Jenkins v. Durrance

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

MIDDLE DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

TAMPA DIVISION

TROY ANTHONY JENKINS,

Plaintiff,

v. Case No. 8:21-cv-1380-TPB-SPF

JACOB BENJAMIN DURRANCE,

Defendant.

/

ORDER DENYING DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO DISMISS

SECOND AMENDED COMPLAINT

This matter is before the Court on Defendant Jacob Benjamin Durrance’s

Motion to Dismiss the Second Amended Complaint, filed on January 13, 2023.

(Doc. 17). Pro se Plaintiff Troy Anthony Jenkins did not file a response in

opposition, and the time to respond has expired. After reviewing the motion,

court file, and the record, the Court finds as follows:

Background

Jenkins alleges that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when

his car was searched and impounded following his arrest for possession of

controlled substances. According to the Second Amended Complaint, Jenkins

was walking on 8th Street in Mulberry, Florida, when Deputy Durrance

approached him. Deputy Durrance was responding to a suspected burglary of

a van parked on 8th Street. After asking whether Jenkins had entered the van,

Deputy Durrance searched him and found marijuana and buprenorphine in his

wallet. He also found the keys to Jenkins’s 2009 Nissan Pathfinder, which was

parked nearby in a private driveway belonging to Amy Landsdale.

Deputy Durrance placed Jenkins under arrest and put him in the “squad

car.” Next, Deputy Durrance located the Pathfinder. He did not ask Landsdale

whether “it was okay for [Jenkins’s] vehicle to sit overnight.” Instead, “without

any permission” and over Jenkins’s objection, Deputy Durrance used the keys

to enter and search the car. Deputy Durrance did not “find[] anything illegal”

in the Pathfinder. Nevertheless, he directed that the car be impounded.

Jenkins was unable to retrieve his car or its contents because he was

incarcerated.

Through this lawsuit, Jenkins seeks to recover the value of his car, which

he claims is $7,500, and the value of the personal items that were inside the

car when it was impounded, which he alleges is $1,800. He also seeks

unspecified declaratory and injunctive relief and $1,009,500 in compensatory

and punitive damages.

On October 12, 2022, the Court screened the Second Amended Complaint

under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1915(e) and 1915(A). (Doc. 11). The Court ruled that

Jenkins could pursue an individual capacity claim against Deputy Durrance

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“for the unlawful search and seizure of his car in violation of his Fourth

Amendment right.” (Id. at 2).

Following service of process, Deputy Durrance moved to dismiss, arguing

that he is entitled to qualified immunity for “the impounding and inventory of

[Jenkins’s] car after [he] was arrested and taken into custody.” (Doc. 17 at 2).

As noted above, Jenkins did not respond to the Motion to Dismiss.

Nevertheless, the Court must decide whether the Second Amended Complaint

states a claim based on the papers in the record. See Giummo v. Olsen, 701 F.

App’x 922, 924 & n.2 (11th Cir. 2017) (noting that dismissing a complaint solely

because a motion to dismiss is technically unopposed would be an abuse of

discretion); Tucker v. United States-U.S. Postal Serv., No. 2:22-cv-13-SPC-

NPM, 2022 WL 911580, at *1 (M.D. Fla. Mar. 29, 2022) (“[C]ourts cannot grant

12(b)(6) motions just because they are unopposed.”).

Legal Standard

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a) requires that a complaint contain “a

short and plain statement of the claim showing the [plaintiff] is entitled to

relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a). “Although Rule 8(a) does not require ‘detailed

factual allegations,’ it does require ‘more than labels and conclusions’; a

‘formulaic recitation of the cause of action will not do.’” Young v. Lexington Ins.

Co., No. 18-62468, 2018 WL 7572240, at *1 (S.D. Fla. Dec. 6, 2018), adopted by

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2019 WL 1112274 (S.D. Fla. Jan. 9, 2019) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly,

550 U.S. 544 (2007)). In order to survive a motion to dismiss, factual allegations

must be sufficient “to state a claim for relief that is plausible on its face.”

Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555.

When deciding a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the court’s scope of review is

limited to the four corners of the complaint. St. George v. Pinellas County, 285

F.3d 1334, 1337 (11th Cir. 2002). However, a document attached to the

pleading as an exhibit or referred to in the complaint may be considered if it is

central to the plaintiff’s claim and the authenticity of the document is not

challenged. See Brooks v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield, 116 F.3d 1364, 1369 (11th

Cir. 1997) (“Where the plaintiff refers to certain documents in the complaint

and those documents are central to the plaintiff's claim, then the Court may

consider the documents part of the pleadings for purposes of Rule 12(b)(6)

dismissal. . . .”). Furthermore, when reviewing a complaint for facial

sufficiency, a court “must accept [a] [p]laintiff’s well pleaded facts as true, and

construe the [c]omplaint in the light most favorable to the [p]laintiff.” Rickman

v. Precisionaire, Inc., 902 F. Supp. 232, 233 (M.D. Fla. 1995) (citing Scheuer v.

Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236 (1974)). “[A] motion to dismiss should concern only

the complaint’s legal sufficiency and is not a procedure for resolving factual

questions or addressing the merits of the case.” Am. Int’l Specialty Lines Ins.

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Co. v. Mosaic Fertilizer, LLC, No. 8:09-cv-1264-RAL-TGW, 2009 WL 10671157,

at *2 (M.D. Fla. Oct. 9, 2009) (Lazzara, J.).

Because Jenkins is proceeding pro se, the Court more liberally construes

the pleadings. Alba v. Montford, 517 F.3d 1249, 1252 (11th Cir. 2008).

However, a pro se plaintiff must still conform to procedural rules, and the

Court does not have “license to act as de facto counsel” on behalf of a pro se

plaintiff. United States v. Padgett, 917 F.3d 1312, 1317 (11th Cir. 2019).

Analysis

Deputy Durrance argues that he is entitled to qualified immunity

because he “did not violate [Jenkins’s] Fourth Amendment right” when he

searched and impounded the car. (Doc. 17 at 5). For the reasons that follow,

the Court concludes that Deputy Durrance is not entitled to qualified

immunity at this stage of the litigation.

“Generally speaking, it is proper to grant a motion to dismiss on qualified

immunity grounds when the complaint fails to allege the violation of a clearly

established constitutional right.” Corbitt v. Vickers, 929 F.3d 1304, 1311 (11th

Cir. 2019). For qualified immunity to apply, the defendant must first show that

“he was acting within the scope of his discretionary authority when the

allegedly wrongful acts occurred.” Fish v. Brown, 838 F.3d 1153, 1162 (11th

Cir. 2016). Once that is established, the Court engages in a two-step inquiry:

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(1) whether, taken in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the factual

allegations show the defendant’s conduct “violated a constitutional right”; and

(2) whether the constitutional right was “clearly established.” Id.

Deputy Durrance’s actions plainly fell within the scope of his

discretionary authority. Accordingly, the Court considers whether Jenkins’s

allegations show that Deputy Durrance violated the Fourth Amendment when

he searched and impounded the car.

The Fourth Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure

in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches

and seizures.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. “[S]earches undertaken without a

warrant issued upon probable cause are per se unreasonable under the Fourth

Amendment—subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated

exceptions.” Swint v. City of Wadley, Ala., 51 F.3d 988, 995 (11th Cir. 1995).

Likewise, “the seizure of personal property is per se unreasonable when not

pursuant to a warrant issued upon probable cause,” but this “general rule” is

subject to “[s]everal exceptions.” Crocker v. Beatty, 886 F.3d 1132, 1136 (11th

Cir. 2018).

Deputy Durrance contends that the search and impoundment of

Jenkins’s car were permissible under the “inventory search” exception to the

warrant requirement. “Though the police generally need a warrant to conduct

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a search, they do not need a warrant to search an impounded car if they (1)

had the authority to impound the car, and (2) followed department procedures

governing inventory searches.” United States v. Isaac, 987 F.3d 980, 988 (11th

Cir. 2021). “An officer has the authority to impound a car if his decision to

impound it is in good faith, based upon standard criteria, and not solely based

upon suspicion of evidence of criminal activity.” Id. at 988-89. The purpose of

requiring standard criteria is to ensure that impoundments and inventory

searches are not merely “a ruse for a general rummaging in order to discover

incriminating evidence.” Florida v. Wells, 495 U.S. 1, 4 (1990). “The

government carries the burden to show that the requirements of this exception

were met.” United States v. Wilson, 979 F.3d 889, 910 (11th Cir. 2020).

Deputy Durrance has not met his burden of showing that the inventory

search exception applies here. An officer may impound a vehicle—and thus

conduct an inventory search—only if “the decision to impound is made on the

basis of standard criteria.” Sammons v. Taylor, 967 F.2d 1533, 1543 (11th Cir.

1992); see also United States v. Handy, 592 F. App’x 893, 907 (11th Cir. 2015)

(“[A] police officer’s decision to impound a car may involve discretion but must

be made according to standard criteria and on the basis of something other

than suspicion of evidence of criminal activity.”). Here, however, Deputy

Durrance “has proffered no standardized impoundment or inventory-search

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policies at all.” Johnson v. Israel, 576 F. Supp. 3d 1231, 1260 (S.D. Fla. 2021).

Moreover, the Second Amended Complaint does not allege that standard

criteria governed the search and impoundment of Jenkins’s vehicle. As a

result, the Court has “no way of knowing whether [Deputy Durrance]

impounded or searched [Jenkins’s car] in accordance with the standard criteria

that federal courts have long demanded.” Id. (collecting cases).

Because Deputy Durrance has not shown that standard criteria

governed his decision to search and impound the car, he has not met his burden

of establishing that the inventory search exception applies. Thus, the Court is

left with the general rule that warrantless searches and seizures of personal

property are per se unreasonable. Without an applicable exception to that rule,

the Court concludes that Jenkins plausibly alleges a Fourth Amendment

violation based on the search and impoundment of his car. See Crocker, 886

F.3d at 1137 (“Without an applicable exception to the rule that the warrantless

seizure of personal property is per se unreasonable, we conclude that the

District Court did not err in determining a Fourth Amendment violation

occurred.”).

The next question is whether the constitutional right at issue was clearly

established. To show that a constitutional right was clearly established, a

plaintiff must demonstrate that (1) “a materially similar case has already been

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decided, giving notice to the police”; (2) “a broader, clearly established principle

should control the novel facts in this situation”; or (3) “this case fits within the

exception of conduct which so obviously violates [the] constitution that prior

case law is unnecessary.” Keating v. City of Miami, 598 F.3d 753, 766 (11th

Cir. 2010).

Little analysis is required here. Long before the events of this case, it

was settled law that (1) warrantless searches and seizures are per se

unreasonable, subject to a few exceptions, Holmes v. Kucynda, 321 F.3d 1069,

1082 (11th Cir. 2003); and (2) to invoke the inventory search exception to the

warrant requirement, an officer must show that “the decision to impound [was]

made on the basis of standard criteria.” Sammons, 967 F.2d at 1543; see also

Colorado v. Bertine, 479 U.S. 367, 375 (1987) (“Nothing . . . prohibits the

exercise of police discretion [in impounding a car] so long as that discretion is

exercised according to standard criteria and on the basis of something other

than suspicion of evidence of criminal activity.”). Deputy Durrance does not

dispute that the law on this issue was clearly established at the time of his

encounter with Jenkins.

Because the factual allegations show that Deputy Durrance violated a

clearly established constitutional right, he is not entitled to qualified immunity

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at this time. Therefore, the Motion to Dismiss is denied. Deputy Durrance may

reassert his qualified immunity defense at summary judgment or trial.

Accordingly, and for the reasons set forth herein, it is ORDERED that:

1. Deputy Durrance’s Motion to Dismiss the Second Amended

Complaint (Doc. 17) is DENIED.

2. Deputy Durrance is directed to file an answer to the Second Amended

Complaint within twenty-one days of the date of this Order.

DONE and ORDERED in Tampa, Florida, on April 18, 2023.

“TOMBARBER i asssi—(‘“—:~s~S™S

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

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