Mary Meier v. City of St. Louis, Missouri ( 2023 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 22-2206
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Mary R. Meier
Plaintiff - Appellee
v.
City of St. Louis, Missouri
Defendant - Appellant
St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners; Richard H. Gray, Member, St. Louis
Board of Police Commissioners, in his official capacity; Thomas Irwin, Member,
St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners, in his official capacity; Erwin Switzer,
Member, St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners, in his official capacity; Bettye
Battle-Turner, Member, St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners, in her official
capacity; Francis G. Slay, in his official capacity as a member ex officio of the St.
Louis City Board of Police Commissioners; Doc’s Towing, Inc.; St. Louis P.O.
House, DSN 219
Defendants
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No. 22-2332
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Mary R. Meier
Plaintiff - Appellant
v.
City of St. Louis, Missouri
Defendant - Appellee
St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners; Richard H. Gray, Member, St. Louis
Board of Police Commissioners, in his official capacity; Thomas Irwin, Member,
St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners, in his official capacity; Erwin Switzer,
Member, St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners, in his official capacity; Bettye
Battle-Turner, Member, St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners, in her official
capacity; Francis G. Slay, in his official capacity as a member ex officio of the St.
Louis City Board of Police Commissioners; Doc’s Towing, Inc.; St. Louis P.O.
House, DSN 219
Defendants
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis
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Submitted: April 12, 2023
Filed: August 28, 2023
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Before LOKEN, SHEPHERD, and KELLY, Circuit Judges.
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KELLY, Circuit Judge.
Mary Meier filed a § 1983 lawsuit against the City of St. Louis and Doc’s
Towing, Inc., alleging that the defendants violated her Fourth and Fourteenth
Amendment rights when they detained her truck pursuant to a “wanted” report. We
held in the first appeal of this case that the evidence was sufficient for Meier’s claims
to survive summary judgment. Meier then settled with Doc’s Towing, and her case
against the City proceeded to trial. The district court 1 granted judgment as a matter
1
The Honorable Matthew T. Schelp, United States District Judge for the
Eastern District of Missouri.
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of law in favor of the City on Meier’s unreasonable seizure claim, and the jury
returned a verdict for Meier on her due process claim and awarded her compensatory
damages. The district court denied the City’s post-trial motion for judgment as a
matter of law but partially granted its motion to reduce the damages award. Both
the City and Meier appeal, and we affirm.
I.
“We recite the relevant facts in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict.”
Quigley v. Winter, 598 F.3d 938, 944 n.2 (8th Cir. 2010). Meier owned a Ford truck
that she and her son Ben used for their family business. In December 2015, Officer
Ashley Kelly of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) responded
to a hit-and-run accident. Officer Kelly believed that Meier’s truck was involved in
the accident, and so she instructed an SLMPD clerk to enter a “wanted” report for
the truck into the Regional Justice Information Service computer network (REJIS).
REJIS, which is the product of a cooperative agreement between the City and St.
Louis County, allows law enforcement agencies within the region to share
information. The wanted report for Meier’s truck was entered into REJIS pursuant
to SLMPD’s policy and practice.
On March 17, 2016, City of Maryland Heights Police Department (MHPD)
officer Clifford House spotted Meier’s truck in the parking lot of a hotel. Meier’s
son Ben and a woman were inside the truck at the time. Officer House ran a check
on the truck’s license plate number, which pulled up the REJIS wanted report.
House noted that SLMPD had entered the report, and he understood the report to
mean that SLMPD wanted the truck for investigative purposes. House decided to
approach the truck’s occupants, and he ultimately arrested the two for reasons
unrelated to the wanted report. House then called Doc’s Towing to remove the truck
from the parking lot, citing the wanted report on the truck as one of the reasons for
having it towed. Officer House told the Doc’s Towing driver who responded to his
call that the City of St. Louis wanted the truck, and he instructed the driver to “make
sure [to] put a hold on it.” The driver, who understood the terms “hold” and
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“wanted” to mean that the vehicle should remain in Doc’s Towing’s possession until
the police authorized its release, wrote “hold” on the truck’s back window and towed
it to Doc’s Towing.
House contacted SLMPD and requested confirmation that the wanted report
on Meier’s truck was still active. SLMPD confirmed it was and asked MHPD to
provide it with information about the arrest of the truck’s occupants. SLMPD also
asked MHPD to “advise [the] driver/owner of [the] vehicle to respond to [SLMPD’s]
First District Detective Bureau regarding release of [the] vehicle.”
The following day, on March 18, Meier went to Doc’s Towing to retrieve her
truck. Doc’s Towing told Meier that the City still had a hold on the vehicle, meaning
that the company could not release it to her. Meier then called Doc’s Towing “every
day” for a week to see if the truck had been released. Meier never received any
notice from the City that it was detaining her truck or any communication explaining
what she needed to do to get the truck released.
Ben also tried contacting the City about the truck. On March 23, Ben spoke
with SLMPD Detective John Russo. When Ben asked about how to get the truck
released, Russo responded that Ben would have to come to the SLMPD station “to
answer questions relative to the accident.”
Meier hired a lawyer, Jeffrey Rath, for help in getting the truck back. Rath
confirmed with both MHPD and Doc’s Towing that it was SLMPD’s wanted report
that was preventing the truck’s release. Rath called SLMPD “several times” and left
“several messages.” He then started going to the police station because he “got tired
of being stuck in voicemail.” Rath finally managed to speak with a detective and
explained that Ben was unavailable to meet with SLMPD about “the accident”
because Ben was in custody. The detective then gave Rath a boilerplate “release
order” form. The form, titled “SLPD release of hold,” stated: “This is to notify you
that the ‘Hold Order’ . . . relative to the vehicle in your possession . . . is hereby
rescinded.” The detective wrote on the form that the reason for the release of the “3-
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17-16” hold order was that the truck was “no longer wanted.” Rath faxed the release
order to Doc’s Towing, and Doc’s Towing released the truck to Meier on April 29.
Meier had to pay fees to Doc’s Towing for the nearly two-month storage of her truck.
Meier sued the City and Doc’s Towing under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming the
defendants had violated her Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizure
and her Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. More specifically, she
contended that the City had a custom of reporting vehicles as “wanted” in order to
detain them without a warrant and without proper notice or process. The district
court granted summary judgment for the defendants, but we reversed, concluding
that Meier had adduced evidence sufficient to establish the defendants’ liability on
both of her claims. Meier v. City of St. Louis (Meier I), 934 F.3d 824, 828 (8th Cir.
2019).
On remand, Meier settled with Doc’s Towing, and her claims against the City
were tried to a jury. At the close of Meier’s evidence, the district court granted the
City’s motion for judgment as a matter of law on Meier’s unreasonable seizure
claim. The jury then returned a verdict for Meier on her due process claim, awarding
her $7,500 in damages, and the district court denied the City’s renewed motion for
judgment as a matter of law or a new trial. The City also moved to amend the
judgment, seeking a set-off of the jury’s award based on the settlement money Meier
received from Doc’s Towing. The district court partially granted that motion,
allowing a set-off of $2,000. The City now appeals, and Meier cross-appeals.
II.
The City challenges the district court’s denial of its post-trial motion for
judgment as a matter of law, which we review de novo, viewing the evidence in the
light most favorable to Meier. See Jacobson Warehouse Co. v. Schnuck Markets,
Inc., 13 F.4th 659, 679 (8th Cir. 2021). “Judgment as a matter of law is only
appropriate when no reasonable jury could have found for the nonmoving party,”
and “conflicts in the evidence must be resolved in favor of the verdict.” Hopman v.
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Union Pac. R.R., 68 F.4th 394, 399 (8th Cir. 2023) (cleaned up and citations
omitted).
A municipality like the City can be held liable under § 1983 if an “action
pursuant to official municipal policy of some nature caused a constitutional tort.”
Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 691 (1978). When the municipal
policy is an unwritten custom, the plaintiff must prove (1) “the existence of a
continuing, widespread, persistent pattern of unconstitutional misconduct” by the
municipality’s employees; (2) “deliberate indifference to or tacit authorization of
such conduct” by the municipality’s “policymaking officials after notice to the
officials of that misconduct”; and (3) that the plaintiff “was injured by acts pursuant
to the [municipality’s] custom, i.e., that the custom was a moving force behind the
constitutional violation.” Brewington v. Keener, 902 F.3d 796, 801 (8th Cir. 2018)
(quoting Corwin v. City of Independence, 829 F.3d 695, 700 (8th Cir. 2016)).
The jury found that the City had a custom that caused a violation of Meier’s
due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Because due process rights
are protected only against infringement by state actors, see U.S. Const. amend. XIV,
§ 1, the jury was required to find that Doc’s Towing’s retention of Meier’s truck was
“fairly attributable” to the City. See Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922,
936–37 (1982) (explaining that in order to meet the state action requirement of the
Fourteenth Amendment, the conduct at issue must be “fairly attributable” to the
state); id. at 929 (“[I]n a § 1983 action brought against a state official, the statutory
requirement of action ‘under color of state law’ and the ‘state action’ requirement of
the Fourteenth Amendment are identical.”). Whether state action is present “must
turn on the particular facts of the case,” and the “one unyielding requirement is that
there be a ‘close nexus’ . . . between the state and the alleged [constitutional]
deprivation itself.” Wickersham v. City of Columbia, 481 F.3d 591, 597 (8th Cir.
2007) (quoting Brentwood Acad. v. Tennessee Secondary Sch. Athletic Ass’n, 531
U.S. 288, 295 (2001)).
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Here, the City first disputes that Doc’s Towing’s conduct was “fairly
attributable” to it. In light of the trial record, however, a reasonable jury could have
determined that Meier presented sufficient evidence of a “close nexus” between the
City and the due process violation she alleged. For instance, SLMPD Captain Steven
Mueller, whose deposition testimony was admitted at trial, explained that a wanted
report on a vehicle is equivalent to a request to “[d]etain it for” SLMPD. The trial
record further established that SLMPD reported Meier’s truck as “wanted,” notified
MHPD that the wanted report was still active on March 17, 2016—the day that
MHPD officer House spotted the truck in a parking lot—and instructed MHPD to
“advise [the] driver/owner” of the vehicle “to respond to the [SLMPD] regarding”
its release. An SLMPD detective then told Meier’s son Ben that he needed to report
to SLMPD “to answer questions relative to the accident” in order to get the truck
back. And it was not until SLMPD issued a “release order” that Doc’s Towing
released the truck to Meier. From this evidence, a reasonable jury could have
concluded that the unlawful detention of Meier’s vehicle at Doc’s Towing—which,
according to the jury verdict, amounted to a violation of Meier’s due process rights—
was fairly attributable to the City.
The City also contends that there was “no evidence of other instances of
similar actions” by the City, and therefore there was “no evidence of a custom or
practice” on the City’s part. But the trial record indicates otherwise. The evidence
at trial showed that the City had taken similar actions in the past. Officers would
routinely enter a wanted report for a vehicle into REJIS when they had only a
description of the vehicle. That report instructed any officers or agencies using
REJIS to “detain [the vehicle] for [SLMPD],” and once the vehicle was detained,
the “process” that SLMPD provided for its release was to have the driver appear at
the police station and submit themselves to the “investigative procedure” deemed
necessary by SLMPD. If SLMPD was satisfied with the driver’s cooperation, it
would then issue a release order.
Indeed, Captain Mueller testified that issuing a wanted report is a “standard
investigative procedure” used by SLMPD “to find out who the driver was at the time
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of [an] accident” and that a wanted report is an investigative tool and an official
action by the City. And Rath testified that in his experience, SLMPD “regularly”
detains vehicles in order to identify and question suspects—even when the suspects
are not the vehicles’ owners. A jury could reasonably infer from this evidence that
SLMPD’s practice of using wanted reports to detain vehicles as investigative
leverage—providing no way for owners to retrieve their vehicles other than by
acquiescing to SLMPD’s investigative demands—was a pervasive custom that
violated Meier’s right to a “opportunity to be heard” in a “meaningful manner.”
Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67, 80 (1972) (“It is . . . fundamental that the right to
notice and an opportunity to be heard must be granted at a meaningful time and in a
meaningful manner.” (cleaned up and citation omitted)); Cleveland Bd. of Educ. v.
Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 542 (1985) (“An essential principle of due process is that
a deprivation of . . . property be preceded by notice and opportunity for hearing
appropriate to the nature of the case.” (cleaned up and citation omitted)).
Our conclusions here are bolstered by our ruling in Meier I, where we held
that based on the summary judgment record, a “reasonable jury could find that
Meier’s truck was towed and held pursuant to SLMPD’s . . . policy.” 934 F.3d at
829. We see no meaningful difference between the evidence presented at the
summary judgment stage and the evidence presented at trial. The City’s suggestion,
then, that the latter evidence is so lacking that “no reasonable jury could have found
for” Meier is unavailing. Hopman, 68 F.4th at 399 (citation omitted).
In sum, the City’s challenge to the district court’s denial of its motion for
judgment as a matter of law fails, and we affirm the verdict on Meier’s due process
claim. As to Meier’s assertion on cross-appeal that the district court erred by
granting the City judgment as a matter of law on her unreasonable seizure claim, we
decline to reverse that ruling. Her due process claim and unreasonable seizure claim
sought compensation for the same injury, and she concedes that she would not be
entitled to additional compensatory damages beyond those that were already
awarded by the jury. Nor does she present any arguments in her briefing that she
would be entitled to other forms of relief. Because Meier fails to articulate what
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relief she could obtain beyond what she has already achieved by way of the jury
verdict, we will not remand for further consideration of this claim. See Warren v.
Pataki, 823 F.3d 125, 143 (2d Cir. 2016) (affirming the district court’s grant of
judgment as a matter of law on certain claims because “plaintiffs could not have
obtained any additional damages” had those claims been submitted to the jury, but
cautioning that “[p]erhaps it is usually the better practice to allow all liability claims
to go to the jury”).
III.
The City also challenges the district court’s ruling on its post-trial motion to
“set-off,” or reduce, the jury award, which we review for abuse of discretion. See
Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e); Continental Indem. Co. v. IPFS of N.Y., LLC, 7 F.4th 713,
717 (8th Cir. 2021) (“We review rulings on Rule 59(e) motions for abuse of
discretion.”); see also Zivitz v. Greenburg, 279 F.3d 536, 539 (7th Cir. 2002)
(reviewing for abuse of discretion the district court’s ruling on a Rule 59(e) motion
“to offset the damages award by the amount paid by the settling defendants”).
Specifically, the City seeks a larger set-off for the settlement money Doc’s Towing
paid to Meier for her claims—not just the $2,000 set-off granted by the district court.
When Meier settled her claims against Doc’s Towing, the two entered into a
settlement agreement that specified the monetary amounts that the company would
pay Meier for each of her claims.2 The City then stipulated with Meier that it would
be entitled to a damages set-off if Meier succeeded at trial. The City does not
challenge the settlement agreement, nor does it dispute the stipulation. In fact, the
City relies on the terms of the agreement and the stipulation to support its request
for a larger set-off.
2
The settlement agreement is under seal. The district court declined to
“needlessly . . .disclose the details of the settlement agreement,” but it reviewed the
agreement and mentioned select details necessary to address the parties’ disputes.
We do the same here.
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The stipulation stated that the City “would be entitled to a set off for any sums
paid by [Doc’s Towing], that was attributable to the claims pending before [the
district court].” In the settlement agreement between Meier and Doc’s Towing, the
“actual damages” attributed to the two claims pending before the district court—
Meier’s unreasonable seizure and due process claims—totaled $2,000. The district
court accordingly offset the $7,500 jury award by that amount, reducing the award
to $5,500. Meier’s net compensation for her damages, then, was $7,500. In other
words, after accounting for Doc’s Towing’s payment for the actual damages
stemming from Meier’s two claims, Meier was remunerated for exactly the amount
of damage the jury determined she had incurred as a result of the detention of her
truck. For this reason, we disagree with the City’s contention that offsetting the jury
award by only $2,000 allowed Meier to be made “more than whole” in violation of
Missouri law. See Mo. Ann. Stat. § 537.060; Poage v. Crane Co., 523 S.W.3d 496,
528 (Mo. Ct. App. 2017) (explaining that in order to “prove a double recovery” under
§ 537.060, “a defendant must demonstrate an overlap between . . . the injuries or
damages for which a plaintiff has received compensation” (emphasis and citation
omitted)).
The City also appears to argue that the district court should have offset the
jury award not only by the actual damages provided for in the settlement agreement,
but also by the attorney’s fees Doc’s Towing paid to Meier. We cannot conclude
that reversal is warranted on that ground. The stipulation stated that the City was
entitled to a set-off of the sums paid by Doc’s Towing that were “attributable to the
claims pending” before the district court. And the district court determined that the
sums “attributable” were the actual damages for those claims, declining to include
the attorney’s fees in its calculation. See Budinich v. Becton Dickinson & Co., 486
U.S. 196, 200 (1988) (“As a general matter, . . . a claim for attorney’s fees is not part
of the merits of the action to which the fees pertain.”). Indeed, the jury award
included only compensatory damages, and Meier concedes that the City may later
seek a set-off for attorney’s fees once the district court resolves her application for
such fees from the City. The City has presented no persuasive arguments that the
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district court abused its “broad discretion” here. Continental Indem., 7 F.4th at 717
(citation omitted).
IV.
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district court.
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