Trolley Boats, LLC v. City of Holly Hill Florida

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FILED
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________ JANUARY 28, 2009
THOMAS K. KAHN
No. 08-10453 CLERK
________________________
D. C. Docket No. 07-01027-CV-ORL-19-UAM
TROLLEY BOATS, LLC,
AMPHIBIOUS PARTNERS, LLC, and
LINDA COLLINS,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
AMPHIBIOUS ATTRACTIONS, LLC, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
versus
CITY OF HOLLY HILL, FLORIDA,
in their individual & official capacities, et al.,
Defendants,
GERALD POTASH,
in his individual and official capacity,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
_________________________
(January 28, 2009)
Before BIRCH and PRYOR, Circuit Judges and STROM,* District Judge.
PER CURIAM:
Appellant Corporal Gerald Potash (“Potash”) appeals an order entered by the
district court for the Middle District of Florida denying his motion to dismiss
Trolley Boats, LLC (“Trolley Boats”), Amphibious Partners, LLC (“Amphibious
Partners”), and Linda Collins’s (collectively, “Appellees”) 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim
on qualified immunity grounds. The Appellees allege that Potash violated their
Fourth Amendment rights by effectively adjudicating a property dispute in the face
of conflicting information regarding the respective ownership interests of the
parties. Because the district court’s order did not adequately address the legal
standard for qualified immunity cases in our circuit, we VACATE the order and
REMAND to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
*
Honorable Lyle E. Strom, United States District Judge for the District of Nebraska,
sitting by designation.
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I. BACKGROUND
The complaint alleges the following facts. Trolley Boats is a Florida-based,
limited liability company with two owners during the time relevant to this case: (1)
Donald and Gwendolyn Redman and (2) Amphibious Partners, a Wyoming limited
liability company. R1-1 at 2. Trolley Boats was managed by Donald Redman
(“Redman”), Louis Steplock, Jr. (“Steplock”) and David Beagle (“Beagle”).
Redman ran the day-to-day operations of Trolley Boats pursuant to an employment
agreement until he resigned from his management position in January 2004. R1-1
at 3. After Redman’s resignation, Steplock and Beagle hired Thom Moss (“Moss”)
as General Manager and Linda Collins (“Collins”) as Office Manager of Trolley
Boats.1 Redman remained a co-owner of Trolley Boats after his resignation as
manager.
On 9 April 2004, Redman informed the City of Holly Hill that he was in an
ownership dispute over Trolley Boats and asked for Holly Hill’s assistance in
removing Moss and Collins from Trolley Boats’ premises. Redman did not
provide any documentation indicating that he had an exclusive right to control the
premises to Holly Hill officials. R1-1 at 5. Nevertheless, Holly Hill dispatched
1
As a “manager managed LLC,” Trolley Boats vested each manager with “complete
authority, power, and discretion to make any and all decisions and to do any and all things which
the Managers shall deem to be reasonably required.” Id. (citation omitted).
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Potash, a police officer for Holly Hills, and another trainee officer to the Trolley
Boats’ facility. Once there, Potash told Moss and Collins to immediately leave the
premises. Id. Moss and Collins objected and attempted to show Potash
documentation proving that Redman did not have an exclusive right to possession
of the premises. Potash ignored Moss and Collins, escorted them off of the
property, and threatened them with arrest if they returned. As a result, Trolley
Boats lost its equipment, cash and inventory located on the premises, Amphibious
Partners lost its investment and its assets located on the property and Collins lost
her personal property and interest in continued employment.
The district court denied Potash’s motion to dismiss and determined that
“[p]laintiffs pled specific facts which indicate that Defendant Potash’s removal of
Moss and Collins from the Trolley Boats premises and threats to arrest them if they
returned illegally deprived them of their property.” R2-43 at 11. Prior to reaching
its decision on the motion to dismiss, the district court considered converting the
motion to dismiss into one for summary judgment, but, given the state of the
record, ultimately decided against doing so. As such, the district court limited its
analysis to the four corners of the complaint.2
2
Defendants attached several affidavits and a state court order to their motion to dismiss.
In their response to the motion to dismiss, the plaintiffs attached over 180 pages of supporting
documents.
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II. DISCUSSION
“We review de novo a trial court’s denial of a motion to dismiss a complaint
on qualified immunity grounds.” Long v. Slaton, 508 F.3d 576, 579 (11th Cir.
2007). In so doing, “we accept the allegations in the complaint as true and draw all
reasonable inferences therefrom in favor of the Plaintiffs.” Id. We have long held
that in order to receive qualified immunity, a government official must first prove
that he was acting within his discretionary authority.3 GJR Investments, Inc. v.
County of Escambia, Fla., 132 F.3d 1359, 1366 (11th Cir. 1998). It is then the
plaintiff who bears the burden of showing that qualified immunity is not
appropriate. Snider v. Jefferson State Cmty. Coll., 344 F.3d 1325, 1327 (11th Cir.
2003).
Qualified immunity represents an accommodation between two conflicting
concerns – “the need for a damages remedy to protect the rights of citizens and the
need for government officials to be able to carry out their discretionary functions
without the fear of constant baseless litigation.” GJR Investments, Inc., 132 F.3d
at 1366. The immunity “protect[s] from suit all but the plainly incompetent or one
who is knowingly violating the federal law.” Gonzalez v. Reno, 325 F.3d 1228,
1233 (11th Cir. 2003) (citation omitted). Moreover, “[b]ecause qualified immunity
3
It is undisputed that Potash was acting within his discretionary authority at all relevant
times.
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is an entitlement not to stand trial or face the other burdens of litigation,
. . . questions of qualified immunity must be resolved at the earliest possible stage
in litigation.” Id. (quotation marks and citations omitted).
When assessing qualified immunity cases, we consider whether a
constitutional right has been violated and whether the right was clearly established
by the law at the time of the violation. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 200, 121 S.
Ct. 2151, 2155 (2001). We note that we need no longer apply the “rigid order of
battle” prescribed by Saucier but are free “to exercise [our] . . . discretion in
deciding which of the two prongs of the qualified immunity analysis should be
addressed first.” Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. __, __ S. Ct. __, No. 07-751, slip
op. at 10 (2009). Although the Saucier protocol is no longer mandatory, we are
mindful of the Supreme Court’s affirmation of its underlying rationale. Id. at 11.
(“[T]he Saucier Court was certainly correct in noting that the two-step procedure
promotes the development of constitutional precedent.”)
In this case, however, our work is nonetheless stymied by the lack of
exactitude in the complaint and the paucity of analysis by the district court. Given
the court’s determination that a constitutional right was violated and that the right
was clearly established, the Supreme Court’s removal of the mandatory nature of
the Saucier procedure is of little moment to our present inquiry. We are still
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charged with elucidating constitutional guidelines. As such, if a court fails to fully
develop its analysis, it runs afoul of the Supreme Court’s guidance to “advance
understanding of the law” in the field of qualified immunity cases. Saucier, 533
U.S. at 201, 121 S. Ct. at 2156.
Here, the district court dedicated one paragraph to its qualified immunity
analysis. See R2-43 at 11. The court identified the Fourth Amendment as the
constitutional right at issue, correctly cited its mandate, but then failed to explain
how the alleged seizure was unreasonable. We have frequently noted that
“[b]ecause the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is not capable
of precise definition or mechanical application, we must [often] slosh our way
through the factbound morass of reasonableness.” Long, 508 F.3d at 580(quotation marks and citations omitted). The district court’s silence regarding the
Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness inquiry only makes our slosh through the
morass that much more difficult.
The court’s cursory handling of the “clearly established” prong also was
markedly devoid of analysis, especially considering our precedent concerning the
operative effect of decisions in other circuits. See Thomas ex rel. v. Casey, 323
F.3d 950, 955 (11th Cir. 2003) (holding that “only Supreme Court cases, Eleventh
Circuit caselaw, and Georgia Supreme Court caselaw can ‘clearly establish’ law in
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this circuit”). The district court relied solely on Soldal v. Cook County, Ill., 506
U.S. 56, 113 S. Ct. 538 (1992), in support of the “clearly established” prong even
though the facts in Soldal can be fairly distinguished from those in the case before
us.4 By summarily concluding that the law was clearly established, the court
bypassed the prong’s “relevant, dispositive inquiry” altogether – namely, “whether
it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the
situation he confronted.” Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S. Ct. at 2156. This
omission comes dangerously close to violating our admonition to avoid unduly
crediting a shotgun pleading, i.e., one that alleges the violation of abstract rights
not clearly supported by the record. See, e.g., GJR Investments, Inc., 132 F.3d at
1369.
III. CONCLUSION
Potash appeals the district court’s order denying his motion to dismiss
Appellees’ § 1983 claim on qualified immunity grounds. We conclude that the
district court did not adequately address the legal standard for qualified immunity
cases in our circuit. Accordingly, we VACATE the order and REMAND to the
district court for the limited purpose of providing the district court with the
4
In Soldal, deputy sheriffs assisted a landlord in evicting a tenant from his mobile home,
even though the sheriffs knew at the time that the landlord’s actions were unlawful. See id. at
59, S. Ct. at 542.
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opportunity to expand its qualified immunity analysis. The court is directed to
make the determinations as set forth in this limited remand within 120 days from
the issuance of this opinion.
VACATED and REMANDED.
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