Nahmod Law

The Supreme Court granted certiorari on January 15, 2016, in Manuel v. City of Joliet, 136 S. Ct. 890 (2016), an unreported Seventh Circuit section 1983 malicious prosecution decision handed down on January 28, 2015.

Manuel, which will be argued in the Supreme Court’s 2016 Term, has the potential to be a blockbuster section 1983 decision that radically transforms the section 1983 malicious prosecution landscape. Such a transformation would have a dramatic impact on section 1983 claims brought for wrongful conviction and incarceration.

Here is the Question Presented: “Whether an individual’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure continues beyond legal process so as to allow a malicious prosecution claim based upon the Fourth Amendment.”

According to the Petition for Writ of Certiorari, the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and D.C. Circuits have all answered this question in the affirmative, while only the Seventh Circuit, in Newsome v. McCabe, 256  F.3d 747 (7th Cir. 2001), has answered in the negative.

In Manuel, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the decision of the district court dismissing the plaintiff’s section 1983 Fourth Amendment claim that police officers maliciously prosecuted him when they falsified the results of drug tests and thereafter arrested him for possession with intent to distribute ecstasy. The district court relied on Newsome and the Seventh Circuit panel found no compelling reason to reconsider that precedent. The Seventh Circuit explained: “Newsome held that federal claims of malicious prosecution are founded on the right to due process, not the Fourth Amendment, and thus there is no malicious prosecution claim under federal law if, as here, state law provides a similar cause of action.”

The issues raised in Manuel  have been a matter of great interest to me for some time. See my post of Sept. 11, 2009, about the basic elements of so-called section 1983 “malicious prosecution” claims. In that post I called for the virtual elimination of most of the tort-like terminology used for such purposes and for a renewed focus on the constitutional bases for such claims.

Manuel now provides the Court with its first opportunity in over twenty years– see Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266 (1994)–to consider the elements of such claims.

Recall that Albright was a splintered decision in which a plurality held that substantive due process could not be used as the basis for section 1983 malicious prosecution claims. See sections 3:65-3:66 of my treatise,  CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES LITIGATION: THE LAW OF SECTION 1983 (4th ed. 2015 West).

In the course of considering Manuel, the Supreme Court will likely address the relevance of available state remedies. It will likely also discuss the Fourth Amendment “continuing seizure” theory that Justice Ginsburg articulated in Albright, a theory that the Seventh Circuit has rejected.