Durand v. Harpold

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 14-2244
LOUISE DURAND,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
DR. THERESA HARPOLD,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Richard G. Stearns, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella, Lynch, and Barron,
Circuit Judges.
Christopher J. Trombetta and Law Office of Christopher J.
Trombetta, on brief for appellant.
Sean E. Capplis, Sandra P. Wysocki Capplis, and Capplis,
Connors & Carroll, PC, on brief for appellee.
December 7, 2015
BARRON, Circuit Judge. Louise Durand appeals the
District Court’s dismissal of her 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim against
Dr. Theresa Harpold. Durand alleges that Harpold violated Durand’s
federal constitutional rights when Harpold issued an order,
pursuant to Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123, § 12, authorizing Durand to
be seized from her home and brought to a hospital for a psychiatric
evaluation. We affirm.
I.
Harpold, Durand's co-worker at a Massachusetts
Department of Mental Health facility in Norton, Massachusetts,
issued the order after she was approached by another co-worker,
Marleen Mills.1 Mills reported that Durand was having "visual
hallucinations of worms coming out of her body and across telephone
[lines]," had "been driving to parts unknown," had been "sending
threatening texts" to Mills, had "not been attending to her blood
sugar[, and] has diabetes and reported a [blood sugar level] of
30."
Harpold signed the § 12 order on this basis, certifying
that there was a "[v]ery substantial risk" that Durand would injure
herself. Pursuant to the order, the police took Durand from her
1
The facts are taken from the operative complaint, and are
assumed true for the purpose of resolving the motion to dismiss.
See Gargano v. Liberty Int'l Underwriters, Inc., 572 F.3d 45, 48-
49 (1st Cir. 2009).
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home and drove her to a hospital. At the hospital, Durand was
evaluated by a doctor, who found Durand lucid and released her.
II.
The District Court dismissed Durand's § 1983 claim
against Harpold for failure to state a claim that Harpold had
violated her federal constitutional rights. We review the District
Court's dismissal de novo, construing all inferences in favor of
Durand. See, e.g., Moralez-Cruz v. Univ. of P.R., 676 F.3d 220,
224 (1st Cir. 2012).
Durand contends that she has stated a plausible
claim that Harpold violated her right, under the Fourth Amendment,
to be free from unreasonable seizures because Harpold violated
Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123, § 12, by (1) not evaluating Durand before
issuing the order to have her seized and brought to the hospital;
and (2) not contacting Durand to learn if she would refuse to be
examined before issuing the order. We disagree.
Durand alleges violations of Mass. Gen. Laws ch.
123, § 12, but a state law violation is not itself enough to render
a seizure unreasonable for Fourth Amendment purposes. See Boveri
v. Town of Saugus, 113 F.3d 4 (1st Cir. 1997) (stating that a
violation of state law is not "inherently sufficient" to support
a § 1983 claim); see also Ahern v. McDonnell, 109 F.3d 809, 816-
17 (1st Cir. 1997) (evaluating the constitutionality of a police
officer's decision to seize the plaintiff pursuant to Mass. Gen.
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Laws ch. 123, § 12, under the framework of "reasonableness");
McCabe v. Life-Line Ambulance Serv., 77 F.3d 540, 544-45 (1st Cir.
1996) (evaluating the constitutionality of a city's policy of
allowing police to enter a home without a warrant to execute a
civil commitment order issued pursuant to Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123,
§ 12, under the framework of "reasonableness"). Durand's only
argument that the state law violation she alleges does amount to
a Fourth Amendment violation relies on precedent that does not
stand for the propositions for which she cites it.
Contrary to Durand's contention, Rockwell v. Cape
Cod Hospital, 26 F.3d 254, 257 (1st Cir. 1994), did not hold that
involuntary confinement for compulsory psychiatric evaluation is
a violation of the Fourth Amendment, or that placing an individual
in custody absent satisfaction of Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123, § 12,
is "unquestionably a violation of the Fourth Amendment." In fact,
Rockwell does not mention the Fourth Amendment at all. Nor do
Carrion v. Singh, No. 12-CV-0360-JFB-WDW, 2013 WL 639040 (E.D.N.Y.
Feb. 21, 2013), and Blyden v. N.Y.P.D., No. 05-CV-4740-SJF-LB,
2005 WL 3388609 (E.D.N.Y. Dec. 12, 2005), stand, as Durand alleges
they do, for the proposition that "failure to follow [the]
requirement[s] of [a] civil commitment statute cause[s] [an]
involuntary examination to be in violation of the Fourth
Amendment." Those cases held that, where the plaintiffs had not
alleged that the defendants had failed to comply with New York's
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governing legal standard for civil commitment, and where that legal
standard had been interpreted to comport with constitutional
requirements, the plaintiffs had failed to state a claim that their
civil commitment in New York violated the Fourth Amendment.
Carrion, 2013 WL 639040, at *8; Blyden, 2005 WL 3388609, at *3;
see also Glass v. Mayas, 984 F.2d 55, 57 (2d Cir. 1993) (noting
that "New York [civil commitment] law has been interpreted to
require a finding of dangerousness" in light of Supreme Court
precedent regarding confinement of nondangerous individuals).
In sum, Durand does not address the limits the
Fourth Amendment places on the need for warrantless seizure in the
scenario at hand, even though the District Court dismissed her
claim below for failure to identify the violation of a
constitutional right (as opposed to the violation of a state law).
Because Durand has failed to provide any developed argumentation
regarding how Harpold's actions rendered Durand's seizure
unreasonable for that particular purpose, her Fourth Amendment-
based § 1983 claim cannot proceed. See United States v. Zannino,
895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990) ("Judges are not expected to be
mindreaders," and "a litigant has an obligation to spell out its
arguments squarely and distinctly, or else forever hold its peace."
(quoting Rivera-Gomez v. de Castro, 843 F.2d 631, 635 (1st Cir.
1988))).
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Durand also argues that she has stated a plausible
claim that Harpold violated her Fourteenth Amendment right to
procedural due process. But although Durand acknowledges that the
violation of a state law is not in itself sufficient to demonstrate
a violation the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of the right to
due process, Durand makes no more than the conclusory
allegation -- in one paragraph of her brief -- that Harpold's
failure to comply with Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123, § 12, "deprived
Ms. Durand of her rights to procedural due process under the
Fourteenth Amendment." Thus, this argument, too, is not
sufficiently developed to merit appellate review. See Cioffi v.
Gilbert Enterprs., Inc., 769 F.3d 90, 93 (1st Cir. 2014) (quoting
Zannino, 895 F.2d at 17, for the proposition that "[i]t is not
enough merely to mention a possible argument in the most skeletal
way, leaving the court to do counsel's work").
For the foregoing reasons, the decision of the
District Court is affirmed.
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