Phelan, Laura v. Village Lyons IL

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

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No. 07-2224

L AURA P HELAN,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

V ILLAGE OF L YONS and D AMIEN D YAS,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 04 C 8327—George M. Marovich, Judge.

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A RGUED JANUARY 7, 2008—D ECIDED JUNE 27, 2008

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Before P OSNER, R OVNER, and W OOD , Circuit Judges.

R OVNER, Circuit Judge. As she was driving through the

Village of Lyons en route to the North Riverside Mall,

Laura Phelan was pulled over and arrested. Officer

Damien Dyas executed the traffic stop based on his belief

that Phelan was driving a stolen vehicle. His belief turned

out to be mistaken, and Phelan was released shortly

2 No. 07-2224

thereafter. She sued the Village of Lyons 1 and Officer Dyas

under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging violations of her rights

under the Fourth Amendment. On the parties’ cross-

motions for summary judgement, the district court

granted Officer Dyas’s motion for summary judgment on

qualified immunity grounds. Phelan appeals, and for the

reasons explained in this opinion, we reverse the grant

of summary judgment to Officer Dyas and remand for

further proceedings.

I.

Shortly after 5:30 p.m. on October 14, 2004, Village of

Lyons police officer Damien Dyas was nearing the end of

his 12-hour shift. He decided to run a random license

check on the white Cadillac sedan driving in front of him.

Laura Phelan was driving the car, which bore the license

plate number 1020. After entering the plate number into

a computer in his squad car, Officer Dyas received what

is referred to as a LEADS report on the computer screen

in his car.

The first screen of the LEADS report contained, among

other things, the date and time of Officer Dyas’s query, the

status of the vehicle registered to the plate in question

(either “valid,” “stolen,” or “suspended”), and a descrip-

tion of a vehicle. As relevant here, the second line re-

layed that the vehicle registered to plate 1020 was “stolen.”

1

In her amended complaint Phelan conceded that she had no

federal claims against the municipality. Because the district

court dismissed the state-law claims against the Village (a

ruling she does not appeal), we do not discuss any of Phelan’s

claims against the Village of Lyons.

No. 07-2224 3

The third line contained the description for the “stolen”

vehicle: a black 2002 Honda motorcycle (relayed on the

LEADS screen in acronyms as “DOT/081504 VCO/BLK

VYR/02 VMA/HD VMO/CYL VST/MC”). Unfortunately,

Officer Dyas did not see this description of the stolen

vehicle. Instead, he read only as far as the second line

stating that plate 1020 belonged to a stolen vehicle. He

thus had no occasion to confront the obvious discrepancy

between the vehicle description (black Honda motor-

cycle) and the vehicle in front of him (white Cadillac). As

the parties explained at oral argument, this discrepancy

arose on account of the confusing Illinois licensing

system for automobiles and motorcycles: the license

plates for both vehicles may have the same number, and

are distinguishable by virtue of the fact that motorcycle

plates are smaller in size than car plates 2 , a fact any

trained law enforcement officer would know.

After reading lines one and two of the LEADS report,

Officer Dyas contacted the dispatcher and reported that he

was following a possible stolen motor vehicle. In response

to Officer Dyas’s query, the dispatcher confirmed that

license plate 1020 belonged to a stolen vehicle, and Officer

Dyas’s location was relayed to assisting officers who

arrived at the scene shortly. In the interim, Officer Dyas

2

The Illinois Secretary of State’s website identifies one excep-

tion to this rule: special “ham radio operator” plates are avail-

able only as a larger “passenger sized plate,” even when used

on a motorcycle. See http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/

departments/vehicles/license_plate_guide/ (follow “Standard

License Plates” hyperlink; then follow “Amateur Radio”

hyperlink).

4 No. 07-2224

continued to follow Phelan’s Cadillac 3 until she stopped at

a railroad crossing. At that point Officer Dyas and the

arriving back-up officers conducted a “felony-traffic stop.”

After activating his emergency lights and signaling Phelan

to pull over, Officer Dyas instructed Phelan to turn off her

vehicle and throw her car keys out of the window. She was

then told to exit her vehicle and walk backwards until

officers were able to place her in handcuffs and secure her

in the squad car. After Officer Dyas searched Phelan’s car,

he learned through dispatch the information that the third

line of the LEADS report had disclosed: that the stolen

vehicle was in fact a black Honda motorcycle. He then

allowed Phelan to exit the squad car, removed the hand-

cuffs, and released her.

As relevant here, Phelan sued Officer Dyas in his individ-

ual capacity, alleging that the stop violated her Fourth

Amendment Rights. The district court granted Officer

Dyas’s motion for summary judgment after concluding that

he was entitled to qualified immunity for the stop because

he had a reasonable basis to believe that Phelan was

driving a stolen vehicle.

II.

On appeal, Phelan maintains that Officer Dyas was not

entitled to qualified immunity for the felony traffic stop.

3

Officer Dyas maintained in the district court that Phelan then

engaged in what he characterized as evasive driving: swerving

into the right-hand lane reserved for vehicles making a

right turn and then traveling through the intersection with-

out turning right. Phelan denied doing either of these things,

and for purposes of summary judgment we credit her version

of events.

No. 07-2224 5

We review the district court’s decision de novo, asking

whether, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to

Phelan, Officer Dyas is nonetheless entitled to qualified

immunity as a matter of law. Boyd v. Owen, 481 F.3d 520,

522 (7th Cir. 2007). Qualified immunity protects public

officials in those situations where the law is not suf-

ficiently clear for a reasonable official to have known

that his actions were illegal. See Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S.

194, 202 (2001); Holmes v. Village of Hoffman Estate, 511

F.3d 673, 687 (7th Cir. 2007). Saucier lays out a two-part

test for qualified immunity. First, we consider whether,

taken in the light most favorable to Phelan, the facts al-

leged amount to a constitutional violation. Saucier, 533

U.S. at 201; Boyd, 481 F.3d at 524 (reiterating Saucier’s

command to first determine whether plaintiff has alleged

a constitutional violation). Second, we ask whether the

right was clearly established at the time of the alleged

violation. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201; Boyd, 481 F.3d at 526. The

“rigid” order of the Saucier test has been repeatedly

criticized, see, e.g., Scott v. Harris, 127 S. Ct. 1769, 1780-81

(2007) (Breyer, J., concurring), and the Supreme Court

recently granted certiorari to consider whether Saucier

should be overruled. Pearson v. Callahan, 128 S. Ct. 1702

(Mar. 24, 2008) (directing parties to brief and argue

“Whether the Court’s decision in Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S.

194 (2001) should be overruled?”). Meanwhile, we ad-

here to Saucier’s sequential approach.

As for the first prong, we conclude that the facts as

alleged by Phelan establish a constitutional violation by

Officer Dyas. A traffic stop and accompanying detention

constitute a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, which

protects “the right of the people to be secure in their

persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable

6 No. 07-2224

searches and seizures.” Thus, an automobile stop violates

the Constitution if it is “unreasonable” under the circum-

stances. See Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 809-10

(1996). A stop is reasonable if the officer has “probable

cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred.” Id. at

810. The question here then is whether the LEADS re-

port gave Officer Dyas such probable cause.

Under the circumstances, it did not. Although the first

two lines of the LEADS report standing alone might

have provided a basis for the stop, we cannot ignore the

information contained in the third line, which appeared

on the initial screen returned in response to Officer Dyas’s

query. In that line, the stolen vehicle is described as a

black Honda motorcycle. If Officer Dyas had read this

line, he would have realized, at the very least, that further

investigation was warranted before initiating a felony

traffic stop. Indeed, if Officer Dyas had read the third

line of the LEADS printout and nonetheless concluded

further investigation or a brief investigatory stop was

warranted on the basis of the confusing Illinois license

plate system, we might have a different case. Cf. United

States v. Cashman, 216 F.3d 582, 587 (7th Cir. 2000) (“[T]he

Fourth Amendment requires only a reasonable assessment

of the facts, not a perfectly accurate one.”). Here though,

Phelan has established that there was in fact no basis for

her detention, and Officer Dyas has responded with an

admission that he failed to read the information in front

of him that would have alerted him to that fact. Because

Phelan’s Cadillac was not in fact stolen, and Officer Dyas

would have known that had he read line three of the

LEADS report he requested, there was no probable cause

and the felony traffic stop was unreasonable under the

circumstances. See Jones v. Wilhelm, 425 F.3d 455, 461 (7th

No. 07-2224 7

Cir. 2005) (“In determining whether a defendant’s al-

leged actions violated a clearly established right, courts

may properly take into account any information the

defendant ought reasonably to have obtained.”).

Having concluded that Officer Dyas’s decision to stop

Phelan and handcuff her violated her Fourth Amendment

right to be free from unreasonable seizures, we next

consider whether that right was clearly established at the

time of the stop. See, e.g., Saucier, 533 U.S. at 200; Jewett v.

Anders, 521 F.3d 818, 823 (7th Cir. 2008). Undoubtedly the

Fourth Amendment’s general proscription against unrea-

sonable seizures was clearly established at the time Officer

Dyas stopped Phelan. Our inquiry, however, is whether

the application of that right to this particular set of cir-

cumstances is clear enough that a “’reasonable official

would understand that what he is doing violates that

right.’” Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202 (quoting Anderson v. Creigh-

ton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987)).

Instead of focusing on the contours of the right to be free

from unreasonable seizures itself, Officer Dyas argues

that his behavior under the circumstances was reason-

able. Phelan construes this argument as an attempt by

Officer Dyas to append a “third prong” to the qualified

immunity inquiry: namely, whether the officer’s actions

were reasonable even if they violated clearly established

law. As Phelan points out, we rejected this precise line of

argument in Jones. Jones dealt with an officer who mis-

takenly entered the wrong apartment when executing a

search warrant. Jones, 425 F.3d at 459-60. The officer in

Jones urged the panel to assess whether his actions were

reasonable under the circumstances, notwithstanding any

violation of clearly established law. Id. at 460. Alterna-

tively, he suggested that in making the inquiry into

8 No. 07-2224

whether it would have been clear to a reasonable officer

that his actions violated the constitution, the court

impute to the hypothetical reasonable officer only the

information the defendant had at the time, “and not the

knowledge he ought reasonably to have amassed during

the execution of the warrant.” Id. at 461. We rejected both

arguments, noting that, “[i]t goes without saying that the

reasonableness of an official’s actions is not a factor in

determining whether the facts as alleged constitute a

violation of constitutional rights.” Id.

That said, Officer Dyas correctly notes that we may

still take into account an officer’s reasonable, but mis-

taken beliefs as to the facts establishing the existence of

probable cause. See Saucier, 533 U.S. at 206. Officer Dyas

essentially argues that based on the information he re-

ceived, it was reasonable for him to mistakenly believe

that Phelan’s automobile was the stolen vehicle described

in the LEADS report and thus that he had probable

cause for the stop. But we have already concluded that

Officer Dyas’s mistake was not a reasonable one. The

third line of the LEADS report appeared on the same

screen as the second line. Officer Dyas need not have

expended more than an additional instant of attention to

see the vehicle description on line three. Given the cir-

cumstances under which he was following Phelan, that

additional instant would not have been hard to come by.

The justifications Officer Dyas advances for failing to

read line three of the LEADS report do not change our

assessment. First, he suggests that because he was pur-

suing a possible stolen vehicle, he had neither the luxury

nor the time of an officer sitting at a desk perusing a

computer screen or informational printout. Although

Officer Dyas was in the field following Phelan’s car, it

No. 07-2224 9

was hardly a hot pursuit situation. Officer Dyas’s deci-

sion to run Phelan’s plates was not prompted by any

suspicious behavior on Phelan’s part, and it is undisputed

that he had time to take a number of steps after receiving

the response to his initial query. He called his dispatcher

to verify the stolen vehicle; he continued following

Phelan; and he awaited the arrival of back-up officers.

Ultimately, he executed the stop only after Phelan had

already come to a stop on account of a railroad crossing

ahead. And at this stage of the proceedings, we credit

Phelan’s assertion that she did nothing unusual or evasive

while Officer Dyas followed her. There is nothing in the

sequence of events surrounding Officer Dyas’s stop of

Phelan to suggest that although he had time to read lines

one and two of the LEADS report, it would have been

impractical or otherwise difficult to read line three. This

is so particularly since line three contains the crucial

descriptive information about the “stolen” vehicle. More-

over, that the stop occurred during what Officer Dyas

characterizes as an “extremely busy” time of day only

reinforces our view that a reasonable officer would have

read the third line: traffic was moving slowly and there

is no evidence that Phelan could have made a quick escape.

Officer Dyas also claims that it was reasonable for him

to rely on the dispatcher’s response to his query about

license plate 1020. After he received the LEADS report,

Officer Dyas contacted the dispatcher and reported that

he was following a possible stolen motor vehicle. Officer

Dyas testified in his deposition that the dispatcher veri-

fied that “license plate 1020 came back to a stolen vehicle.”

But Officer Dyas’s reliance on the dispatcher is mis-

placed—far from being either the sole or authoritative

source on the matter, the dispatcher simply responded to

Officer Dyas’s query, which was founded on his erroneous

10 No. 07-2224

belief that the vehicle he was following was stolen. Al-

though Officer Dyas’s attempt to verify the status of the

vehicle with the dispatcher certainly reinforces that his

mistake was an innocent one, it does nothing to further

his claim that the mistake, innocent as it may have been,

was reasonable. His failure to review the information in

front of him in his squad car cannot be excused by the

dispatcher’s response to his admittedly incomplete query.

In sum, we cannot conclude that Officer Dyas’s failure

to read the third line was objectively reasonable under

the circumstances. We do not hold that a reasonable

officer who had read the pertinent information in front

of him could never have concluded that a stop was nec-

essary. Indeed, if Officer Dyas had read the third line

and still harbored the belief that a crime had been com-

mitted or that further investigation was warranted, we

would have a different set of facts that may or may

not represent a violation of a clearly established right.

Here Phelan has advanced evidence that she was neither

driving a stolen vehicle nor engaging in any traffic viola-

tion, and Officer Dyas has responded simply by ad-

mitting that in executing the stop he overlooked a crucial

piece of information about the vehicle he was stopping.

On this record, we conclude that Officer Dyas was not

entitled to summary judgment on the basis of qualified

immunity.

III.

For the foregoing reasons, we R EVERSE the decision of

the district court granting summary judgment to Officer

Dyas and R EMAND for further proceedings.

USCA-02-C-0072—6-27-08