Larson v. Goodman et al

Filing 78

Memorandum and Order Adopting the Report and Recommendation 74 ; Striking the re-alleged claims against all previously dismissed Defendants in the Third Amended Complaint 63 ; Granting Defendant Deal Albers's Motion to Join Motion to Dismiss 68 ; Granting Defendant's Motion to Dismiss 57 ; and Dismissing with Prejudice all claims in the Third Amended Complaint. LET JUDGMENT BE ENTERED ACCORDINGLY. (Written Opinion). Signed by Senior Judge Paul A. Magnuson on 04/21/2011. (LM)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MINNESOTA

Hollis J. Larson,

Civil No. 09-3600 (PAM/AJB)
Plaintiff,

v.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

Brian Roussell, Pete Badker,
Josh Stehr, Thomas Wolner,
County of Goodhue,
Minnesota, and Dean Albers,
Defendants.

This matter is before the Court on the Report and Recommendation (“R&R”) of Chief
Magistrate Judge Arthur J. Boylan dated March 28, 2011. The R&R recommended dismissal
of all of the claims in the Third Amended Complaint. Plaintiff filed timely objections to the
R&R, and Defendants filed a response to those objections. According to statute, the Court
must conduct a de novo review of any portion of the Magistrate Judge’s opinion to which
specific objections are made. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C); Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b); D. Minn. L.R.
72.2(b). For the reasons that follow, the Court adopts the R&R and dismisses Plaintiff’s
claims with prejudice.
BACKGROUND
In the early 1990s, Plaintiff was convicted of criminal sexual conduct involving
incidents with girls, including two of Plaintiff’s nieces, who were 13 and 15 at the time the
incidents first occurred. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. His release date was to be

February 5, 2008. In late December 2007, he and his sister, former Defendant Wendy
Goodman, had a disagreement and Plaintiff wrote Goodman a letter that she interpreted as
a threat to her life. She called the police, and ultimately Plaintiff was charged with making
terroristic threats. The sheriff’s deputies who investigated and prosecuted Mrs. Goodman’s
charge, and the current Goodhue County Sheriff, are the only individual Defendants
remaining in the case. Plaintiff was convicted of making terroristic threats, but the
Minnesota Court of Appeals determined that there was insufficient evidence to support that
conviction and thus reversed. State v. Larson, No. A08-1444, 2009 WL 2925658 (Minn. Ct.
App. Sept. 15, 2009).
During the pendency of the terroristic threats charge, Defendant Goodhue County
filed a petition to civilly commit Plaintiff. During his civil commitment hearing, both the
examiner for the county and the examiner selected by Plaintiff found that Plaintiff had denied
culpability for his conviction and had refused sex-offender treatment during his incarceration.
In re Civil Commitment of Larson, Nos. A09-1188, A08-1486, 2009 WL 1049171, at *1
(Minn. Ct. App. Apr. 21, 2009). The examiners also noted that Plaintiff “suffers from mental
disorders.” Id. Plaintiff was not released from prison on February 5, 2008, but rather was
remanded to the custody of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program, where he remains civilly
committed.
Plaintiff believes that his sister and the other Defendants in this action brought the
terroristic threats charge as part of a conspiracy to prevent him from being released from
prison. The overturning of his terroristic threats conviction only added fuel to Plaintiff’s
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conspiracy theory, and he filed this lawsuit three months later.
In November 2010, this Court dismissed with prejudice Plaintiff’s claims against most
of the Defendants in the case, including his sister and her husband. The Court allowed
Plaintiff to amend his Complaint, however, for the limited purpose of naming the proper
Sheriff of Goodhue County. Instead of complying with the Court’s specific order, Plaintiff
took the opportunity to re-allege all of his claims against all of the original Defendants.
Because this Court has previously dismissed those claims with prejudice, it will not discuss
those claims any further.
DISCUSSION
Plaintiff’s first objection is that the R&R “recognized” claims but then determined that
those claims failed to state a claim on which relief could be granted. Plaintiff contends that
the R&R’s treatment of the claims is “ludicrous” and accuses the Magistrate Judge of
“illogical reasoning.” (Obj. at 1.) Because Plaintiff’s Third Amended Complaint is difficult
to decipher, the Magistrate Judge very properly read the allegations liberally and
“recognized” that the Complaint raised certain causes of action. Merely because the R&R
found that certain causes of action were alleged, however, does not mean that those causes
of action are legally sufficient. Indeed, as the R&R later determined, none of the causes of
action in the Third Amended Complaint are legally sufficient. Plaintiff’s first objection is
without merit.
Plaintiff also contends that his pleadings sufficiently allege that Defendants violated
his rights under the U.S. Constitution, and thereby violated 42 U.S.C. § 1983. (Obj. at 2.)
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According to Plaintiff, Ҥ 1983 embraces violations of state laws (tort claims) under the
federal court’s supplemental jurisdiction pursuant to Title 28 U.S.C. § 1367, if, as is the case
here, those state torts were committed simultaneously with the constitutional violations
and/or they also constitute violations of the U.S. Constitution.” (Id.) While it is true that an
act that violates the Constitution may also violate state law, it is not the case that “state torts
committed simultaneously with” constitutional violations are illegal under § 1983.
Nor does 28 U.S.C. § 1367 support Plaintiff’s theory. In essence, § 1367 provides that
federal courts may exercise jurisdiction over state claims when those claims arise out of the
same incident giving rise to federal claims. The fact that a court may decide to hear both
state and federal claims arising out of the same incident does not, however, mean that the
state claims are covered by § 1983. Section 1983 penalizes the infringement of federal
constitutional rights by those acting under color of state law. Purely state-law claims,
whether arising under tort or contract or statute, that do not implicate the U.S. Constitution
simply are not covered by the proscriptions of § 1983.
Plaintiff contends that the R&R did not recommend dismissal of his First Amendment
claims. But the R&R specifically found that Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity
on both Plaintiff’s First and Fourth Amendment claims. (R&R at 12.) This portion of
Plaintiff’s objections is thus without merit.
Plaintiff next argues that the R&R erred by determining that Defendants did not
violate Plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights. Plaintiff believes that the Minnesota Court of
Appeals’ reversal of his conviction means that there was not probable cause for his arrest on
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the terroristic threats charge. But the question whether there was sufficient evidence to
believe that Plaintiff was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt is far different from the question
whether there was probable cause to pursue the charge against Plaintiff. The fact that the
trial court found Plaintiff guilty is almost ipso facto evidence that there was sufficient
probable cause to pursue the case. Moreover, the reversal of the conviction was not based
on the lack of any evidence, but merely on the Court of Appeals’ belief that the evidence was
not quite strong enough to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Plaintiff threatened
violence against his sister. That court did not state, or even imply, that the same evidence
was not sufficient to support a reasonable belief that Plaintiff violated the terroristic threats
statute.
The crux of Plaintiff’s argument is his belief that his sister deliberately mislead the
investigators and the investigators in turn failed to properly investigate the claim. Again,
however, the fact that a neutral judge evaluated the evidence and determined that probable
cause existed to issue a warrant is almost prima facie evidence that there was probable cause
to believe Plaintiff committed the crime. In fact, the Court of Appeals noted that Plaintiff
himself explained the comment his sister found threatening with reference to the same
incident to which his sister referred, an incident in which Plaintiff pulled a knife on his sister
after an argument. Larson, 2009 WL 2925658, at * 2. Thus, Plaintiff’s own explanation of
his comments shows both that his sister’s reaction to the letter was not misleading and that
there was probable cause to interpret the letter the way she and the investigators did.
Plaintiff next contends that the R&R erred in dismissing his Fourteenth Amendment
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claim. According to Plaintiff, his due process claim is not the same as his Fourth
Amendment claim, but rather is a claim that he was denied both procedural and substantive
due process by Defendants’ “willful and malicious finding of probable cause” to arrest him
for the terroristic threats charge. (Obj. at 4.) But this Court has determined that there was
probable cause to arrest Plaintiff, and thus there is no constitutional violation arising out of
that arrest.
Plaintiff also claims that the R&R erred in dismissing his claim under the Equal
Protection Clause. He argues that he has sufficiently stated a “class of one” Equal Protection
Clause claim, because he “was treated differently than other people accused of a crime in
Goodhue County.” Such a claim requires Plaintiff to allege that Defendants “intentionally
treated [him] differently from others who are similarly situated and that no rational basis
existed for the difference in treatment.” Mathers v. Wright, — F.3d —, Nos. 10-1241, 101242, 2011 WL 1345100, at *4 (8th Cir. Apr. 11, 2011). Here, Plaintiff has not come
forward with any similarly situated individuals nor has he established that anyone was treated
differently than he was.
More importantly, however, Plaintiff simply cannot raise a class of one equal
protection claim in this situation. Police “decisions about whom to investigate and how to
investigate are matters that necessarily involve discretion.” Flowers v. City of Minneapolis,
558 F.3d 794, 799 (8th Cir. 2009). In the police investigation context, “the rule that people
should be ‘treated alike, under like circumstances and conditions’ is not violated when one
person is treated differently from others, because treating like individuals differently is an
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accepted consequence of the discretion granted” police officers. Engquist v. Or. Dep’t of
Agric., 553 U.S. 591, 603 (2008). Thus, “while a police officer’s investigative decisions
remain subject to traditional class-based equal protection analysis, they may not be attacked
in a class-of-one equal protection claim.” Flowers, 558 F.3d at 799-800 (8th Cir. 2009). For
that reason alone, Plaintiff’s purported class-of-one claim fails.
For his final constitutional claim, Plaintiff contends that “the mere fact that [he] was
incarcerated for a crime he did not commit made his treatment and the conditions of his
incarceration cruel and unusual” in violation of the Eighth Amendment. (Obj. at 5.) He cites
no caselaw for this proposition, and the Court has found none. Imprisonment is simply not
per se cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Nor does the
appellate court’s reversal of his conviction implicate the propriety of the sentence imposed
or the manner in which that sentence was carried out.
However, even if the Eighth Amendment prohibits the incarceration of an individual
like Plaintiff whose conviction was subsequently overturned, because Plaintiff was already
confined to the sex offender program for reasons unrelated to the terroristic threats charge
at the time of his sentencing on that charge, his challenge to the execution of that sentence
is moot.
Finally, there can be no doubt that Defendants are entitled to official immunity against
Plaintiff’s state-law claims.1 Plaintiff contends that Defendants may not claim this absolute

1

Because the Court concludes that Plaintiff’s constitutional claims are meritless, it
will not discuss whether Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity on those claims.
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immunity because “they are guilty of willfully and maliciously ‘determining’ there was
probable cause when absolutely no crime was committed.” (Obj. at 9.) But as discussed at
length above, the fact that the Minnesota Court of Appeals overturned Plaintiff’s conviction
does not mean that there was no probable cause to pursue the charge against him. Indeed,
the record of the terroristic threats prosecution establishes without a doubt that there was
probable cause not only to investigate, but also to charge Plaintiff with the crime. Plaintiff
undoubtedly believes in the conspiracy described in his Third Amended Complaint, but his
belief does not make it so. There are no issues of fact regarding whether Defendants were
acting within the scope of their discretionary authority, and they are entitled to absolute
official immunity from Plaintiff’s state-law claims.
CONCLUSION
Plaintiff’s allegations fail to state any claims on which relief may be granted.
Accordingly, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that:
1.

The Report and Recommendation (Docket No. 74) is ADOPTED;

2.

The re-alleged claims against all previously dismissed Defendants in the Third
Amended Complaint (Docket No. 63) are STRICKEN;

3.

Defendant Dean Albers’s Motion to Join Motion to Dismiss (Docket No. 68)
is GRANTED;

4.

Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss (Docket No. 57) is GRANTED; and

However, even if the constitutional claims survived Defendants’ Motion, the Court would
determine that Defendants were entitled to qualified immunity.
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5.

All claims in the Third Amended Complaint are DISMISSED with prejudice.

LET JUDGMENT BE ENTERED ACCORDINGLY.

Dated: Thursday, April 21, 2011

s/ Paul A. Magnuson
Paul A. Magnuson
United States District Court Judge

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