families ("DCF") and a subsequent criminal
action brought against the Piccones for parental kidnapping. The
district court dismissed the claims against some of the defendants
under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Later, the
remaining claims brought by Mrs. Piccone were dismissed under Rules
41(b) and 37(b), and the remaining claims brought by Mr. Piccone
were dismissed under Rule 37(b).
The district court's Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal of claims
against the various DCF officials and employees (collectively "DCF
defendants") is reviewed de novo. MacDonald v. Town of Eastham,
745 F.3d 8, 11 (1st Cir. 2014). We are not bound by the lower
court's rationale, but may affirm on any ground supported by the
record. See Gonzalez-Cancel v. Partido Nuevo Progresista, 696 F.3d
115, 118-19 (1st Cir. 2012) (citation omitted).
While we agree with the district court that defendants
Heather Nietsche, Irene Woods, Lance LaPointe, and Janet Rice are
entitled to qualified immunity as to the Piccones' § 1983 claims,
our reasoning differs somewhat. The § 1983 claim against these
defendants, as best as we have been able to discern from the
complaint and briefs, is that they violated the Piccones'
constitutionally protected interest in the care, custody, and
control of their children in several respects. First, it is
contended they involuntarily removed Mr. Piccone from the family
home while they investigated allegations that he abused one of the
children. Further, the juvenile court care and protection order
transferring custody to DCF allegedly prevented Mrs. Piccone from
returning to Massachusetts with the children for fear of losing
physical custody of them; it also separated Mr. Piccone from his
family for many months until the juvenile court proceedings ended
and he was financially able to move his family to Canada from
Russia. Finally, the DCF defendants instituted ex parte juvenile
court proceedings by way of an allegedly misleading custody
petition.
As to Mr. Piccone's § 1983 claim based on his departure
from the family home, we do not decide whether the district court
correctly held that he experienced no interruption in physical
custody when he left home in response to the social worker's
insistence that he permit an unrecorded interview of his child or
agree to leave home for the weekend. Assuming that his decision to
leave home was not voluntary, see Croft v. Westmoreland Cnty.
Children and Youth Services, 103 F.3d 1123, 1125 n. 1 (3d Cir.
1997) ("explicitly reject[ing]" government's characterization of
father's decision to leave home as voluntary when CYS threatened to
take temporary physical custody of daughter if he did not leave
home during abuse investigation), the facts alleged in the
complaint still do not make out a plausible § 1983 claim, for
reasons that follow.
We have held that the state may separate a child from his
parent, as an interim measure, based on reasonable suspicion that
child abuse has occurred or, alternatively, that a threat of abuse
is imminent. See Hatch v. Dep't for Children, Youth and Their
Families, 274 F.3d 12, 20-22 (1st Cir. 2001). Reasonable suspicion
depends on the content of the information possessed by the state
actors and its degree of reliability, considered in the totality of
the circumstances. Id. at 25 (quoting Alabama v. White, 496 U.S.
325, 330 (1990)); see also United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411,
417-18 (1981) (reasonable suspicion focuses on what reasonable
state actor in same or similar circumstances would have thought).
Here, it may reasonably be inferred from the facts
alleged in the complaint that the DCF defendants had reasonable
suspicion to separate father from children temporarily while they
investigated the abuse allegations. DCF was acting on the basis of
a report from a day care center employee that was seemingly
credible, the worker having reported the allegations both orally
and in writing, and DCF reasonably treated the situation as an
emergency. When the DCF social workers went to the Piccones' home,
they were able to view the child, but they were not permitted to
interview any of the children unless DCF agreed to videotape the
interviews. No Massachusetts law, regulation, or policy appears to
mandate videotaping interviews of children in abuse investigations,
and Massachusetts courts have not required that recordings be made.
See Commonwealth v. Howard, 446 Mass. 563, 565 n. 1 (2006);
Commonwealth v. Upton U., 59 Mass.App.Ct. 252, 255, review denied,
440 Mass. 1106 (2003). Simply viewing the child neither proved nor
disproved the abuse allegations. The social workers and their
managers needed time to sort everything out, but they could not
leave the child in the home where he could possibly be in danger.
Under these circumstances, one may reasonably conclude that the
child's interest in being in a safe and neutral environment
outweighed Mr. Piccone's private interest in the care, custody, and
control of his children. See Hatch, 274 F.3d at 21.
As to the claims based on the juvenile court custody
order, assuming, once again without deciding, that a parent's loss
of legal custody while maintaining physical custody can give rise
to a § 1983 claim, they were properly dismissed. DCF filed its ex
parte custody petition only after its efforts to interview the
children were thwarted by the Piccones' refusal to allow an
interview unless it was videorecorded, followed by Mrs. Piccone's
departure from the Commonwealth with the children. These
circumstances gave DCF sufficient reasonable suspicion of child
abuse or neglect to warrant protecting the children by instituting
care and custody proceedings and obtaining an order giving them
custody during the pendency of the proceedings while DCF conducted
its investigation. See United States v. Wright, 582 F.3d 199, 213
(1st Cir. 2009) (reasonable suspicion can arise from combination
and progression of facts), cert. denied, 559 U.S. 1021 (2010); see
also Hatch, 274 F.3d at 22.
Finally, to the extent the Piccones may be alleging that
the juvenile court affidavit submitted by Nietsche and co-signed by
Rice contained misrepresentations and omissions, these defendants,
as witnesses at judicial proceedings, would be entitled to either
absolute or qualified immunity from § 1983 liability as to this
claim. See Watterson v. Page, 987 F.2d 1, 9 & n.8 (1st Cir. 1993).
For these reasons, the judgment dismissing the Piccones'
§ 1983 claims against defendants Nietsche, Woods, LaPointe, and
Rice was proper. As to the dismissal of the other claims against
the remaining defendants named in the complaint, we affirm,
essentially for the reasons stated by the district court in its
Memoranda and Orders dated July 2, 2010; March 22, 2013; and April
23, 2013.
Affirmed.