False arrest case is dismissed on qualified immunity grounds

False arrest cases are often dismissed prior to trial because the police are able to prove they had probable cause to arrest the plaintiff. Even if the charges against the plaintiff are ultimately dismissed and the criminal process reaches that endpoint, the police can still avoid liability if they had arguable probable cause, a qualified immunity concept warrants dismissal of the case when the police reasonably believed, even if mistakenly, that the plaintiff had committed a crime. In this case, the federal trial court said the jury may rule in the plaintiff's favor on the false arrest claim, but the Court of Appeals nixes the case entirely on qualified immunity grounds.

The case is Jin v. City of New York, issue don March 12. It took the Court of Appeals nearly two years to decide this case, owing to complexity of the issues and the lengthy dissent from Judge Kearse.

It all started when the police arrived at the plaintiff's home after a 911 call reported a domestic violence dispute. The plaintiff was arrested for assault and harassment, but the charges were dropped. Upon arriving at the house, the police arrested plaintiff after her son reported that she had assaulted a family member, who pointed out his injuries to the police and simulated how the plaintiff had assaulted him. Plaintiff denied any wrongdoing and said that she was the assault victim. The police never interviewed the neighbors even though plaintiff said they would exonerate her. 

After the charges against plaintiff were dropped, she sued the police for false arrest. The trial court said plaintiff had enough evidence to win the case, but the Court of Appeals reverses, and the case is over. The Second Circuit (Bianco, Perez and Kearse [dissenting])  notes that the police can make an arrest upon "reasonably trustworthy information" that the plaintiff had committed a crime, and "an identified citizen informant is presumed to be reliable" in this context. So, even if the son was not present for the alleged assault, and had merely reported what the victim had told him, that was enough for probable cause, as the victim did show the police his injuries and explained how the plaintiff had allegedly attacked him. "Reasonable officers could disagree as to whether there was probable cause to arrest based on the reasonably trustworthy information relayed to the Officers," "which was simultaneously corroborated [by the victim] demonstrating the attack and displaying his injuries."

The case is significant for the Court of Appeals' holding that domestic violence cases are held to the same false arrest standards as every other case, and there is no special rule that the police need to be more skeptical when a domestic violence victim reports a crime. The district court said the inherent "relational dynamics" of alleged domestic disputes require additional inquiry by the police. But "the mere fact that a victim, eyewitness, or informant is reporting criminal activity arising from a domestic dispute does not, by itself, raise a doubt as to the witness's veracity sufficient to undermine the presumption of reliability that officers are permitted to attach to such witnesses."