Dettelis v. Sharbaugh , 919 F.3d 161 ( 2019 )

17-4150
Dettelis v. Sharbaugh
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Second Circuit
August Term, 2018
Argued: November 8, 2018
Decided: March 20, 2019
Docket No. 17-4150-cv
JOHN DETTELIS
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
MICHAEL R. SHARBAUGH, CATTARAUGUS COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PROBATION SUPERVISOR,
DENISE LONGARVSKY, CATTARAUGUS COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PROBATION OFFICER, GERALD
ZIMMERMAN, CATTARAUGUS COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PROBATION DIRECTOR,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of New York
No.17-cv-407, Geraci, Chief Judge.
Before: RAGGI, HALL, and SULLIVAN, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff-Appellant John Dettelis appeals the district court’s dismissal of his 42 U.S.C. § 1983
complaint. Dettelis claimed malicious prosecution, alleging that Appellees falsely charged him with
violating a condition of his probation. The district court concluded that Dettelis’s conviction for that
violation, though overturned on appeal, still gave rise to a presumption of probable cause that Dettelis
failed to overcome. We refrain from deciding whether that presumption applies and, instead, conclude
that Appellees were entitled to qualified immunity.
AFFIRMED.
MATTHEW A. ALBERT, Law Offices of Matthew Albert,
Buffalo, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
SEAN W. COSTELLO, Rupp Baase Pfalzgraf Cunningham LLC,
Buffalo, NY, for Defendants-Appellees.
PER CURIAM.
Plaintiff-Appellant John Dettelis appeals from a judgment of dismissal entered, pursuant to
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), on November 30, 2017, in the United States District Court
for the Western District of New York (Geraci, C.J.). Dettelis was serving a term of probation, a
condition of which required him to report certain police contact. When he failed to report an incident
with a police officer, he was charged with violating the terms of his probation. His resulting conviction
was overturned on appeal, and Dettelis then brought this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suit against County
Probation Director Gerald Zimmerman, Probation Supervisor Michael Sharbaugh, and Probation
Officer Denise Lengvarsky (“Appellees”), claiming malicious prosecution. The district court granted
Appellees’ motion to dismiss, concluding in part that Dettelis failed to overcome a presumption of
probable cause that arose from the facts underlying his subsequently vacated conviction. This appeal
follows.
We affirm the challenged dismissal without delineating the contours of a presumption of
probable cause here because we conclude that Appellees are, in any event, entitled to qualified
immunity.
I.
In April 2011, Dettelis was convicted by state court of driving while intoxicated and sentenced
to three years’ probation.1 A condition of his probation required him to contact his probation officer
“upon arrest or questioning” by law enforcement officials. App. 15, ¶ 54. In November 2012, Dettelis
1
The facts as set forth are taken from the allegations in Dettelis’s complaint, which we accept here as
true, and from the documents attached to the complaint. See DiFolco v. MSNBC Cable L.L.C., 622
F.3d 104, 111 (2d Cir. 2010).
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went to the town courthouse in Yorkshire, New York, demanding unrelated records but was asked to
leave when he became loud and unruly. At the request of the court clerk, a state police officer went
to Dettelis’s home and told him not to go to the court for the records but instead to have his lawyer
collect those documents.
In December 2013, Dettelis became aware of a Violation of Probation (“VOP”) report
charging him with having violated the terms of his probation by not reporting the November 2012
police contact. Although the report was dated and notarized in November 2012, Dettelis believed
that it had been fabricated by Appellees at the behest of the district attorney. This was done, Dettelis
alleged, because county personnel wanted to “imprison [him] by any means possible.” App. 17, ¶ 65.
The county court nevertheless determined by a preponderance of the evidence that Dettelis had
violated his probation and sentenced him to 90 days in jail. The Fourth Department reversed,
concluding that “the evidence at the hearing [did] not establish that the interaction between defendant
and the police officer amounted to defendant being ‘questioned,’ which would have triggered his
obligation to notify a probation officer.” People v. Dettelis, 137 A.D.3d 1722, 1723 (4th Dep’t 2016).
II.
“We review de novo the grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim,
accepting all factual allegations as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff.”
Trs. of Upstate N.Y. Eng’rs Pension Fund v. Ivy Asset Mgmt., 843 F.3d 561, 566 (2d Cir. 2016). To survive
a 12(b)(6) motion, the complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, plausibly to
give rise to an entitlement to relief. Crawford v. Cuomo, 796 F.3d 252, 256 (2d Cir. 2015). Although a
complaint “does not need detailed factual allegations,” see Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555
(2007), Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure “demands more than an unadorned, the-
defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation,” see Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). We may
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affirm on any ground that finds support in the record. See, e.g., Wells Fargo Advisors, LLC v. Sappington,
884 F.3d 392, 396 (2d Cir. 2018).
III.
To state a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim for malicious prosecution, a plaintiff must plead both “a
violation of his rights under the Fourth Amendment” and “the elements of a malicious prosecution
claim under state law.” See Manganiello v. City of New York, 612 F.3d 149, 160–61 (2d Cir. 2010). Under
New York law, a malicious-prosecution claim requires a plaintiff to show “(1) the initiation or
continuation of a criminal proceeding against plaintiff; (2) termination of the proceeding in plaintiff’s
favor; (3) lack of probable cause for commencing the proceeding; and (4) actual malice as a motivation
for the defendant’s actions.” Murphy v. Lynn, 118 F.3d 938, 947 (2d Cir. 1997) (internal quotation
marks omitted).
Relying in part on a presumption of probable cause arising from Dettelis’s violation
determination, despite the fact that the violation was overturned on appeal, the district court
concluded that Dettelis’s pleadings established probable cause for Appellees to bring and prosecute
the VOP charge, and, therefore, precluded a plausible malicious prosecution claim. See Savino v. City
of New York, 331 F.3d 63, 72 (2d Cir. 2003) (“[T]he existence of probable cause is a complete defense
to a claim of malicious prosecution in New York.”); see also Mitchell v. Victoria Home, 434 F. Supp. 2d
219, 228 (S.D.N.Y. 1993) (observing that a “conviction establishes the existence of probable cause
which, even when the conviction is reversed on appeal, becomes a rebuttable presumption” (internal
quotation marks omitted)). In challenging this ruling, Dettelis questions the applicability of a probable
cause presumption to probation violations, noting that guilt of such a violation need be proved by
only a preponderance of the evidence. We need not here delineate the precise contours of the
probable cause presumption or conclusively decide its application to probation violations. Instead,
we conclude that qualified immunity bars Dettelis’s claim.
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As a general matter, probation officers are entitled to immunity in the performance of their
duties, but the type of immunity afforded depends on whether “the duties of the defendants were
judicial or prosecutorial, which entitles them to absolute immunity, or administrative, which may
entitle them to qualified immunity.” King v. Simpson, 189 F.3d 284, 288 (2d Cir. 1999) (internal
quotation marks omitted). Thus, probation officers are entitled to absolute immunity from suit in
connection with their “preparing and furnishing presentence reports to the court.” Dorman v. Higgins,
821 F.2d 133, 137 (2d Cir. 1987); accord Peay v. Ajello, 470 F.3d 65, 69 (2d Cir. 2006) (concluding that
Connecticut probation officers are “entitled to absolute immunity in suits for damages arising out of
their preparation and submission of presentence reports”). They are also entitled to absolute
immunity in “initiating parole revocation proceedings and in presenting the case for revocation to
hearing officers.” Scotto v. Almenas, 143 F.3d 105, 112 (2d Cir. 1998); accord Victory v. Pataki, 814 F.3d
47, 65 (2d Cir. 2016), as amended (Feb. 24, 2016). By contrast, in performing investigatory duties, for
example, the filing of a violation report or recommending the issuance of an arrest warrant, a parole
officer is entitled only to qualified immunity. See Scotto, 143 F.3d at 111; see also Roberts ex rel. Estate of
Roberts v. Lapp, 297 F. App’x 67, 69 (2d Cir. 2008) (summary order) (holding state parole officer entitled
to qualified immunity in recommending that parole warrant issue); Malik v. Mackey, 268 F. App’x 83,
84 (2d Cir. 2008) (holding state parole officer entitled to qualified immunity in filing parole violation
charges).
Here, it could be argued that certain Appellees are entitled to absolute immunity for
prosecuting a violation of probation, notwithstanding Dettelis’s allegation that they did so maliciously.
See Dorman, 821 F.2d at 139 (“[A]bsolute immunity spares the official any scrutiny of his motives,”
including “an allegation that [an act] was done in bad faith or with malice.”). But we need not resolve
which immunity applies here because the allegations in Dettelis’s complaint and the documents
attached thereto plainly demonstrate that Appellees are entitled at least to qualified immunity since
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they had “arguable probable cause” to bring the VOP charge. See Jenkins v. City of New York, 478 F.3d
76, 87 (2d Cir. 2007) (“An officer’s determination is objectively reasonable if there was arguable
probable cause at the time of arrest—that is, if officers of reasonable competence could disagree on
whether the probable cause test was met.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). True, the Fourth
Department ultimately concluded that Dettelis’s November 2012 interaction with police did not
amount to “questioning” under the terms of his probation—an interpretation of state law that we are
bound to accept. Dettelis, 137 A.D.3d at 1723; see Licci ex rel. Licci v. Lebanese Canadian Bank, SAL, 739
F.3d 45, 48 (2d Cir. 2013). But prior to the Fourth Department so ruling, Appellees’ determination
that Dettelis’s interaction with a law enforcement officer was reportable, such that his failure to report
violated a condition of his probation, was objectively reasonable, not having been clearly established
as incorrect in state law by the identification of a stricter questioning requirement. See Betts v. Shearman,
751 F.3d 78, 82–83 (2d Cir. 2014) (holding officer entitled to qualified immunity where “it was
objectively reasonable for [the officer] to believe that [his] actions were lawful at the time of the
challenged act” (internal quotation marks omitted)); see also Figueroa v. Mazza, 825 F.3d 89, 100 (2d Cir.
2016) (The qualified-immunity inquiry asks “whether any reasonable officer, out of the wide range of
reasonable people who enforce the laws in this country, could have determined that the challenged
action was lawful.”). Because it was objectively reasonable for the Appellees to believe that there was
probable cause that Dettelis violated the conditions of his probation, Appellees were entitled to
qualified immunity.
IV.
We have considered Dettelis’s remaining arguments and find them without merit. For the
reasons stated above, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
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