Sloan Pleasants v. Robert Rigsby

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 14-1320
SLOAN PLEASANTS,
Plaintiff – Appellant,
v.
ROBERT RIGSBY, sued in his individual capacity,
Defendant – Appellee,
and
TOWN OF LOUISA,
Defendant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western
District of Virginia, at Charlottesville. Norman K. Moon,
Senior District Judge. (3:11-cv-00032-NKM-RSB)
Argued: January 28, 2015 Decided: March 2, 2015
Before SHEDD, DUNCAN, and KEENAN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished opinion. Judge Shedd wrote the opinion
in which Judge Duncan and Judge Keenan joined.
ARGUED: Jeffrey Edward Fogel, Charlottesville, Virginia, for
Appellant. Maurice Scott Fisher, Jr., HARMAN, CLAYTOR, CORRIGAN
& WELLMAN, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Steven
D. Rosenfield, Charlottesville, Virginia, for Appellant. Jeremy
D. Capps, David P. Corrigan, HARMAN, CLAYTOR, CORRIGAN &
WELLMAN, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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SHEDD, Circuit Judge:
Sloan Pleasants appeals from the summary judgment entered
against her on her claim that Officer Robert Rigsby falsely
arrested her, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. For the
following reasons, we affirm.
I.
Pleasants filed this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983,
alleging that Officer Rigsby, of the Town of Louisa Police
Department, unlawfully entered her home and arrested her for
assault and battery against a family member. Pleasants asserted
causes of action against the Town of Louisa for failure to train
and against Officer Rigsby for unlawful entry, false arrest,
malicious prosecution, and related state law claims.
The Town of Louisa and Officer Rigsby moved to dismiss the
complaint pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6). After allowing limited
discovery on the unlawful-entry claim, * the district court
dismissed all of Pleasants’ claims. In a prior opinion, we
reversed the dismissal of the false-arrest claim and affirmed
the dismissal of all other claims. See Pleasants v. Town of
Louisa, 524 F. App’x 891 (4th Cir. 2013). We remanded the false-
arrest claim for further proceedings because, at the motion to
*
The court’s use of this discovery made the disposition on
the unlawful-entry claim a matter of summary judgment.
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dismiss stage, Pleasants’ complaint stated a plausible claim for
relief.
On remand, and in light of a more developed factual record,
the district court granted summary judgment in favor of Officer
Rigsby on the false-arrest claim. The court held that Officer
Rigsby was entitled to qualified immunity. Pleasants now appeals
that decision.
II.
We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary
judgment in favor of Officer Rigsby. Henry v. Purnell, 652 F.3d
524, 531 (4th Cir. 2011) (en banc). We view the evidence and all
reasonable inferences from it in the light most favorable to
Pleasants, the non-moving party. Id.Pleasants argues that the district court erred in granting
summary judgment to Officer Rigsby because the court improperly
based its qualified immunity analysis on disputed facts and
inferences drawn in favor of Officer Rigsby. We have carefully
reviewed the record and find no error.
The doctrine of qualified immunity protects government
officials performing discretionary functions “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.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457
U.S. 800, 818 (1982). Qualified immunity is a two-step inquiry
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“that asks first whether a constitutional violation occurred and
second whether the right violated was clearly established.”
Henry, 652 F.3d at 531 (quoting Melgar ex rel. Melgar v. Greene,
593 F.3d 348, 353 (4th Cir. 2010)) (internal quotation mark
omitted). We need not, however, address these inquiries in that
order. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009).
After considering the summary judgment record, the district
court determined that Officer Rigsby is entitled to qualified
immunity on Pleasants’ false-arrest claim. Exercising its
discretion, the court proceeded directly to the second prong of
the qualified immunity test. J.A. 161. The court found that
regardless of whether probable cause existed for the arrest, a
reasonable officer could have believed Officer Rigsby’s actions
to be lawful, in light of clearly established law and the
information that Officer Rigsby possessed. J.A. 161; see
Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 641 (1987).
Having carefully reviewed the record and the parties’
arguments, we find no error in the district court’s conclusion
that Officer Rigsby is entitled to qualified immunity. The
summary judgment record demonstrates that at the time of the
arrest, Officer Rigsby was faced with a situation involving a
distraught and frightened child who was not being allowed to
freely talk to others. Officer Rigsby knew that K.P.’s father
had complained that Pleasants had prevented him from talking
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with K.P., and at the scene, Pleasants interrupted Officer
Rigsby’s attempts to speak to K.P. on several occasions.
Further, Officer Rigsby could reasonably believe that the
violence described by K.P. was more than normal parental
discipline. Based on these facts, a reasonable officer could
have believed that Officer Rigsby’s arrest of Pleasants was
lawful.
III.
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the grant of summary
judgment to Officer Rigsby on the false-arrest claim.
AFFIRMED
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