Opinion
Civil No. 03-257-HA.
June 16, 2004
Thomas M. Steenson, Steenson, Schumann, Tewksbury, Creigthon Rose Portland, Attorney for Plaintiff.
William G. Blair, Senior Assistant County Counsel Hillsboro, Oregon, Attorney for Defendants.
OPINION AND ORDER
This case is brought by Rebecca Whitelock, who claims that pursuant to the erroneous policies of defendants Washington County, Sheriff James Spinden, and Sheriff Rob Gordon, she was wrongfully denied the full credit for time served while incarcerated in the Washington County Community Corrections Center in Washington County, Oregon. Plaintiff alleges that because of this, defendants caused her to serve time in excess of the amount that was lawful, and thereby inflicted mental pain and suffering, mental trauma, stress, and loss of liberty. Plaintiff brings two claims: one for due process violations under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and the other for false imprisonment. Plaintiff has moved for partial summary judgment and to strike portions of the affidavit of defense counsel William Blair and related portions of Defendants' Concise Statement of Material Facts. Defendants have also moved for summary judgment. Oral argument on these motions was heard in open court on March 15, 2004. This court ordered supplemental briefing from the parties after that hearing. That briefing is now complete. For the following reasons, plaintiff's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment and defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment are both granted in part and denied in part. Plaintiff's Motion to Strike is denied as moot.
BACKGROUND
Plaintiff was sentenced on convictions for Driving While Revoked and Driving While Under the Influence of Intoxicants (Case No. C972364CR, hereinafter referred to as Whitelock I) on March 17, 1999 in the Circuit Court of the State of Oregon for Washington County. See Pl.'s Ex. No. 1, Attached to Steenson Aff. in Supp. of Pl.'s M. for Summ. J.(exhibits from this source hereinafter identified as "Pl.'s Ex."). Plaintiff received sentences of eighteen months probation for Driving While Revoked and five years probation for Driving While Under the Influence of Intoxicants ("DWUII"), with six months in custody as a condition of the five-year probation for the DWUII conviction. Id.
On May 18, 1999, plaintiff was sentenced on new convictions that included Driving While Revoked (Felony) and DWUII (Case No. C982866CR, hereinafter referred to as Whitelock II). Plaintiff received sentences of eighteen months probation for Driving While Revoked and five years probation for DWUII plus six months custody as a condition of the five-year probation for the DWUII conviction, declared to have commenced on December 26, 1998 to run concurrently with Whitelock I. Pl.'s Ex. 2.
In sum, plaintiff received two sentences of 180 days in jail, beginning on December 26, 1998, and running concurrently. Id. Plaintiff completed those concurrent six-month sentences by serving 104 days from December 26, 1998, through April 9, 1999, after earning various credits. Pl.'s Concise Statement of Facts Para. 18.
Plaintiff's sentence of five years probation for her convictions for Driving Under the Influence of Intoxicants was still in effect in early 2001. Plaintiff was held in custody on probation detainers on February 6, 2001, and from February 23, 2001 through March 7, 2001.
On March 20, 2001, plaintiff was sentenced to time served plus ninety days in both Whitelock I and Whitelock II as a result of these probation violations. Pl.'s Exs. 3 and 4. These sentences did not indicate whether they were to run concurrently or consecutively.
Plaintiff absconded from custody from April 1 to April 14, 2001. Pl.'s Ex. 8. As a result, plaintiff was given additional sentences in both Whitelock I and Whitelock II on May 4, 2001, by Judge Marco Hernandez. Pl.'s Exs. 5 and 6. Judge Hernandez sentenced plaintiff to serve an additional one year in both Whitelock I and Whitelock II and ordered that these sentences be served consecutively, with credit for time served on her original six-month sentences. Id.
As noted above, plaintiff had completed those concurrent six-month sentences by serving 104 days from December 26, 1998 through April 9, 1999, after earning various credits. The parties later disputed whether the "credit for time served" ordered by Judge Hernandez should be calculated as the full sentence term of 180 days, or as the 104 days plaintiff actually served. An adjudication pursuant to a state habeas corpus petition filed by plaintiff was issued subsequently that ordered defendants to calculate the credit as the full 180 days on the sentences in both Whitelock I and Whitelock II (see below).
On June 8, 2001, plaintiff absconded from maternity leave, before she had finished serving her consecutive one-year sentences. Pl.'s Ex. 8. Authorities captured and returned plaintiff to custody on December 30, 2001. On January 14, 2002, plaintiff was sentenced on one count of "Unauthorized Departure" (Case No. D0102959M, hereinafter referred to as Whitelock III). She received a 90-day sentence to be served consecutively to the one-year sentences in Whitelock I and Whitelock II. Pl.'s Exs. 7-8.
On July 15, 2002, plaintiff filed a petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus challenging the time served credits she had received. On December 19, 2002, the Washington County Sheriff filed a "Return" as part of the response to plaintiff's habeas petition. This Return was provided to this court as Plaintiff's Exhibit 14. Attached to this Return as Exhibit 2 is an affidavit from Carolyn Hallford, who served as the Washington County Sheriff's Office Time Computations Officer during plaintiff's incarceration. Hallford certified that the attached "Exhibit B" to her affidavit was an accurate calculation of plaintiff's time computations. See Pl.'s Ex. 14.
The policy in force at the Washington County Sheriff's Office at the relevant time defined "Credit for time served" as day-for-day credit that an inmate receives for previous time spent in any jail on pretrial or sentenced status. Pursuant to this policy Hallford calculated only 104 days credit for the time served on plaintiff's six-month terms in Washington County jail on her two convictions in Whitelock I and Whitelock II, and plaintiff did not receive credit for the full sentences. Under these parameters, plaintiff's release dates according to Hallford were as follows: in Whitelock I — June 11, 2002; in Whitelock II — November 27, 2002; and in Whitelock III — January 20, 2003. Id., Ex. B at 2.
A trial on plaintiff's habeas petition was held before Washington County Circuit Court Judge Steven L. Price on December 23, 2002. On January 2, 2003, Judge Price issued a letter decision ruling against the Washington County Sheriff. Judge Price rejected the Sheriff's policy and held that under ORS 137.750, where there is no express language defining the scope of credit, the decision in Brown v. Cupp, 31 Or. App. 1237 (1977) controlled, and plaintiff should receive credit for the entire term of the sentence rather than the actual time served. Accordingly, Judge Price ordered plaintiff's immediate release: "I conclude that Ms. Whitelock is entitled to credit for 180 days, not 104 days, for her previously completed incarcerations as conditions of probations." Plaintiff was released on January 2, 2003.
An Order of Judgment was entered on January 7, 2003, which directed the Sheriff to credit plaintiff with an additional seventy-six days for time served in each of the two sentences plaintiff served for Whitelock I and Whitelock II. Pl.'s Ex. 17. Defendants did not appeal this Judgment.
Plaintiff now claims that pursuant to the erroneous policies of defendants Sheriffs Spinden and Gordon, she was wrongfully denied the full 180-day credit to which Judge Price ruled she was entitled. Plaintiff alleges in this suit that defendants caused her to serve time in excess of the amount that was lawful, causing a loss of liberty and thereby inflicting mental pain and suffering, mental trauma, and stress.
STANDARDS FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
Summary judgment is appropriate "if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). Summary judgment is not proper if material factual issues exist for trial. Warren v. City of Carlsbad, 58 F.3d 439, 441 (9th Cir. 1995).
The moving party has the burden of establishing the absence of a genuine issue of material fact. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323 (1986). If the moving party shows the absence of a genuine issue of material fact, the nonmoving party must go beyond the pleadings and identify facts which show a genuine issue for trial. Id. at 324. Assuming that there has been sufficient time for discovery, summary judgment should be entered against a "party who fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party's case, and on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial." Id. at 322.
Special rules of construction apply to evaluating summary judgment motions: (1) all reasonable doubts as to the existence of genuine issues of material fact should be resolved against the moving party; (2) all inferences to be drawn from the underlying facts must be viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party; and (3) the court must assume the truth of direct evidence set forth by the nonmoving party if it conflicts with direct evidence produced by the moving party. T.W. Elec. Serv. v. Pacific Elec. Contractors, 809 F.2d 626, 630 (9th Cir. 1987). When different ultimate inferences can be reached, summary judgment is not appropriate. Sankovich v. Life Ins. Co. of N. Am., 638 F.2d 136, 140 (9th Cir. 1981).
The issue of material fact required by Rule 56 to entitle a party to proceed to trial need not be resolved conclusively in favor of the party asserting its existence; all that is required is sufficient evidence supporting the claimed factual dispute to require a jury or judge to resolve the parties' differing versions of the truth at trial. Id. At this stage of the litigation, the judge does not weigh conflicting evidence or make credibility determinations. These determinations are the province of the factfinder at trial. Id.; see also Abdul-Jabbar v. Gen. Motors Corp., 85 F.3d 407, 410 (9th Cir. 1996).
ANALYSIS
1. Plaintiff's Release Date After the Habeas Ruling and Issue Preclusion
As clarified in their supplemental briefing, defendants contend that plaintiff's sentence in Whitelock I expired on March 28, 2002, after taking into account all of plaintiff's credits and parole violations. Defendants now assert that because the sentence in Whitelock II was to run consecutively under Judge Hernandez's order, it should be calculated as having begun to run on March 28, 2002. In defendants' view, because plaintiff already received credit for time served in her sentence for Whitelock I, the one-year sentence imposed by Judge Hernandez in Whitelock II had no remaining applicable credit for time served. Accordingly, under defendants' view, that sentence did not expire until March 27, 2003. Defendants then assert that plaintiff's 90-day sentence for her conviction for Unauthorized Departure, which was also to run consecutively, would have begun running on March 28, 2003 and would have expired (with good time credits) on May 20, 2003.
However, issue preclusion or collateral estoppel now bars relitigating the issue of how much credit for time served plaintiff should receive on each of her probationary sentences in Whitelock I and Whitelock II. Issue preclusion applies when three conditions are met: (1) the issue in question must have been resolved by a judgment on the merits in a prior suit; (2) the second action must involve the same parties or their privities; (3) and the second action must be based on the same cause of action. Cent. Delta Water Agency v. United States, 306 F.3d 938, 953 (9th Cir. 2002), citing Jackson v. Hayakawa, 605 F.2d 1121, 1126 (9th Cir. 1979). Stated differently, issue preclusion attaches when an issue of fact or law is actually litigated by the same parties or parties in privity and determined by a valid and final judgment, and the determination is essential to the judgment. Amadeo v. Principal Mut. Life Ins., 290 F.3d 1152, 1159 (9th Cir. 2002), quoting Arizona v. California, 530 U.S. 392, 414 (2000).
In their summary judgment briefing to this court defendants acknowledge that issue preclusion applies to the question of whether plaintiff was entitled to credit of 180 days (the full term of plaintiff's sentence) or 104 days (the time plaintiff actually served). Defs.' Resp. Br. at 6. Defendants then attempt to distinguish the issue of whether to credit plaintiff with 180 days or 104 days from the issue of whether plaintiff was entitled to that credit in both Whitelock I and Whitelock II, arguing that Judge Price's ruling failed to address that second issue.
Regarding this second issue, defendants contend that summary judgment against plaintiff is appropriate because Judge Price lacked the authority to order that plaintiff's time served credit be applied against both of her probation violation sentences. If his ruling is to be construed consistently with Oregon law, defendants assert, it must be read as ordering the Sheriff to credit plaintiff with an additional seventy-six days against either of her consecutive sentences, but not both sentences.
However, the issue of whether to apply the credit to one or both of the consecutive sentences was in fact addressed in the proceedings before Judge Price. In a colloquy with Judge Price, Hallford, the Sheriff's witness, explained that when sentences "are supposed to be consecutive, we can only apply the credit to one charge." Pl.'s Ex. 15, Trial Tr. at 18. Defendants are left to contend that this testimony was simply overlooked by Judge Price in his ruling, and that the issue of whether the credit for time served can be applied to both of two consecutive sentences was never fully argued or litigated at the trial.
The Judgment that issued on January 7, 2003, explicitly instructs that seventy-six days credit was to be applied to each of the two sentences. See Pl.'s Ex. 17. The record before this court establishes that Judge Price heard testimony and argument regarding whether to apply credits in each sentence running consecutively, and his Judgment explicitly resolved that question. These arguments regarding whether to apply the credit to both Whitelock I and Whitelock II should have been raised in a direct challenge to Judge Price's ruling. This court is now precluded from addressing the merits of defendants' untimely attack upon that ruling.
Moreover, the sentences ordered by Judge Hernandez state plainly that sentences of one year, with credit for time served, were imposed in each of plaintiff's remaining two sentences. Pl.'s Exs. 5 and 6. There is no support for defendants' new proposition that the second sentence imposed by Judge Hernandez was for one year without credit for time served. This novel interpretation contradicts the explicit rulings of both Judges Hernandez and Price.
The interpretation also contradicts the defendants' own sworn representations to Judge Price and this court. As discussed above, Defendant's Return on Writ of Habeas Corpus, which was filed by defendant Spinden in December 2002 as part of the response to plaintiff's habeas action, included the affidavit from Hallford as Exhibit 2. Hallford served as the Washington County Sheriff's Office Time Computations Officer during plaintiff's incarceration. Hallford certified that her calculations of plaintiff's release dates were accurate. Under these calculations, which credited plaintiff with only time served and did not credit the full sentences of 180 days that Judge Price later ruled was proper, plaintiff's final release date was January 20, 2003. See Pl.'s Ex. 14.
The dates resulting from Hallford's calculations were reaffirmed when defendants in this action submitted responses to Plaintiff's Fifth Discovery Requests on July 16, 2003. When asked in Interrogatory No. 20 what plaintiff's release dates would be after assuming that plaintiff received 180 days credit in each of her two sentences, defendants responded, while objecting to the relevancy of the question, that plaintiff's final release date with full credits would be August 21, 2002. The question was essentially repeated in Interrogatory 23, and — with the same objections — defendants reiterated that with the credits as applied consistently with Judge Price's order, plaintiff's final release date should have been August 21, 2002. Senior Assistant County Counsel William G. Blair, of attorneys for defendants, signed these answers and stated that the release date computations were calculated by current Senior Administrative Specialist Hallford. See also Answers to Interrogs. 22, 25.
Statements of fact contained in a party's brief may be accepted as admissions at the discretion of the district court. See American Title Ins. Co. v. Lacelaw Co., 861 F.2d 224, 227 (9th Cir. 1988). Senior Administrative Specialist Hallford was the sole witness called on behalf of the Sheriff to testify before Judge Price, and she testified that in her former role as the time computations officer she had performed "hundreds" of sentence calculations for Washington County, including computations regarding plaintiff's sentences. Pl.'s Ex. 15, Trial Tr. at 13. She testified unequivocally that under the Sheriff's policy of crediting actual time served (later rejected by Judge Price), plaintiff's final release date was January 20, 2003. Pl.'s Ex. 15, Trial Tr. at 21. As also noted above, Hallford also certified that these computations were correct in an affidavit to the court. Counsel for defendants in this case referred to and relied upon the calculations in submissions to opposing counsel and to the court. In light of these repeated representations, and in consideration of the fact that the calculations were performed by an officer who could have qualified as an expert in sentencing computations, and who testified on behalf of the Sheriff before Judge Price as to the accuracy of the calculations, the release dates identified by Hallford and by defendants in their responses to Plaintiff's Interrogatories 20 and 23 are now construed by this court as judicial admissions.
Accordingly, January 20, 2003, is accepted as plaintiff's final release date before calculating the credits Judge Price ordered. Issue preclusion attaches to the questions that were litigated before Judge Price and resolved by him in a valid and final judgment — that plaintiff was entitled to 180 days credit, not 104 days, and that this credit applied to her sentences in both Whitelock I and Whitelock II.
As represented by defendants, when applying the additional credit of seventy-six days to each of plaintiff's two sentences as ordered by Judge Price, plaintiff should have received an additional 152 days credit and her final release date became August 21, 2002, instead of January 20, 2003. Plaintiff, therefore, was released 145 days after the release date that this court is compelled to accept.
Although the court is precluded from re-litigating the issues resolved by Judge Price, the court recognizes that plaintiff remained incarcerated beyond her release date even if the court were to accept defendants' contention that plaintiff's credit should be applied to only one of her two consecutive sentences. Given a "pre-credit" release date of January 20, 2003, if she received time-served credit of 180 days in only one of her sentences, as advocated by defendants, plaintiff's final release date would have been November 5, 2002, fifty-nine days before she was actually released.
The court next turns to whether plaintiff's claims for violations under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and for false imprisonment are actionable.
2. Plaintiff's § 1983 Claim
In order to recover under Section 1983, a plaintiff must prove that a person acting under color of state law committed an act that deprived the plaintiff of some right, privilege, or immunity protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. "A person deprives another `of a constitutional right, within the meaning of section 1983, if he [or she] does an affirmative act, participates in another's affirmative acts, or omits to perform an act which he [or she] is legally required to do that causes the deprivation of which [the plaintiff complains].'" Redman v. County of San Diego, 942 F.2d 1435, 1439 (9th Cir. 1991) (emphasis in original omitted), quoting Johnson v. Duffy, 588 F.2d 740, 743 (9th Cir. 1978).
A prisoner challenging the validity of the decisions underlying the prisoner's confinement is required to proceed first in habeas corpus. Nonnette v. Small, 316 F.3d 872, 874 (9th Cir. 2002), citing Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 488-90 (1973). The prisoner cannot bring a Section 1983 action for damages until the prisoner's confinement has been invalidated through habeas corpus proceedings. Id., citing Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 486-87 (1994); see also Ramirez v. Galaza, 334 F.3d 850, 855 (9th Cir. 2003) (in the aftermath of Heck, a Section 1983 plaintiff seeking to recover damages for allegedly unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment, or for other harm caused by action the unlawfulness of which would render a conviction or sentence invalid, must first prove that the conviction or sentence has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal, or called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus). Because plaintiff's confinement was invalidated by Judge Price's unchallenged habeas corpus ruling, the "favorable termination rule" has been satisfied.
For her Section 1983 claim, plaintiff relies solely upon "Washington County's express, written, and undisputed time computation policy which directed its employees on how much credit to give a prisoner such as Whitelock, for time served" as the grounds for municipal liability. Pl.'s Reply Br. at 14. Plaintiff asserts that this is in accordance with the first of at least two routes that the Ninth Circuit instructs "can lead to the conclusion that a municipality has inflicted a constitutional injury." Gibson v. County of Washoe, Nev., 290 F.3d 1175, 1185 (9th Cir. 2002). Under this theory for establishing municipal liability, a plaintiff must show that a municipality violated someone's rights or instructed its employees to do so. Id. To make this showing, "a plaintiff can prove that the municipality acted with `the state of mind required to prove the underlying violation,' just as a plaintiff does when he or she alleges that a natural person has violated his [or her] federal rights." Id., quoting Bd. of County Comm'rs of Bryan Co. v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 405 (1994).
The Gibson court proceeded to give examples of claims that give rise to this "direct path to municipal liability," including proof of a city's policy of discriminating against pregnant women in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, a policy-maker's order to its employees to serve writs of attachment in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and a county jail cell policy that policymakers know will likely lead to sexually abusive situations in violation of the prisoners' Fourteenth Amendment right to personal security. Id. at 1185-86 (citations omitted).
The Ninth Circuit distinguished this route to municipal liability from one in which a plaintiff can establish liability through proving allegations that a municipality is responsible for constitutional violations that were inflicted upon a plaintiff through the municipality's omissions, even though the municipality's policies were facially constitutional, employees were not directed to take unconstitutional action, and the municipality lacked the state of mind required to prove the underlying violation. Id. at 1186 (citations omitted). The Gibson court discussed that under this second theory, the plaintiff must prove that the municipality's deliberate indifference led to the omissions that caused an employee to commit constitutional violations. Id.
Plaintiff argues that in light of the discussion in Gibson regarding deliberate indifference as it pertains to the second theory of liability, "proof of deliberate indifference which would be required of Whitelock if she [were] relying upon the second route to municipality liability — i.e., an act of omission — is irrelevant to the analysis of Washington County's liability in this case." Pl.'s Reply Br. at 14 (emphasis in the original).
Plaintiff's argument is unpersuasive. While the court in Gibson first refers to deliberate indifference in its analysis of the "second path" to municipal liability, the decision does not hold, as plaintiff suggests, that the question of deliberate indifference on the part of the municipality is irrelevant when a plaintiff is attempting to establish liability under the first, more direct path discussed in Gibson. The Gibson court begins its scrutiny of "The First Route to Municipal Liability" by focusing upon the policies and the constitutional rights at issue when determining whether a municipality violated a person's rights or directed its employees to do so. Gibson, 290 F.3d at 1187. In the third paragraph under that subheading, the court addresses deliberate indifference as a standard used for testing whether jails have met the duty to provide medical care that encompasses a detainee's psychiatric needs. Id. To suggest that deliberate indifference is irrelevant in a quest to determine municipal liability under the more direct theory is, therefore, misleading.
A more accurate reading of Gibson reveals that the court instead distinguished liability that arises from a municipality violating a person's rights or directing an employee to do so, id. at 1185-93, from liability that arises from constitutional violations that are caused by a municipal employee, under circumstances in which the municipality has customs or policies that amount to deliberate indifference that are the moving force behind the employee's conduct. Id. at 1193-96. Regardless of this distinction, deliberate indifference may well be relevant under either theory of liability.
Plaintiff relies explicitly and solely upon the first route to establishing liability, and this court will follow the analysis of this route as it is provided in Gibson. As reviewed above, what Gibson describes as the first route to municipal liability begins with a focus on the policies at issue and the constitutional rights the municipality or its employees allegedly violated. Gibson, 290 F.3d at 1187.
As to the first inquiry, plaintiff's sentence was calculated pursuant to an official policy. Through this policy, plaintiff alleges, defendants miscalculated the "time served" credit to which plaintiff was entitled and caused an improper extension of plaintiff's incarceration.
The second part of the inquiry requires the identification of the constitutional rights at issue. Plaintiff alleges that she was deprived of her Fourteenth Amendment liberty interests without due process of law. Plaintiff's allegations could also be construed as alleging that defendants' conduct deprived her of her right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment as guaranteed by the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution. See Gibson, 290 F.3d at 1187 (detaining a prisoner beyond the termination of the prisoner's release date is undeniably "punishment" and under some circumstances could be viewed as violative of the Eighth Amendment).
With regard to the Eighth Amendment issues, punishment that is construed as cruel and unusual must be incompatible with "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society," Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101 (1958), or must involve unnecessary or wanton pain disproportionate to the severity of the crime. Haygood v. Younger, 769 F.2d 1350, 1354 (9th Cir. 1985), citing Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277 (1983). A prisoner's detention that extends beyond the termination of that prisoner's actual sentence could constitute cruel and unusual punishment if it is the result of deliberate indifference to the prisoner's liberty interest. Id., citing Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104-06 (1976). "[O]therwise, such detention can be held to be unconstitutional only if it violates due process." Id., citing Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 535 n. 16 (1979).
There is no evidence to suggest that defendants were deliberately indifferent to plaintiff's liberty interests. To the contrary, defendants employed a trained, experienced officer — one who now serves as a Senior Administrative Specialist — to calculate the release dates of the persons incarcerated in Washington County, and promptly and efficiently computed plaintiff's release date. Plaintiff acknowledges that she argues only that defendants used an erroneous policy to do so, not that defendants were indifferent to her liberty interests.
However, when the state creates a statutory right to release from prison, "the state also creates a liberty interest and must follow minimum due process appropriate to the circumstances to ensure that liberty is not arbitrarily abrogated." Haygood, 769 F.2d at 1355, citing Vitek v. Jones, 445 U.S. 480, 488-92 (1980); Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 226 (1976). As analyzed by the Ninth Circuit in Haygood, a cause of action may be available under Section 1983 if prison officials make release-date calculations that extend a prisoner's detention beyond the correct termination of that prisoner's sentence, and these calculations are done in a manner that denies the prisoner his or her statutory right to liberty without due process of law. Id. (emphasis provided). As in Haygood, the question here is whether the defendants denied plaintiff due process of law when calculating her release date.
The undisputed facts establish that plaintiff filed a petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus on July 15, 2002, challenging the amount of time-served credit she was receiving in the calculations of her release dates. Judge Price conducted a trial on the petition in December 2002, ordered her immediate release on January 3, 2003, and issued his Judgment on the petition on January 7, 2003. Under the terms of this unchallenged Judgment, plaintiff remained incarcerated 145 days beyond her proper release date because her jailers did not believe that she was entitled to be released. Regardless of whether such beliefs on the part of her jailers were negligent or intentional, defendants were at least aware as of July 15, 2002, that plaintiff was protesting her retention in custody. In the ordinary course of her habeas corpus litigation, plaintiff established — at least to Judge Price — that she should have been released four months prior to when she was actually released.
As in Haygood, there is no challenge here to the due process afforded to plaintiff before the underlying convictions and sentences were imposed. Instead, "[t]he denial of due process occurred when state officers, through established interpretations of the regulations for setting release dates" and without affording plaintiff an opportunity to be heard on those interpretations, "chose to extend [her] custodial period" beyond the date that Judge Price concluded was proper. See Haygood, 769 F.2d at 1358.
Judge Price's order to immediately release plaintiff "was remedial, or postdeprivation, relief in part at least," but it did not satisfy the due process requirements for a hearing before such liberty interests are taken away. See id. For these reasons, this court is compelled to conclude that plaintiff has stated a Section 1983 claim for damages for denial of liberty without due process of law. The remaining question regarding this claim is whether any defendants have a qualified immunity defense as a matter of law, and the scope of the triable issues of fact remaining.
A. Qualified Immunity
Defendants assert that defendants Sheriff Spinden and Sheriff Gordon (Gordon was appointed to replace the retiring Spinden on August 31, 2002) are entitled to qualified immunity. State officials sued in their individual capacity are entitled to qualified immunity to the extent that their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). Qualified immunity extends to prison officials. See Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U.S. 555 (1978); see also Neal v. Shimoda, 131 F.3d 818, 832 (9th Cir. 1997).
Under Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 (2001), the Supreme Court instructed courts making qualified immunity determinations to consider whether, in a light most favorable to the party asserting an injury, the alleged facts show that the individual defendants' conduct violated a constitutional right. If not, no further inquiry regarding qualified immunity is necessary. See Brown v. Li, 299 F.3d 1092, 1100 (9th Cir. 2002).
Following that determination, the court should ask whether the right was clearly established. The relevant, dispositive inquiry in determining whether a right is clearly established is whether the unlawfulness of an officer's conduct would be clear to a reasonable officer in the situation confronted by that officer. See Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202 (citation omitted). "The plaintiff bears the burden of proving the constitutional right allegedly violated was clearly established at the time of the defendant's misconduct." Holman v. City of Warrenton, 242 F. Supp.2d 791, 809 (D. Or. 2002), citing Sorrels v. McKee, 290 F.3d 965, 969 (9th Cir. 2002). Determining whether the law governing the conduct at issue is clearly established and whether a reasonable official could have believed his or her conduct was lawful in light of clearly established legal principles is a question of law for the court. Plumb v. Prinslow, 847 F. Supp.2d 1509, 1516 (D. Or. 1994), citing Act Up!/Portland v. Bagley, 988 F.2d 868, 873 (9th Cir. 1993).
The undisputed facts establish that in calculating plaintiff's release date the Sheriff defendants relied upon time-computation policies that were used and revised regularly and subject to court review and approval. Judge Price reviewed the applicable sentencing statute (now ORS 137.545(7)) and the applicable case law, and decided that plaintiff was entitled to credit for the full sentence served, not the days actually served in the term. Judge Price interpreted a legislative amendment to the applicable statute as giving judges more discretion regarding whether to give the time-served credit, but leaving unchanged the calculations for determining the amount of credit to be given. This interpretation differed from the Sheriff's policy, which was to credit a prisoner with only time actually served.
Accordingly, the Sheriff's conduct, which under Judge Price's ruling amounted to miscalculating plaintiff's release date, resulted in extending plaintiff's incarceration beyond the proper release date, thereby affecting plaintiff's constitutional rights. However, under these circumstances, the specific right at issue — plaintiff's entitlement to time-served credit calculated in a manner recognized as proper by Judge Price — was not clearly established.
Plaintiff relies upon Floyd v. Laws, in which the Ninth Circuit instructed that the proper question in determining whether a right was clearly established "is not whether the law is settled, but whether, in light of clearly established law and the information available to [the official], a reasonable person in [the official's] position could have objectively believed his [or her] actions to be proper." 929 F.2d 1390, 1394 (9th Cir. 1991). Plaintiff refers to the extensive analysis in Judge Price's Letter Opinion and contends that the same "information" and authorities that Judge Price relied upon to render his decision were also available to defendants. Therefore, plaintiff contends, defendants should have known that Washington County's method of calculating release-dates "would run afoul of the law and violate the Due Process rights of its prisoners." Pl.'s Reply Br.at 17-18.
Plaintiff misreads and overstates the Ninth Circuit's reasoning in Floyd. This court declines to construe an official's conduct as presumptively unreasonable simply because his or her conduct or beliefs differed from a subsequent judicial interpretation of that conduct or those beliefs. Instead, the court relies upon the test as it is plainly stated by the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court — would the unlawfulness of an officer's conduct be clear to a reasonable officer in the situation confronted by that officer?
This court concludes that the impropriety that Judge Price found in Washington County's release-date calculation policies would not have been clear to a reasonable officer under the circumstances faced by the defendant Sheriffs here — even given a putative awareness of the case authorities relied upon by Judge Price in rendering his decision. Because plaintiff fails to meet her burden of proving the constitutional right allegedly violated was clearly established at the time of defendants' miscalculations, defendants Spinden and Gordon are entitled to qualified immunity to the extent they are sued in their individual capacities. As defendants sued in their official capacities they, like Washington County itself, are not entitled to assert a defense of qualified immunity.
B. Triable Issues
For the foregoing reasons, defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment as it pertains to plaintiff's Section 1983 claim is denied, and plaintiff's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment is granted in part as follows: this court concludes as a matter of law that plaintiff's due process rights were violated when she remained incarcerated beyond the designated release date of August 21, 2002. A jury trial will be conducted to determine the damages she is entitled to recover, if any. A special verdict form will ask for a determination of a daily rate of damages for use in calculating plaintiff's damages. This will be done so that a retrial will be unnecessary in the event that a future, superseding tribunal construes plaintiff's release date as being prior to January 3, 2003, but on a date later than August 21, 2002.
3. Plaintiff's False Imprisonment Claim
Defendants are entitled to summary judgment on plaintiff's pendant state claim for false imprisonment brought under the Oregon Tort Claims Act. Defendants acted in compliance with the apparent authority of the law as they understood it.
There is no dispute that Judge Price's interpretation that plaintiff should receive credit for the full term of her sentence rather than the time she actually served effectively invalidated a long-recognized policy upon which the county had relied. Since this reliance was without malice and not in bad faith, defendants are immune from liability under ORS 30.265(3)(f). This statute provides that public bodies and their officers acting within the scope of their duties are immune from liability for claims arising out of an act done or omitted under apparent authority of a law, resolution, rule, or regulation that is unconstitutional, invalid, or inapplicable except to the extent that they would have been liable had the law, resolution, rule, or regulation been constitutional, valid, and applicable, unless such act was done in bad faith or with malice.
Plaintiff contends that this exception to the Oregon Tort Claims Act is inapplicable because defendants have not yet admitted that their policy was unconstitutional, and because defendants were acting under apparent authority of a policy, rather than a law, resolution, rule or regulation. These arguments are rejected.
Under the circumstances, defendants' application of a calculation policy that was based upon statutory law and subject to legislative amendment and reinterpreted by a court ruling fairly constitutes an act conducted under "apparent authority" of a rule or regulation that was invalidated by Judge Price's ruling. Moreover, there is no evidence that defendants acted in bad faith or with malice. Defendants are entitled to summary judgment on this claim.
4. Plaintiff's Motion to Strike
Plaintiff complains that portions of the affidavit of William Blair and Defendants' Concise Statement of Facts were improper and should be stricken. Blair is the Senior Assistant County Counsel for Washington County.
Plaintiff asserts that Blair's affidavit is argumentative, contains descriptions of his reviews of the evidence, and contains excerpts from a deposition of Judge Hernandez that lacks the necessary certification. While the affidavit contains some superfluous commentary about Blair's evaluation of the evidence, this court did not rely upon anything presented in the Blair affidavit or anything improperly presented in the Defendants' Concise Statement of Facts in rendering this Opinion and Order. Accordingly, this motion is denied as moot.
CONCLUSION
For the reasons provided, plaintiff's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment (Doc. # 17) and defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. # 33) are granted in part and denied in part in accordance with this Opinion. Plaintiff's Motion to Strike (Doc. # 39) is denied as moot.
IT IS SO ORDERED.