Macdonald V. Town of Eastham et al
Filing
27
Judge Richard G. Stearns: ORDER entered granting 14 Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim. "For the foregoing reasons, defendants' motion to dismiss the Amended Complaint is ALLOWED. The Clerk will enter judgment for all defendants and close the case." (RGS, law2)
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
CIVIL ACTION NO. 12-12061-RGS
PHILIP MACDONALD
v.
TOWN OF EASTHAM, NORMAN SYLVIA,
KATE MUNGOVAN, and TERRY DINAN
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER ON DEFENDANTS’
MOTION TO DISMISS
May 24, 2013
STEARNS, D.J.
In this action, Philip Macdonald seeks damages to redress alleged violations
of the Fourth Amendment and various state laws arising from a warrantless search of
his home and his subsequent prosecution in state court based on the fruits of that
search. Defendants Town of Eastham, Eastham police officers Norman Sylvia and
Kate Mungovan, and Barnstable County Sheriff’s Department employee Terry Dinan
move to dismiss the Complaint for failure to state a claim pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P.
12(b)(6). For the reasons set forth below, defendants’ motion will be allowed.
BACKGROUND
The well-pleaded facts alleged in the Complaint are as follows. See S.E.C. v.
Tambone, 597 F.3d 436, 438 (1st Cir. 2010) (en banc). At approximately 1:00 p.m.
on November 7, 2009, Macdonald left his house with his dog and drove to a nearby
beach to dig clams, stopping for a coffee along the way. As he often did when away
for a short period of time, Macdonald left the side entrance of the house open to
permit his cat to roam freely.
Forty-five minutes later, a dispatcher at the Town of Eastham Police
Department received a call from Georgia Hawko, a neighborhood watch captain who
lived in a house adjoining Macdonald’s property. Hawko stated:
This is Georgia Hawko. I am a neighborhood watch and I see a house
that nobody’s home but the door is wide open, both the screen and the
front door, and I don’t know if I should be concerned, if they just ran out
and left it open or what’s going on.
Compl. ¶ 11.
Eastham police officers Sylvia and Mungovan were sent to investigate. Upon
arrival, they spoke briefly with Hawko, who told them that Macdonald’s door was
wide open and that, to her knowledge, no one was home. The officers then proceeded
to Macdonald’s house. They announced their presence and, after receiving no
response, walked through the open door into the kitchen. Sylvia reported in a radio
transmission upon entering that “[s]o far it appears that somebody just left their door
open. There are definitely people staying here.” Compl. ¶ 17. The officers then
proceeded to conduct a sweep of the house, during which they observed marijuana
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plants growing upstairs and in the basement.
Macdonald returned home at approximately 2:15 p.m. to discover police cars
in his driveway and Officers Sylvia and Mungovan in his living room. The officers
told Macdonald that they had found marijuana and that the house was now a crime
scene. Macdonald was frisked, read his Miranda rights, and detained. Following the
issuance of a search warrant, Officers Sylvia and Mungovan, Eastham Detective
Benjamin Novotny, and Sheriff’s Department employee Dinan conducted a second
search of the home, looking inside closets, drawers, and cabinets. Macdonald several
times asked them individually and collectively to stop the search and leave the
property. Each request was refused.
On November 25, 2009, Detective Novotny, the officer in charge of the
investigation, submitted an application for a criminal complaint against Macdonald
in the Orleans District Court.1 Three days later, Macdonald, through his attorney,
provided Novotny with a legal memorandum asserting that the initial entry into the
house by Officers Sylvia and Mungovan was unlawful and requesting that no criminal
complaint be pursued. At a January 27, 2010 hearing, the clerk magistrate asked
A prior complaint that had issued on or about November 16, 2009, was
dismissed for failure to provide Macdonald with an opportunity to be in heard in
opposition to the issuance of the complaint, a right afforded to a person not then
under arrest. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 218, § 35A.
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Novotny whether anything could be done short of issuance of the complaint.
Novotny replied in the negative, requesting that the matter be referred to the District
Attorney. The complaint then issued. Macdonald was charged with knowingly or
intentionally manufacturing a Class D controlled substance (marijuana) in violation
of Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 94C, § 31.
Macdonald filed a motion to suppress in the state district court challenging the
legality of the search. He contended in a July 13, 2010 motion and accompanying
memorandum that the initial search of his home was unlawful because it was
conducted without a search warrant. He also argued that neither the emergency
exception nor the community caretaking doctrine excused the failure to obtain a
warrant. At a subsequent evidentiary hearing, Officer Mungovan testified that she did
not observe anything prior to or immediately upon entering Macdonald’s home that
indicated that there had been a forced entry, or that a burglary was in progress, or that
someone might be in distress. Hawko similarly testified that she did not observe
anything at or around the home suggestive of an emergency. The state district court
judge granted the motion to suppress, and the criminal complaint was dismissed on
September 3, 2010.
This lawsuit followed. Macdonald’s Amended Complaint sets out five counts:
alleged Fourth Amendment violations pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1983 against
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individual defendants Sylvia, Mungovan, and Dinan (Counts I and II); an alleged §
1983 failure to train violation against the Town of Eastham (Count III); and commonlaw claims of false imprisonment and malicious prosecution against Sylvia and
Mungovan (Counts IV and V). On March 3, 2013, defendants filed this motion to
dismiss all counts for failure to state a claim. The court heard oral argument on May
22, 2013.
DISCUSSION
To survive a motion to dismiss, “a complaint must contain sufficient factual
matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’”
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009), quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550
U.S. 544, 570 (2007). Two underlying principles guide the court’s analysis. “First,
the tenet that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a
complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. “Second,
only a complaint that states a plausible claim for relief survives a motion to dismiss.”
Id. at 679. A claim is facially plausible if its factual content “allows the court to draw
the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id.
at 678. “If the factual allegations in the complaint are too meager, vague, or
conclusory to remove the possibility of relief from the realm of mere conjecture, the
complaint is open to dismissal.” Tambone, 597 F.3d at 442.
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Section 1983 Claims
The gravamen of Macdonald’s lawsuit is his claim that Sylvia, Mungovan, and
Dinan violated his Fourth Amendment rights when they entered and searched his
home without a warrant. Defendants, for their part, argue that their actions were
legally justified and that, in any event, they are entitled to qualified immunity.
The doctrine of qualified immunity shields state officials from liability for
damages under §1983 where 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).
“[T]he qualified immunity
inquiry . . . allows . . . for the inevitable reality that ‘law enforcement officials will
in some cases reasonably but mistakenly conclude that [their conduct] is
[constitutional], and . . . that . . . those officials – like other officials who act in ways
they reasonably believe to be lawful – should not be held personally liable.” Hegarty
v. Somerset Cnty., 53 F.3d 1367, 1373 (1st Cir. 1995), quoting Anderson v. Creigton,
483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987) (emphasis omitted). The line properly drawn is not
between the constitutional and unconstitutional, but between acts that although
unconstitutional are nonetheless objectively reasonable and acts that are
unconstitutional on their face. See Cox v. Hainey, 391 F.3d 25, 31 (1st Cir. 2004).
The doctrine is not merely a defense to liability but also “a limited ‘entitlement not
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to stand trial or face the other burdens of litigation.’” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 672, quoting
Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526 (1985). “Accordingly, qualified immunity
should be resolved at the earliest possible stage of litigation.” Rocket Learning, Inc.
v. Rivera-Sanchez, 2013 WL 1668229, at *5 (1st Cir. April 18, 2013), citing
Maldonado v. Fontanes, 568 F.3d 263, 268 (1st Cir. 2009).
In assessing a claim of qualified immunity at the motion to dismiss stage,2 the
court must determine “(1) whether the facts alleged by the plaintiff make out a
violation of a constitutional right; and (2) if so, whether the right at issue was ‘clearly
established’ at the time of the defendant’s alleged violation.” Eldredge v. Town of
Falmouth, Mass., 662 F.3d 100, 104-105 (1st Cir. 2011), quoting Maldonado, 568
F.3d at 269 (alteration omitted). The “clearly established” inquiry, in turn, has two
aspects.
One aspect focuses exclusively on the clarity of the law at the time of
the alleged violation. “To overcome qualified immunity, ‘[t]he contours
of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would
understand that what he is doing violates that right.”’ [Maldonado, 568
F.3d at 269] (alteration in original) (quoting Anderson[, 483 U.S. at
640]). The other aspect considers the specific facts of the case at bar.
While there is usually a benefit in resolving the constitutional question before
proceeding to the qualified immunity issue, see Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 609
(1999), there are “cases in which a court will rather quickly and easily decide that
there was no violation of clearly established law before turning to the more difficult
question whether the relevant facts make out a constitutional question at all.”
Pearson v. Callahan, 55 U.S. 223, 239 (2004).
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The “clearly established” inquiry “must be undertaken in light of the
specific context of the case, not as a broad general proposition.”
Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 198 (2004) (quoting Saucier v. Katz,
533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Rocket Learning, 2013 WL 1668229, at *5. The dispositive inquiry in determining
whether a right is clearly established is whether, given the contours of the allegedly
infringed right and the facts of the particular case, “it would be clear to a reasonable
officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted.’” Brosseau, 543
U.S. at 199.
The constitutional right implicated in this case is the Fourth Amendment right
to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Under the Fourth Amendment,
warrantless searches are per se unreasonable. See, e.g., Katz v. United States, 389
U.S. 347, 357 (1967). This presumption has special force when it comes to the
warrantless entry of a home, a “space which, for centuries, has been regarded as
‘entitled to special protection.’” Kentucky v. King, 131 S.Ct. 1849, 1865 (2011)
(Ginsburg, J., dissenting), quoting Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 115 & n.4
(2006). The officers’ warrantless entry into Macdonald’s home was therefore invalid
unless justified by a recognized exception to the warrant requirement. See Michigan
v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 506 (1978); see also Camara v. Mun. Court, 387 U.S. 523,
528-529 (1966) (“[O]ne governing principle, justified by history and by current
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experience, has consistently been followed: except in certain carefully defined classes
of cases, a search of private property without proper consent is ‘unreasonable’ unless
it has been authorized by a valid search warrant.”).
To justify their actions here, the officers invoke the community caretaking
doctrine.3
“Community caretaking” is a catchall for the wide range of
non-investigatory services expected by society of its uniformed officers. The
community caretaking doctrine recognizes that “in addition to being an enforcer of
the criminal law, [the police officer] is a ‘jack-of-all-emergencies,’ expected to aid
those in distress, combat actual hazards, prevent potential hazards from materializing,
and provide an infinite variety of services to preserve and protect community safety.”
United States v. Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d 780, 784-785 (1st Cir. 1991), quoting
The officers do not claim that their search was justified by exigent
circumstances, which various courts have found present where officers reasonably
believe that a dwelling has recently been or is being burglarized. See United States
v. Tibolt, 72 F.3d 965, 970-971 (1st Cir. 1995), citing United States v. Erickson, 991
F.2d 529, 533 (9th Cir. 1993) (“In a wide variety of contexts, this and other circuits
have upheld warrantless searches conducted during burglary investigations under the
rubric of exigent circumstances.”). The law is far from “clearly established” as to
whether an open door, coupled with a concerned neighbor’s report that no one is at
home, is sufficient to suggest that a burglary is in progress for exigency purposes.
See generally 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 6.6(b) (5th ed. 2012) (collecting
state and federal cases illustrating the differing approaches courts have taken). In this
context, an officer such as Mungovan’s subjective impression that no burglary had
taken place at the home is irrelevant. See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813
(1996).
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3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 5.4(c) (2d ed. 1987). When an officer is
performing a community caretaking role, the imperatives of the Fourth Amendment
are satisfied so long as his actions are reasonable. United States v. Coccia, 446 F.3d
233, 239 (1st Cir. 2006). In the case at bar, this requires that both the officers’
decision to enter Macdonald’s home and the scope of their subsequent search of the
premises be “within the realm of reason.” Rodriguez-Morales, 929 F.2d at 787.
Because here the officers’ search was limited to ensuring that no one was lurking
inside the home, the scope of the search was properly curtailed for purposes of the
caretaking doctrine. See People v. Ray, 981 P.2d 928, 935 (Cal. 1999).4 The salient
question, then, is whether the officers’ entry was justified at its inception.
The Supreme Court first recognized the community caretaking doctrine in Cady
v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433 (1973). In Cady, Chicago police officer Chester
Dombrowski, while on a visit to Wisconsin, reported to local authorities that he had
been involved in an automobile accident. Under the impression that Chicago police
officers were required to carry their service revolvers at all times and having found
A “sweep” search, such as the one conducted here, “may extend only to a
cursory inspection of those spaces where a person may be found.” Maryland v. Buie,
494 U.S. 325, 335 (1990). There is no dispute that during the course of the sweep
Officers Sylvia and Mungovan made only a visual examination of the interior of the
home and did not intrude into any locked spaces or closed containers. Thus, there
was no constitutional infirmity in their observation of marijuana plants in plain view.
See Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 393 (1978).
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no revolver on Dombrowski’s person, one of the responding officers looked into the
front seat and glove compartment of the disabled vehicle for the weapon, but found
nothing. The vehicle was then towed to a privately owned garage, where it was left
in an unsecured area. After Dumbrowski was placed under arrest for drunken driving
and taken to a local hospital, one of the officers returned to the vehicle to search again
for the revolver “to protect the public from the possibility that [it] would fall into
untrained or perhaps malicious hands.” 413 U.S. at 443. In the trunk of the vehicle,
he found and seized numerous items that linked Dombrowski to a recent homicide
and ultimately contributed to his conviction for first-degree murder.
The Supreme Court held that the warrantless search of the vehicle was
reasonable because it was undertaken pursuant to the officers’ “community caretaking
functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of
evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute.” Id. at 442. In so holding, the
Court emphasized the distinction between buildings and vehicles and the lesser
expectation of privacy in the latter.
Because of the extensive regulation of motor vehicles and traffic, and
also because of the frequency with which a vehicle can become disabled
or involved in an accident on public highways, the extent of
police-citizen contact involving automobiles will be substantially greater
than police-citizen contact in a home or office. . . . The Court’s previous
recognition of the distinction between motor vehicles and dwelling
places leads us to conclude that the type of caretaking “search”
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conducted here . . . was not unreasonable solely because a warrant had
not been obtained.
Id. at 441-442; see also id. at 442 (“The constitutional difference between searches
of and seizures from houses and similar structures and from vehicles stems both from
the ambulatory character of the latter and from the fact that extensive, and often
noncriminal contact with automobiles will bring local officials in ‘plain view’ of
evidence, fruits, or instrumentalities of a crime, or contraband.”).
There is a split of authority, state and federal, as to whether the community
caretaking doctrine extends beyond the context of automobile searches. A majority
of the federal Courts of Appeals have concluded that the plain import of the Cady
decision is that it does not. The Ninth Circuit in United States v. Erikson, 991 F.2d
529 (9th Cir. 1993), for example, refused to extend the community caretaking
doctrine to the warrantless search of a home on the ground that “Cady clearly turned
on the ‘constitutional difference’ between searching a house and searching an
automobile.” Id. at 532, quoting Cady, 413 U.S. at 439. In so holding, the Court
cited with approval the Seventh Circuit’s conclusion that the Supreme Court “did not
intend to create a broad exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement to
apply whenever the police are acting in an ‘investigative,’ rather than a ‘criminal’
function,” but instead sought “to confine the holding to the automobile exception and
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to foreclose an expansive construction of the decision allowing warrantless searches
of private homes or businesses.” United States v. Pichany, 687 F.2d 204, 208-209
(7th Cir. 1982) (per curiam) (refusing to extend the exception to the warrantless
search of a business warehouse). The Third and Tenth Circuits have likewise
concluded that the community caretaking doctrine cannot be used to justify a
warrantless search of a home. See Ray v. Twp. of Warren, 626 F.3d 170, 174-177 (3d
Cir. 2010); United States v. Bute, 43 F.3d 531, 534-535 (10th Cir. 1994).
Other courts, however, have given the community caretaking doctrine the same
effect with respect to homes as to vehicles. In United States v. Rohrig, 98 F.3d 1506
(6th Cir. 1996), the Sixth Circuit invoked the community caretaking doctrine in
finding no violation where officers entered a home at night without a warrant to abate
a significant noise nuisance that had caused neighbors to complain. Id. at 1521-1522.
But see United States v. Williams, 354 F.3d 497, 508 (6th Cir. 2003) (“[D]espite
references to the doctrine of Rohrig, we doubt that community caretaking will
generally justify warrantless entries into private homes.”). The Eighth Circuit did the
same in United States v. Quezada, 448 F.3d 1005 (8th Cir. 2006), where it upheld a
warrantless home entry under circumstances suggesting that someone inside could be
in need of immediate assistance. Id. at 1007-1008. Various state courts are in accord.
See, e.g., People v. Ray, 981 P.2d 928, 934-938 (Cal. 1999) (concluding that “[u]nder
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the community caretaking exception, circumstances short of a perceived emergency
may justify a warrantless entry [into the home]”); State v. Pinkard, 785 N.W.2d 592,
598 n.6 (Wis. 2010) (same, collecting cases); State v. Deneui, 775 N.W.2d 221, 236
n.8 (S.D. 2009) (same).
The unsettled nature of this area of the law is further compounded by a widelyshared confusion between and among the distinct doctrines of community caretaking,
emergency aid, and exigent circumstances. “Some courts treat these exceptions
interchangeably. Others declare that the community caretaker exception applies, but
then use the law applicable to one of the other exceptions, such as the emergency
doctrine.” Deneui, 775 N.W.2d at 232; accord Pinkard, 785 N.W.2d at 600 n.8
(repeating Deneui’s observation and collecting cases). The Third Circuit has
observed that Rohrig and Quezada, for example, “do not simply rely on the
community caretaking doctrine established in Cady . . . [but] instead apply what
appears to be a modified exigent circumstances test, with perhaps a lower threshold
for exigency if the officer is acting in a community caretaking role.” Ray, 626 F.3d
at 176.
Given this state of the law, the court need not decide whether the community
caretaking doctrine justified the officers’ entry into Macdonald’s home on November
7, 2009. See Maldonado, 568 F.3d at 269-270 (noting that courts have discretion to
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address the components of the qualified immunity non-sequentially). Far from being
“clearly established,” the law at the time of the officers’ actions was distinctly
unsettled. Indeed, the uncertainty persists even today. A reasonable Massachusetts
police officer seeking to determine whether and under what circumstances the
community caretaking doctrine justifies the warrantless entry of a home would likely
turn first to state law, as it is often more restrictive than federal law in a search and
seizure context. In so doing, the officer would discover that the Supreme Judicial
Court has most recently noted that the question is an open one under Massachusetts
and First Circuit law. See Commonwealth v. Entwistle, 463 Mass. 205, 219 n.8
(2012). Entwistle would further alert the officer to a split in authority among the
federal circuit courts, which the Supreme Court has yet to resolve. Id. Moreover,
given that the exigent circumstances exception is now clearly held by the Supreme
Court to justify entries into the home, see Brigham City, Utah v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398,
403 (2006), an officer could reasonably believe that the Supreme Court might well
conclude that the community caretaking doctrine does so, as well. Faced with this
absence of controlling authority and conflicting precedent, a reasonable officer would
not have known whether his actions violated Macdonald’s Fourth Amendment rights.
The officers here are therefore entitled to qualified immunity.
This conclusion fatally undermines Macdonald’s failure to train claim, as well.
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Macdonald alleges that the Town of Eastham “failed to maintain adequate policies
and/or conduct adequate training of its police officers” relative to warrantless
searches. Compl. ¶ 61. He stakes his claim not on a pattern of similar violations, but
rather on the contention that the Town’s allegedly deficient training created an
extremely high risk that constitutional violations would ensue.
The Supreme Court has not “foreclose[d] the possibility, however rare, that the
unconstitutional consequences of failing to train could be so patently obvious that a
city could be liable under § 1983 without proof of a pre-existing pattern of
violations.” Connick v. Thompson, 131 S. Ct. 1350, 1361 (2011), citing Bd. of Cnty.
Comm’rs of Bryan Cnty., Okla. v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 409 (1997). In determining
whether the need for training was “obvious,” however, courts look to whether there
were “clear constitutional guideposts” in the area. See City of Canton, Ohio v.
Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 397 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part);
see also id. at 395 (explaining that “[w]ithout some form of notice to the city, and the
opportunity to conform to constitutional dictates both what it does and what it
chooses not to do, the failure to train theory of liability could completely engulf
Monell [v. New York City Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978)], imposing
liability without regard to fault.”); Febus-Rodriguez v. Betancourt-Lebron, 14 F.3d
87, 94 n.10 (1st Cir. 1994) (observing that where there are “no clear constitutional
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guideposts as to the precise nature of the obligations that the [Constitution] places
upon the police . . . , it is difficult to conclude that the failure to train . . . reflects
callous or reckless indifference to constitutional rights”). Thus, while a municipality
does not enjoy qualified immunity from damages liability resulting from an
unconstitutional policy or decision, Owen v. City of Independence, 445 U.S. 622, 650
(1980), the conclusion that officers are immune from suit because the right allegedly
violated was not clearly established also precludes municipal liability. See, e.g.,
Szabla v. City of Brooklyn Park, Minn., 486 F.3d 385, 393 (8th Cir. 2007); Townes
v. City of New York, 176 F.3d 138, 143 (2d Cir. 1999); Joyce v. Town of Tewksbury,
Mass., 112 F.3d 19, 23 (1997). Macdonald’s failure to train claim against the Town
of Eastham must therefore be dismissed.
Common-Law Claims
Macdonald’s common-law false imprisonment and malicious prosecution
claims fare no better. False imprisonment consists of an “intentional and unlawful
confinement of a person, either directly or indirectly, of which the person confined
is conscious or is harmed by such confinement.” Jonielunas v. City of Worcester
Police Dep’t, 338 F. Supp. 2d 173, 177 (D. Mass. 2004). An arrest is “unlawful” if
it is unsupported by probable cause. Goddard v. Kelley, 629 F. Supp. 2d 115, 129 (D.
Mass. 2009). To prevail on a claim of malicious prosecution, a plaintiff must
17
establish that he suffered damages because the defendant commenced an action
against him without probable cause and with improper purpose, and that the action
terminated in his favor. Chervin v. Travelers Ins. Co., 448 Mass. 95, 103, 110 (2006).
Macdonald cannot prove the lack of probable cause necessary to succeed on
either of these claims.5 Macdonald admits that the officers “discovered growing
marijuana plants, grow lights, and other items” in his home. Compl. ¶ 28. Moreover,
even if there were a constitutional infirmity in the officers’ initial decision to enter
Macdonald’s home, it would not vitiate the probable cause to arrest and prosecute
Macdonald based on that discovery. See Townes, 176 F.3d at 149 (“The lack of
probable cause to stop and search does not vitiate the probable cause to arrest,
because . . . the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine is not available to assist a § 1983
claimant.”); Padilla v. Miller, 143 F. Supp. 2d 479, 491 (M. D. Pa. 2001) (“[T]he
courts that have addressed the issue have uniformly concluded that the exclusionary
Macdonald argues in his Opposition that there are factual issues concerning
whether the marijuana recovered in the search exceeded the weight necessary to
constitute a criminal offense given the passage of “An Act Establishing a Sensible
State Marihuana Policy,” Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 94C, § 32L, which decriminalized the
possession of one ounce or less of marijuana. Pl.’s Opp’n at 15-16. Shortly after his
Opposition was filed, however, the Supreme Judicial Court held in Commonwealth
v. Palmer, 464 Mass. 773 (2013), that the Act did not decriminalize the cultivation
of marijuana, which is a felony offense under Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 94C, § 32C(a).
The weight of the marijuana recovered is therefore irrelevant to the issue of probable
cause.
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rule is not applicable in a § 1983 action.”) (collecting cases); see also Kelly v. Civil
Serv. Comm’n, 427 Mass. 75, 79 (1998) (holding that the exclusionary rule does not
apply in the context of a civil proceeding, even one that is quasi-punitive in nature).
The false imprisonment and malicious prosecution claims consequently fail as a
matter of law.
ORDER
For the foregoing reasons, defendants’ motion to dismiss the Amended
Complaint is ALLOWED. The Clerk will enter judgment for all defendants and close
the case.
SO ORDERED.
/s/ Richard G. Stearns
_______________________________
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
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