Hill et al v. Walsh et al

Filing 44

Judge Richard G. Stearns: MEMORANDUM & ORDER entered granting 30 Motion for Summary Judgment. (RGS, law1) Modified on 6/29/2017 (Caruso, Stephanie).

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
CIVIL ACTION NO. 16-10225-RGS
ROLAND G. HILL & MARY R. HILL
v.
EDWARD WALSH ET AL.
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER ON
DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
June 29, 2017
STEARNS, D.J.
Plaintiffs Roland and Mary Hill (Roland and Mary) bring this civil
rights action against the City of Taunton, its police chief, and several of its
police officers, alleging that a search of their home in the course of executing
a warrant of apprehension for their son, Matthew Hill, violated their rights
under the Fourth Amendment.

In due course, defendants moved for

summary judgment. For the following reasons, the court will grant the
motion.
BACKGROUND
Roland and Mary have lived at 3 Eldridge Street in Taunton for over
twenty years. Matthew grew up in the family home, but by the time of the

events in suit, he had reached adulthood and was living on his own in an
apartment on Weir Street in Taunton.
Matthew had struggled with drug addiction since his teenage years. In
March of 2015, his drug use escalated and concerned family members felt the
need for an urgent intervention.

On March 3, 2015, Matthew’s sister,

Amanda Hill, called the Taunton police and 911 warning that Matthew was
on the verge of an overdose. Taunton police officers responded to Matthew’s
Weir Street address and assisted his transport by ambulance to Morton
Hospital in Taunton.
The following day, Amanda filed a petition in the Taunton District
Court seeking to have Matthew committed as a substance abuser pursuant
to Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123, § 35. Amanda listed her parents’ Eldridge Street
home as Matthew’s address, but also noted Morton Hospital as his current
location. In response to the petition, a District Court Judge issued a warrant
of apprehension for Matthew, which the statute authorizes “if there are
reasonable grounds to believe that such person will not appear [for a
commitment hearing] and that any further delay in the proceedings would
present an immediate danger to the physical well-being of the respondent.”
Id. The warrant of apprehension issued at 2:20 p.m. and identified its
subject as “Matthew Hill, 3 Eldridge Street, Taunton, MA 02780.” Dkt #302

14. In capital letter typeface below Matthew’s name and address, the warrant
stated “CURRENTLY AT MORTON HOSPITAL.” Id. The standard-form
warrant also stated in bold type that it could “not be executed unless the
respondent can be brought before a judge prior to 4:30 P.M. on the same day
that it is executed.” Id.
The warrant was faxed to the Taunton police department at
approximately 2:58 p.m., where it was received by the shift commander,
defendant Joseph Marques.

Marques examined the warrant, entered

information from it into the department’s dispatching system, and then gave
the warrant to defendant Deborah Lavoie, a dispatcher. Lavoie passed the
warrant on to defendant William Henault, who was the duty patrol
supervisor. All three officers testified at their depositions that they did not
see the reference to Morton Hospital on the face of the warrant.
Henault left the station to serve the warrant no later than 3:17 p.m. He
arrived at the Eldridge Street address a few minutes later. Because Henault
knew from past experience that several large dogs lived at the house, he
shook the chain link fence surrounding the property to draw the attention of
any dogs that might be loose in the yard. As he did so, Henault was joined
by defendant officer Troy-Allen Enos, who had responded to a radio call from
Lavoie requesting officer assistance in serving the warrant. Henault and
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Enos went to the front door of the home and knocked, which caused the dogs
inside to approach the door and begin barking.

Receiving no human

response to their knocks, the officers peered through sidelights next to the
front door. Henault testified that he briefly saw what he believed to be a
fleeting silhouette inside the home. Enos testified that he saw a curtain
moving and what he thought to be a person inside the home.
The officers walked around the perimeter of the home, calling
Matthew’s name. As they did so, they discovered that a side door of the home
was unlocked. The officers testified that they believed someone was inside
the home, but that they were reluctant to enter because of the hostile dogs.
Before they could act further, defendant Police Chief Edward Walsh arrived.
Henault explained the situation to Walsh: that they were attempting to
serve a warrant of apprehension for Matthew; that he and Enos had been
unable to definitively determine whether Matthew was inside the home; that
there were aggressive dogs in the house deterring them from entering; and
that he believed that he had seen the shadow of a person inside. Henault also
told Walsh that the home belonged to Matthew’s parents, and that Matthew
had his own apartment on Weir Street. After receiving the briefing, Walsh
instructed Henault to ask the dispatchers whether they had received any
additional information about Matthew or the warrant. Henault spoke with
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both Lavoie and Marques, who reported nothing further had been provided.
After further discussion, the officers decided that Matthew was probably
inside the home and potentially at grave risk of an overdose.
Walsh then instructed Enos to retrieve the fire extinguisher from his
cruiser. Armed with the fire extinguisher, Walsh, Henault, and Enos entered
the home through the unlocked side door.

Walsh sprayed the fire

extinguisher three times to drive the dogs back, enabling the officers to
conduct a sweep of the premises. They found no one at home. Roland and
Mary were forced to vacate the home for several days while cleaners removed
the fire retardant residue.
Angry at the damage done to their home, Roland and Mary filed this
lawsuit, asserting violations of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, by the
officers and the City of Taunton, as well as common-law claims for
intentional infliction of emotional distress and trespass against Walsh,
Henault, and Enos. Following the completion of discovery, defendants
moved for summary judgment, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 56, invoking the doctrine
of qualified immunity. The court heard argument on the motion on May 31,
2017.

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DISCUSSION
In evaluating a motion for summary judgment, the court views the
facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving parties and draws all
reasonable inferences in their favor. Iverson v. City of Boston, 452 F.3d 94,
98 (1st Cir. 2006). Summary judgment is appropriate where “there is no
genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to
judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). The moving party must
demonstrate the absence of any real disputes of material fact in the summary
judgment record. Flovac, Inc. v. Airvac, Inc., 817 F.3d 849, 853 (1st Cir.
2016). Where the nonmovants bear the burden of proof on an issue, they
must respond by “adduc[ing] specific facts showing that a trier of fact
reasonably could find in [their] favor.” Murray v. Warren Pumps, LLC, 821
F.3d 77, 83 (1st Cir. 2016). This showing must be based on competent
evidence, Flovac, 817 F.3d at 853, and cannot consist merely of “[c]onclusory
allegations, improbable inferences, and unsupported speculation,” Warren
Pumps, 821 F.3d at 83.
I. Qualified Immunity
The officer defendants seek qualified immunity, which “protects
government officials ‘from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct
does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which
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a reasonable person would have known.’” Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223,
231 (2009), quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982).
Qualified immunity requires two separate inquiries. First, the court looks at
“whether the plaintiff’s version of the facts makes out a violation of a
protected right.” Alfano v. Lynch, 847 F.3d 71, 75 (1st Cir. 2017). Second,
the court examines whether the right was clearly established at the time of
the violation. Id. The court need not address these questions sequentially,
but can take the most efficient route permitted by the undisputed facts.
Matalon v. Hynnes, 806 F.3d 627, 633 (1st Cir. 2015).
Defendants frame their argumentation on both prongs of the inquiry.
They first maintain that the search did not violate Roland and Mary’s Fourth
Amendment rights. Second, they contend that even if they were mistaken in
a constitutional sense in entering the home, their entry did not violate clearly
established law.
The court begins with first principles. The home is the sanctum
sanctorum of Fourth Amendment law, such that “warrantless police entry
into a residence is presumptively unreasonable unless it falls within the
compass of one of a few well-delineated exceptions.” United States v.
Romain, 393 F.3d 63, 68 (1st Cir. 2004). Defendants do not contend that
the warrant of apprehension authorized them to enter Roland and Mary’s
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home, but rather that they acted reasonably under the exigent circumstances
and special needs exceptions to the warrant requirement, as well as pursuant
to the community caretaking doctrine.
This case begins (and ends) with the exigent circumstances doctrine.
Under this doctrine, officers may conduct a warrantless search when they
face “a ‘compelling necessity for immediate action that w[ould] not brook the
delay of obtaining a warrant.’” United States v. Tibolt, 72 F.3d 965, 969 (1st
Cir. 1995), quoting United States v. Wilson, 36 F.3d 205, 209 (1st Cir. 1994).
A subset of this doctrine is the so-called “emergency aid” exception, which
allows a warrantless entry based on “the need to assist persons who are
seriously injured or threatened with such injury.” Brigham City v. Stuart,
547 U.S. 398, 403 (2006); see Commonwealth v. Kaeppeler, 473 Mass. 396,
401-402 (2015); Commonwealth v. Entwistle, 463 Mass. 205, 213-214
(2012). To invoke this exception, “the government must show a reasonable
basis, approximating probable cause, both for the officers’ belief that an
emergency exists and for linking the perceived emergency with the area or
place into which they propose to intrude.”1 United States v. Martins, 413

The “approximating probable cause” qualifier is open to question in
light of the Supreme Court’s subsequent emergency aid decisions, although
the First Circuit has yet to revisit this standard. See United States v.
Almonte-Báez, 857 F.3d 27, 31 & n.3 (1st Cir. 2017) (citing Martins for the
proposition that the emergency aid doctrine requires a showing of probable
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1

F.3d 139, 147 (1st Cir. 2005). This analysis is conducted “in light of the
totality of the circumstances confronting the officers, including, in many
cases, a need for on-the-spot judgment based on incomplete information and
sometimes ambiguous facts bearing upon the potential for serious
consequences.” Id. The court is to consider “the objective facts reasonably
known to, or discoverable by, the officers at the time of the search.” Tibolt,
72 F.3d at 969.
Roland and Mary seize on the argument that the officers should have
known from the typewritten insert on the warrant of apprehension that
Matthew was “currently at Morton Hospital.”

Given that information,

Roland and Mary say, no reasonable officer could have believed that
Matthew was in the home.

cause); United States v. D’Andrea, 648 F.3d 1, 11 (1st Cir. 2011) (observing
in an emergency aid case that “exigent circumstances is an exception to the
warrant, not the probable cause, requirement”). In both Brigham City and
Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45 (2009), the Supreme Court did not invoke
probable cause in approving entries pursuant to the emergency aid doctrine,
instead speaking solely in terms of reasonableness. See Fisher, 558 U.S. at
49 (“It sufficed to invoke the emergency aid exception that it was reasonable
to believe that Fisher had hurt himself . . . or that Fisher was about to hurt,
or had already hurt, someone else.”). Relying on these cases, the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has held that probable cause is not a
necessary component of the emergency aid doctrine. See Commonwealth v.
Duncan, 467 Mass. 746, 750 (2014); Entwistle, 463 Mass. at 214-215.
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The court disagrees. Even if the officers should have seen the notation,
that fact alone would not have made it unreasonable for them to travel to the
3 Eldridge Street address to search for Matthew.

The warrant of

apprehension listed the subject of the warrant as “Matthew Hill, 3 Eldridge
Street, Taunton, MA.” The Morton Hospital notation indicated only that
Matthew was believed to be at the hospital at the time Amanda filed the
warrant application.2 Although the gap in time between the filing of the
application, the issuance of the warrant, and its attempted execution was
relatively short, Matthew might well have departed the hospital, unknown to
the court or to his sister. The reasonableness of the decision to travel to the
home is reinforced by the time constraints the officers faced: the police did
not receive the warrant until shortly before 3 p.m., but knew that it had to be
promptly executed so that Matthew could be “brought before a judge prior to
4:30 P.M. on the same day.” Dkt #30-14. Fruitless efforts to locate Matthew
at Morton Hospital would have further reduced the window for a timely
execution of the warrant, placing his safety at greater risk. In hindsight, a
reasonable officer might well have taken a preliminary step to ascertain
whether Matthew was still at Morton Hospital, but that would have been a

Under the statute, a civil commitment order for an alcoholic or drug
addict can be requested by “[a]ny police officer, physician, spouse, blood
relative, guardian, or court official.” Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 123, § 35.
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2

matter of discretion, given the two possible locations for Matthew indicated
on the warrant.3
As the initial decision to proceed to 3 Eldridge Street was reasonable,
the focus turns to the reasonableness of the entry of the home after the
officers’ arrival. What followed is a textbook example of the emergency aid
doctrine. The officers went to the home based on a court order finding that
“any further delay in the [commitment] proceedings would present an
immediate danger to [Matthew]’s physical well-being.” Dkt #30-14. This
concern was compounded by the limited timeframe available to the officers
to serve the warrant before the court closed. The court order also informed
the officers that the court had determined that Matthew “will not appear
upon summons,” Dkt #30-14, and the officers’ observations at the house
were consistent with that finding: Henault and Enos both testified that they
believed they saw someone in the home who was not responding to their
knocks and acting furtively. In addition, Henault and Enos determined that
the side door to the house was unlocked, which would be unusual if no one
was at home.

This conclusion suffices to carry the summary judgment day for
defendants Marques and Lavoie, who are charged solely with failing to
observe the notation and, thus, causing an unreasonable search by directing
the other officers to the Eldridge Street address.
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3

To be sure, the most critical part of this account — the officers’
assertion that they observed indications that someone was in the home —
relies solely on their own testimony. No witness could otherwise contradict
their claim, given that no other person was present. But even in these
circumstances, “summary judgment . . . must be granted absent a genuine
dispute as to a material issue.”4 Hegarty v. Somerset County, 53 F.3d 1367,
1376 n.6 (1st Cir. 1995).

Roland and Mary point to several alleged

contradictions in the officers’ account in an effort undermine their
testimony, but none are availing. First, they say that Henault’s knowledge,
communicated to Walsh, that Matthew lived on Weir Street demonstrates
that the officers could not have had a reasonable belief that Matthew was at
his parents’ home. This position is bolstered, they contend, by the fact that
the officers knew or should have known that other officers had assisted
Matthew’s transport to Morton Hospital from Weir Street the night before.
Yet the officers were in possession of a court order for Matthew’s
apprehension that linked him to the 3 Eldridge Street address. It was also

Courts sometimes apply a more rigorous standard of scrutiny to cases
where officers are the only witnesses (typically excessive force cases brought
by the estates of individuals killed in police shootings). See Flythe v. District
of Columbia, 791 F.3d 13, 19 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (collecting cases). As the
following discussion indicates, however, Roland and Mary have failed to
create a genuine question of material fact even under that more exacting
inquiry.
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4

not unreasonable for the officers to believe that a child in distress might
likely seek refuge with his parents. Moreover, as already noted, the Morton
Hospital notation was not dispositive of the reasonableness of the officers’
decision to go to the home in the first place. Thus, any disputed facts
surrounding the officers’ knowledge on these collateral matters are not
material to the summary judgment decision.
Second, Roland and Mary argue that Enos’s assertion that he believed
he saw someone in the home is questionable because Henault and Walsh do
not recall Enos communicating that information to them. The deposition
testimony taken as a whole, however, belies this argument. Henault testified
that he and Enos conferred and concluded that they believed someone was
in the house — a statement entirely compatible with Enos’s testimony that
he told Henault that he thought he saw a person inside. See Dkt #36-6 at 35;
Dkt #36-12 at 21. Moreover, neither officer testified that Enos relayed his
observation to Walsh.

The fact that Walsh did not recall Enos saying

anything, Dkt #36-12 at 21, and his failure to include Enos’s observation in
his report, thus come as no surprise.5

Roland and Mary also suggest that Henault’s testimony is unreliable
because he claims to have perceived a silhouette despite the presence of
barking, menacing dogs jumping at the window. Not only does this
argument call for weighing the credibility of a witness — forbidden at the
summary judgment stage, see Ahmed v. Johnson 752 F.3d 490, 495 (1st Cir.
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5

Third, Roland and Mary argue that Walsh’s statement in his police
report that dispatch was “urgently” seeking execution of the warrant is
contradicted by a the passive tone of a recording of the dispatch call. Dkt
#37-16; Dkt #36-9 at 84. Yet Walsh’s characterization of the call in his report
does not alter the objective and undisputed facts about the reasonableness of
the officers’ decision to enter the home. The late hour of issuance of the
warrant and the time constraints it set out reasonably lent themselves to a
sense of urgency; the fact that Walsh, in a report written weeks later,
inaccurately attributed that urgency to communications from the dispatcher
is immaterial.
In sum, on the undisputed facts, the officers are entitled to summary
judgment on the § 1983 claims under the emergency aid exception.6

2014) — but it has no basis in Henault’s testimony. Henault stated that he
was startled by a dog leaping at the window, backed away, and then peered
in a second time. It was during this second look that he believed he glimpsed
the silhouette. Dkt #36-6 at 34.
Even if the officers committed a Fourth Amendment violation by
entering the home, they would have a strong case under the “clearly
established” prong of the qualified immunity analysis. One Court of Appeals
has concluded that there is no clearly established Supreme Court precedent
governing whether a similar civil warrant for an alcoholic in danger of
harming himself establishes exigent circumstances to search a third party’s
home, see Bates v. Harvey, 518 F.3d 1233, 1249 (11th Cir. 2008), and no First
Circuit precedent provides definite guidance either way. Similarly, the
search here bears similarity to the special needs search under an analogous
civil commitment regime for the mentally ill persons endorsed as compliant
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6

II. Other Claims
In light of the court’s conclusion that no Fourth Amendment violation
occurred, Roland and Mary’s other claims also fail. First, their claim against
the City of Taunton under Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S.
658 (1978), cannot survive without a Fourth Amendment violation to ground
it. See, e.g., City of Los Angeles v. Heller, 475 U.S. 796, 799 (1986) (per
curiam). Second, setting aside their factual insufficiency, the state-law
claims for trespass and intentional infliction of emotional distress against
Henault, Enos, and Walsh are barred by common-law immunity. A public
official enjoys immunity from liability for intentional torts under
Massachusetts law when he acts “in good faith, without malice, and without
corruption.” Nelson v. Salem State Coll., 446 Mass. 525, 537 (2006). So it
is here: the record contains no evidence of bad purpose or malice, and
indeed, Roland and Mary admit they can identify no motive for the officers’
search other than the failed attempt to locate and rescue Matthew.

with the Fourth Amendment in McCabe v. Life-Line Ambulance Service,
Inc., 77 F.3d 540 (1st Cir. 1996). Finally, if the officers acted reasonably, but
without meeting the “approximating probable cause” standard, the apparent
split between the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the First Circuit
over the showing required under the emergency aid exception, see supra
note 1, would by itself entitle the officers to qualified immunity, see Starlight
Sugar, Inc. v. Soto, 253 F.3d 137, 143-145 (1st Cir. 2001) (holding that
conflicting rulings from the relevant state high court and the First Circuit bar
a conclusion that the law is clearly established).
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ORDER
For the foregoing reasons, defendants’ motion for summary judgment
(Dkt #30) is GRANTED. The clerk is directed to enter judgment for the
defendants and close the case.
SO ORDERED.
/s/ Richard G. Stearns
__________________________
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

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