Crawford v. City of Quincy

• Court: Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
• Decided: February 17, 2000
• Docket: 99-1312
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

[NOT FOR PUBLICATION NOT TO BE CITED AS PRECEDENT] United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit

No. 99-1312

PETER A. CRAWFORD,

Plaintiff, Appellant,

v.

CITY OF QUINCY, ET AL.,

Defendants, Appellees.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Torruella, Chief Judge, Selya and Boudin, Circuit Judges.

Peter A. Crawford on brief pro se. James S. Timmins on brief for appellee, City of Quincy. Richard J. Conner on brief for appellees, One Stop Gas, Inc., Petar's Automotive, Inc., Michael Elder and Albert Galano.

February 17, 2000

Per Curiam. At a gas station in Quincy, Massachusetts, appellant Crawford quarreled with the station attendants over what he perceived to be a misleading pricing practice. An attendant called the police. Within minutes, the police arrested Crawford on a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. Money was taken from him at the scene to pay the price shown on the pump, and his automobile was towed to an adjacent lot. When he sought to retrieve his vehicle the next day, he was charged a towing fee in excess of any allowed by state regulation. A jury acquitted Crawford on the misdemeanor charge. He then mounted this federal suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, against the police officer and the City of Quincy (the public defendants), the two gas station attendants and their employer, One Stop Gas, Inc., and the towing company, Petar's Automotive, Inc. (the private defendants). Both corporate defendants are wholly owned by one Peter Palmer. Crawford alleged, inter alia, that the police officer had deprived him of his liberty and property without probable cause in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, that the private defendants had conspired with the officer to effect the deprivations, that both sets of defendants had violated state civil rights and tort laws, and that the private defendants had engaged in deceptive practices in violation of Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 93A. A trial ensued. After both sides had rested, the district court granted in part the defendants' motions for judgment as a matter of law. The court then submitted the remaining claims to the jury which exonerated the private defendants, but found the public defendants liable for deprivation of Crawford's civil rights, wrongful arrest, and an invasion of privacy. The jury awarded damages in the amount of $4,116. In addition, the court granted equitable relief in the form of an order expunging the record of the arrest (including fingerprints and a photograph taken at the time of booking in violation of a state law). At a later hearing, the court granted the private defendants' motion for attorneys' fees, awarding them "the amount that [Crawford] recovers of the City of Quincy and no more," and decreeing that "the City of Quincy may discharge the judgment entered in Mr. Crawford's favor by either paying off One Stop and these other [private] defendants or reaching an accommodation with them." Judge Young added: The result is that Mr. Crawford gets no monetary benefits, he gets the satisfaction of having litigated and won against able and ethical counsel, having vindicated his rights as against a police officer who arrested him without probable cause, and he gets the expungement of that arrest and all collateral documents in the . . . City of Quincy. Crawford -- and only Crawford -- appeals. He assigns as error (1) the district court's entry of judgment as a matter of law on various claims; (2) certain aspects of the jury instructions; (3) the court's rejection of his motion for judgment as a matter of law on his Chapter 93A claims; and (4) the fee award. I. Upon de novo review, we affirm the judgment as a matter of law. We briefly recount our reasons. In all instances, we have taken the evidence in the light most favorable to Crawford. See CPC Int'l, Inc. v. Northbrook Excess & Surplus Ins. Co., 46 F.3d 1211, 1214 (1st Cir. 1995). A. As to the section 1983 claims against the private defendants, Crawford alleged several conspiracy theories. There was insufficient proof at trial, however, to sustain a reasonable inference that a mutual understanding arose between the station attendants and the police officer prior to Crawford's arrest. The attendants and the officer testified without contradiction that they were utter strangers to one another before this incident. Although different witnesses offered different versions of the relevant events, all the testimony pointed to a sudden, unilateral decision by the officer to effect the arrest. We have held before, and today reaffirm, that "merely initiating a good-faith request for police protection [will] not attach liability for the subsequent unconstitutional conduct of arresting officers." Wagenmann v. Adams, 829 F.2d 196, 209 (1st Cir. 1987). To be sure, there was proof that after the arrest the attendants conversed with the officer and cooperated in the taking of Crawford's money and in arranging for towing of Crawford's automobile. But this evidence, without more, was insufficient to permit a jury reasonably to infer that the private defendants thereby knowingly "collogued [with the officer] to deprive the plaintiff of his civil rights." Id. Crawford was similarly unsuccessful in making out a section 1983 claim against the towing company. The defense adduced undisputed testimony that the attendants did not work for the towing company and there was no proof that any agent of the towing company knew of the events preceding the police authorization to tow. Thus, even if the towing company might be considered a public actor subject to individual liability under section 1983 (due to its municipal towing contract and other facts), there is nothing in the record that serves to contradict its assertion of good faith in accepting (and acting upon) the facially valid police authorization. This same reasoning likewise supports the district court's entry of judgment for the towing company on Crawford's conversion claim. B. The district court did not err in entering judgment as a matter of law on two damages claims against the public defendants. First, the court decided not to submit to the jury a separate claim for compensatory damages for mental distress stemming from the "invasion of privacy" that allegedly occurred during the booking process. Given that Crawford did not testify to any emotional distress traceable separately to the booking process, but, rather, described only an undifferentiated emotional upset following the entire incident, the decision was proper. Second, the court declined to submit to the jury a claim for punitive damages arising from the unlawful arrest. We discern no error. "Where . . . the evidence shows no more than that an exasperated police officer, acting in the heat of the moment, made an objectively unreasonable mistake, punitive damages will not lie." Iacobucci v. Boulter, 193 F.3d 14, 26 (1st Cir. 1999). There was no proof that the officer harbored any evil motive nor that he possessed a "conscious awareness" that the arrest might violate Crawford's civil rights. Id. II. Neither the jury instructions nor the Chapter 93A claims need detain us. As to the instructions, it suffices to say that they sufficiently conveyed the relevant substance of most of the matters that Crawford had wanted explained in greater detail to the jury. Crawford's Chapter 93A argument, as explicated on appeal, seems to be that two of One Stop's pump signs allegedly violated Mass. Regs. Code tit. 202, 2.06(2), and that, therefore, regardless of whether he relied on those signs, the court should have found a "per se" violation of Chapter 93A. This argument is unpreserved, and we reject it on that basis. For one thing, it was not squarely presented below in Crawford's omnibus motion for judgment as a matter of law. For another thing, he compounded the waiver by acquiescing in a defense request for a supplementary instruction directing the jury to find liability only if it found that he had relied on a deceptive practice. III. We are unable to sustain the district court's decision to award attorneys' fees to the prevailing private defendants under 42 U.S.C. 1988. A prevailing defendant in a civil rights case is entitled to fees and costs only if the defendant can establish that the suit was "totally unfounded, frivolous, or otherwise unreasonable" when brought, or that the plaintiff continued the litigation after it clearly became so. Bercovitch v. Baldwin Sch., Inc., 191 F.3d 8, 10 (1st Cir. 1999) (quoting Casa Marie Hogar Geriatrico, Inc. v. Rivera-Santos, 38 F.3d 615, 618 (1st Cir. 1994)). This is a necessary precondition to any fee award in favor of a defendant under section 1988 (although other facts may persuade the court that fees should be denied or reduced). See Tang v. Rhode Island Dep't of Elderly Affairs, 163 F.3d 7, 13-15 (1st Cir. 1998); Foster v. Mydas Assocs., Inc., 943 F.2d 139, 145 (1st Cir. 1991). We review fee awards deferentially, and reverse only for abuse of discretion. See Casa Marie, 38 F.3d at 618. We may find such an abuse if the lower court ignores a material factor, relies upon an improper factor, or makes a serious mistake in weighing the relevant factors. See Coutin v. Young & Rubicam P. R., Inc., 124 F.3d 331, 336 (1st Cir. 1997). In all events, an appellate court "must engage the district court's [fee] decision critically." Id. We have instructed trial judges who make (or decline to make) fee awards to explain their actions so that "at a bare minimum, the order awarding fees, read against the backdrop of the record as a whole ...expose[s] the district court's thought process and show[s] the method and manner underlying its decisional calculus." Id. In this instance, the judge gave three reasons for the fee award: (1) that the "federal claim of conspiracy was brought without any basis to support it," although, "the rest . . . was a triable case;" (2) that the suit had grown out of a $1.86 dispute but had consumed three days of trial time and thus judicial resources valued (by the judge) at more than $60,000; and (3) that Crawford previously had brought "successful lawsuits about minor matters." The second and third reasons are troubling; even if taken at face value, neither seems sufficient to justify a decision to award fees against a civil rights plaintiff. Even more troubling, however, is that the court's basic precondition for the award -- the finding that the federal conspiracy claim was baseless when brought -- does not withstand scrutiny. We have reviewed the record in detail. While the evidence supports the decision to dismiss the section 1983 claims against the private defendants at the close of the trial, that is not the proper coign of vantage. To the precise contrary, in awarding fees to a prevailing defendant, a "court must resist the understandable temptation to engage in post hoc reasoning by concluding that, because a plaintiff did not ultimately prevail, his action must have been unreasonable or without foundation." Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U.S. 412, 421-22 (1978). When Crawford brought suit, there was a plausible (if circumstantial) foundation for his conspiracy claims. Crawford had been arrested without apparent cause or police investigation within a few moments of the officer's arrival on the scene in response to an attendant's telephoned complaint. The officer and the two attendants then conversed amongst themselves and all three participated in an improper confiscation of money and in the unauthorized towing of Crawford's automobile. To make appearances worse, the towing was accomplished by a municipal contractor, and the company's owner (who also owned the service station) was familiar with various police officials. The towing firm then conditioned Crawford's retrieval of his vehicle on the payment of a towing fee. This is the sort of circumstantial sequence that has troubled even seasoned jurists, see, e.g.,Alexis v. McDonald's Restaurants of Massachusetts, Inc., 67 F.3d 341, 354 (1st Cir. 1995) (Bownes, J. dissenting in part); Moore v. The Marketplace Restaurant, Inc., 754 F.2d 1336, 1362 (7th Cir. 1985) (Gibson, J. dissenting in part), and we think it is unreasonable to hold the plaintiff to a higher standard. In sum, we hold that the district court erred in finding that the federal conspiracy claims were utterly without foundation when suit was brought. Once that finding falls from the case, we cannot affirm a fee award to the prevailing private defendants under 42 U.S.C. 1988. Affirmed in part and reversed in part. No costs.