Gupta v. C.O Owens et al
Filing
93
Opinion and Order. Signed by the Honorable Sara L. Ellis on 3/18/2014: Mailed notice(rj, )
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
Ashish Gupta,
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Plaintiff,
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v.
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Correctional Officer Randy L. Owens,
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Will County Sheriff’s Office; Officer Ricky
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Krakow #7825, Naperville Police Department; )
and Correctional Officer Todd Wittmayer, Will )
County Sheriff’s Office; Correctional Officer )
Mike Janovyak, Will County Sheriff’s Office; )
Correctional Officer James Patras, Will County )
Sheriff’s Office; Joshua Lane, Will County
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Sheriff’s Office, in their individual capacities; )
Will County Sheriff’s Office; and the County )
of Will, Illinois,
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Defendants.
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No. 12 C 7855
Judge Sara L. Ellis
OPINION AND ORDER
Plaintiff Ashish Gupta brings a five count Complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against
Officer Ricky Krakow of the Naperville Police Department, the Will County Sheriff, and several
officers from the Will County Sheriff’s Office. In Count II of the Complaint, Mr. Gupta asserts
that Officer Krakow violated § 1983 by arresting him without probable cause and by unlawfully
seizing his telephone. Now before the Court is a motion to dismiss brought by Officer Krakow
and the Naperville Police Department. The motion to dismiss [47] is granted in part and denied
in part. The Court grants the motion to dismiss with regard to the Naperville Police Department
as it is not an entity that can be sued independently from the city of Naperville. 1 The motion to
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There is some question as to whether the Naperville Police Department has been named as a
Defendant in this case. In responding to the motion to dismiss, Mr. Gupta acknowledges that the
Naperville Police Department is not a named Defendant. Dkt. No. 51 at 7. But for the sake of clarity,
the Court grants the motion to dismiss the Complaint against the Naperville Police Department.
dismiss is denied with respect to Officer Krakow because Mr. Gupta’s claim for unlawful arrest
does not necessarily challenge his conviction for disorderly conduct and because, based on the
facts alleged in the Complaint, the Court cannot find that Officer Krakow’s conduct was
protected by qualified immunity.
BACKGROUND 2
On October 1, 2010, Officer Krakow went to Mr. Gupta’s home, purportedly following
up on a report from Jessica Bouldin that Mr. Gupta had harassed her earlier that same evening.
Because Mr. Gupta was not home, Officer Krakow left his phone number with Mr. Gupta’s
father. Upon returning home at around 10:00 p.m., Mr. Gupta called Officer Krakow. Officer
Krakow requested that they meet a short while later at a local 7-Eleven. Immediately after Mr.
Gupta arrived at the 7-Eleven, Officer Krakow arrested him and seized his cell phone.
Mr. Gupta was charged with one count of Intimidating a Juror. 3 At the time, Mr. Gupta
was not involved in any court proceeding involving a juror. Later in the evening of October 1,
2010 or sometime after midnight, Mr. Gupta was transported to the Will County Adult Detention
Facility in Joliet, Illinois. In other counts of the Complaint, Mr. Gupta alleges that he was
subject to various abuses and constitutional violations at the Will County Adult Detention
2
The facts in the background section are taken from the Complaint and are presumed true for the
purpose of resolving defendant’s motion to dismiss. See Virnich v. Vorwald, 664 F.3d 206, 212 (7th
Cir. 2011). A court normally cannot consider extrinsic evidence without converting a motion to
dismiss into one for summary judgment. Hecker v. Deere & Co., 556 F.3d 575, 582–83 (7th Cir.
2009). Where a document is referenced in the complaint and central to Plaintiff’s claims, however,
the Court may consider it in ruling on the motion to dismiss. Id. The Court may also take judicial
notice of matters of public record. Gen. Elec. Capital Corp. v. Lease Resolution Corp., 128 F.3d
1074, 1080–81 (7th Cir. 1997). Here, the Court takes judicial notice of Mr. Gupta’s state court
conviction and sentence for disorderly conduct, as well as the criminal complaint for Harassment of
Witness.
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The state criminal complaint against Mr. Gupta identifies the charged offense as “Harassment of
Witness,” a class 2 felony. The distinction between Harassment of Witness and Intimidating a Juror
is not relevant to the Court’s ruling.
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Facility. But the Court need not summarize those allegations here because they do not involve
Officer Krakow and are not relevant to this motion to dismiss.
The initial charge of Intimidating a Juror (or Harassment of Witness) was eventually
dropped. On January 11, 2013 Mr. Gupta was charged with and pleaded guilty to one count of
disorderly conduct—a class C misdemeanor—for conduct occurring on October 1, 2010. Mr.
Gupta was sentenced to pay a $300 fine and to serve 24 months’ conditional discharge.
LEGAL STANDARD
A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) challenges the sufficiency of the complaint, not
its merits. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6); Gibson v. City of Chicago, 910 F.2d 1510, 1520 (7th Cir.
1990). In considering a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the Court accepts as true all wellpleaded facts in the plaintiff’s complaint and draws all reasonable inferences from those facts in
the plaintiff’s favor. AnchorBank, FSB v. Hofer, 649 F.3d 610, 614 (7th Cir. 2011). To survive
a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the complaint must not only provide the defendant with fair notice of a
claim’s basis but must also be facially plausible. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S. Ct.
1937, 173 L. Ed. 2d 868 (2009); see also Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 127 S.
Ct. 1955, 167 L. Ed. 2d 929 (2007). “A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads
factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable
for the misconduct alleged.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678.
ANALYSIS
In his motion to dismiss Mr. Gupta’s Complaint, Officer Krakow argues that probable
cause to arrest Mr. Gupta was conclusively proven by Mr. Gupta’s guilty plea, and therefore the
Supreme Court’s ruling in Heck v. Humphrey bars Mr. Gupta from challenging the lawfulness of
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the arrest. Officer Krakow also seeks protection from liability under the principle of qualified
immunity.
In Heck v. Humphrey, Mr. Heck brought a § 1983 claim alleging that county prosecutors
and a state police investigator committed unlawful acts in investigating and prosecuting his
criminal case. 512 U.S. 477, 479, 114 S. Ct. 2364, 129 L. Ed. 2d 383 (1994). The Supreme
Court held that Heck’s § 1983 claim was barred because it necessarily challenged the validity of
his conviction. Id. at 487. The Supreme Court held that in order to prevail on a constitutional
claim relating to his conviction or imprisonment, “a § 1983 plaintiff must prove that the
conviction or sentence has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared
invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a
federal court’s issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.” Id. at 486-87.
However, the Seventh Circuit has made clear that Heck does not apply to § 1983 claims
challenging the plaintiff’s arrest rather than his prosecution or conviction. “[A] wrongful arrest
claim, like a number of other Fourth Amendment claims, does not inevitably undermine a
conviction; one can have a successful wrongful arrest claim and still have a perfectly valid
conviction.” Booker v. Ward, 94 F.3d 1052, 1056 (7th Cir. 1996). Likewise, in Simpson v.
Rowan, the Seventh Circuit held that the plaintiff’s § 1983 “claims relating to an illegal search
and an improper arrest are not barred by Heck because neither claim, if successful, would
necessarily undermine the validity of his conviction.”
73 F.3d 134, 136 (7th Cir. 1995).
Likewise, in Reynolds v. Jamison, the Seventh Circuit held that a Ҥ 1983 claim for false arrest
does not impugn the validity of [the] underlying criminal conviction” for harassment. 488 F.3d
756, 767 (7th Cir. 2007). A guilty plea in a state court case precludes a § 1983 claim “only if,
among other things, the [validity of the arrest] was actually litigated and decided on the merits
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and its resolution was necessary to the result in the case.” Lang v. City of Round Lake Park, 87
F. Supp. 2d 836, 842 (N.D. Ill. 2000).
The Court finds that Heck does not bar Mr. Gupta’s claim for false arrest and unlawful
search and seizure. Mr. Gupta’s § 1983 claim does not necessarily challenge the underlying
conduct for which he pled guilty. Simpson, 73 F.3d at 136. Nor does it appear from the
pleadings that Mr. Gupta’s claim attempts to re-litigate an issue that was actually litigated and
decided on the merits in the state court action. Lang, 87 F. Supp. 2d at 842. Instead, Mr. Gupta
alleges that Officer Krakow lacked probable cause to arrest him. “Probable cause is determined
from the facts known to the officers at the time of the arrest.” Fox v. Hayes, 600 F.3d 819, 838
(7th Cir. 2010). The validity of Mr. Gupta’s claim will hinge on whether Officer Krakow had
sufficient facts amounting to probable cause at the time he arrested Mr. Gupta. It is entirely
possible that Mr. Gupta was guilty of disorderly conduct or harassment, but that Officer Krakow
did not have probable cause to make the arrest when he did. Simpson, 73 F.3d at 136; Sanders v.
Cruz, 08 C 3318, 2010 WL 3004636, at *4-5 (N.D. Ill. July 29, 2010); Lang, 87 F. Supp. 2d at
844; Patterson v. Leyden, 947 F. Supp. 1211, 1217 (N.D. Ill. 1996).
Additionally, at this stage in the litigation, the Court rejects Officer Krakow’s argument
that qualified immunity warrants dismissing Count II. Qualified immunity protects officers from
civil liability stemming from discretionary functions, but only if their conduct does not violate
clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have
known. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231, 129 S. Ct. 808, 172 L. Ed. 2d 565 (2009). Put
another way, qualified immunity protects Officer Krakow only if a reasonable officer could have
believed that probable cause existed to arrest Mr. Gupta in light of the information Officer
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Krakow possessed at the time. Hunter v. Bryant, 502 U.S. 224, 227, 112 S. Ct. 534, 116 L. Ed.
2d 589 (1991).
To survive a motion to dismiss in the face of a qualified immunity defense, the Complaint
must plausibly allege that Officer Krakow violated Mr. Gupta’s clearly established rights by
arresting him without probable cause. The Court is required not only to take the facts alleged in
the Complaint as true but also to draw all reasonable inferences in Mr. Gupta’s favor. The Court
finds that the Complaint has satisfied this standard. First, Mr. Gupta plausibly alleges that
Officer Krakow lacked probable cause or any basis to arrest him. Second, the Court finds at this
stage that Mr. Gupta had a clearly established right to be free from arrest without probable cause.
Mustafa v. City of Chicago, 442 F.3d 544, 548 (7th Cir. 2006). Moreover, the Court infers that a
reasonable person in Officer Krakow’s position would have known that probable cause was
required to make an arrest. Finally, taking the allegations in the Complaint as true, the Court
may infer that Officer Krakow should have known that he lacked probable cause to arrest Mr.
Gupta. Officer Krakow’s actual knowledge at the time of the arrest is a question of fact outside
the Complaint which the Court cannot consider on a motion to dismiss. Because the Court
cannot find at this stage that Officer Krakow’s conduct was protected by the principle of
qualified immunity, the motion to dismiss on that basis is denied.
CONCLUSION
The Court grants in part and denies in part Defendants’ motion to dismiss [47]. The
motion is granted with respect to the Naperville Police Department to the extent that the
Department was even named as a Defendant. The motion is denied with respect to Officer
Krakow. The Court finds that the Complaint does not violate the principle outlined in Heck v.
Humphrey because it does not necessarily challenge the validity of Mr. Gupta’s state court
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conviction. The Court also finds that the question of Officer Krakow’s qualified immunity
involves questions of fact outside the Complaint that cannot be established on a motion to
dismiss.
Dated: March 18, 2014
SARA L. ELLIS
United States District Judge
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