Mario J. Diana V. Williard Oliphant; Carmen R. Altavilla, Appellants; 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 16005; United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

Police officers’ granted qualified immunity based on reasonable reliance on “ordinary course” exception of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Street Act (Title III).

A jury found that the defendant police officers violated the plaintiff police officer's constitutional rights, the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act (Title III) and Pennsylvania's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act and awarded the plaintiff compensatory and punitive damages. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania denied the defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law. The defendants appealed. The plaintiff sued the defendants after learning that a telephone call regarding his return to work was recorded. The defendants' argued that they were entitled to qualified immunity on the Fourth Amendment claim as a matter of law. The doctrine of qualified immunity protects government officials from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights which a reasonable person would have known. The Supreme Court has established a two-part analysis that governs whether a government official is entitled to qualified immunity. The first question is whether the official's conduct violated a constitutional or federal right. The second question is whether the right at issue was clearly established. In examining the first question, the court looked at whether the official's actions were reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances available to the officer at the time. The court reviewed the official's actions from the perspective of an objectively reasonable law enforcement officer under the circumstances, "rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight." The second question is whether the right at issue was "clearly established." To be clearly established, the contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. If the officer made a reasonable mistake about the legal constraints on his actions, then qualified immunity should protect him or her from suit. The court held that it was not clearly established that defendants could not rely on the "ordinary course" exception in Title III to protect them from liability under the Fourth Amendment. In addition, the district court also erred when it found that no reasonable officer could believe that any exception to liability under Title III could act as an exception to Fourth Amendment liability. The court reasoned that it was not sufficiently clear to a reasonable officer that he could be liable for a Fourth Amendment violation when he reasonably believed he was protected under the ordinary course exception to Title III. The court held that the evidence demonstrated as a matter of law that the Actions of the defendants were covered by the exception to liability under 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5704 of Pennsylvania's Wiretap Act and were entitled to qualified immunity on the Fourth Amendment claim as a matter of law.

Case Law Alert - 4th Qtr 2011