Justice Alito Cites Torts 2d in Dissent
In a dissenting opinion delivered in Manuel v. Joliet, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. cited and quoted Restatement of the Law Second, Torts 2d § 653(b). The Illinois case involved a city police officer who, in the process of pulling over a driver who failed to signal a turn, searched the petitioner—a passenger in the car—and found a vitamin bottle containing pills. Under suspicion that the pills were illegal drugs, the officer conducted a field test, which was negative, but nevertheless arrested the petitioner. A second test at the police station was also negative, but the technician who conducted it allegedly lied in his report, claiming that controlled substances were present, and that report was the basis for a criminal complaint. Relying on the complaint, a judge found probable cause to detain the petitioner. He was detained for seven weeks.
The petitioner brought a Fourth Amendment claim under § 1983 against the city and several city police officers. The district court dismissed the petitioner’s claim, finding it untimely under the applicable two-year statute of limitations. Although the lawsuit was filed within two years of his release, it was filed more than two years after his arrest. The district court ruled, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed, that the petitioner’s “complaint, in alleging only a Fourth Amendment violation, rested on the wrong part of the Constitution: A person detained following the onset of legal process could at most (although, the court agreed, not in Illinois) challenge his pretrial confinement via the Due Process Clause.”
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that an unlawful “pretrial detention can violate the Fourth Amendment not only when it precedes, but also when it follows, the start of legal process in a criminal case.” It noted that “[i]n defining the contours and prerequisites of a § 1983 claim, including its rule of accrual, courts are to look first to the common law of torts,” and remanded the question back to the Court of Appeals as to whether the petitioner’s claim was timely based on the “favorable termination” element of the common-law tort of malicious prosecution.
In his dissent, Justice Alito contended that the question raised in the certiorari petition, regarding whether a malicious-prosecution claim could be brought under the Fourth Amendment, was not the question the Court ultimately decided.
In concurring with the Seventh Circuit’s finding that a malicious-prosecution claim was not cognizable under the Fourth Amendment, Justice Alito cited § 653(b) of the Restatement of the Law Second, Torts 2d, which represents the “favorable termination” element of a malicious-prosecution claim.
Justice Alito further argued that the “favorable termination” accrual rule applied only to common-law malicious-prosecution claims, not to Fourth Amendment claims, and should not be applied in this claim.
