Turner v. Dellapia

Background

Wilbert K.A. Turner, proceeding without a lawyer, sued Federal Bureau of Investigation agents Jeremy Dellapia and George Gjelaj and Westchester County police officials Christopher Kelly, Erin Moore, and Mark Carey. He brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which allows suits for constitutional violations by state actors, and under Bivens, which can provide damages claims against certain federal officials. Turner alleged that officers conducted a warrantless search of his apartment on August 23, 2017, after Agent Dellapia arrested him and obtained his apartment keys. He alleged that a visitor, Elita Hudson, did not have authority to consent, that the consent form was forged or coerced, and that officers left the apartment door unlocked after the search.

The defendants filed separate motions to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), arguing that Turner had not pleaded legally sufficient claims. The court treated the factual allegations in Turner’s pleadings and, where appropriate, his opposition papers as true at this stage. The court also noted that Turner had previously obtained suppression of evidence from the search in his criminal case, but it did not treat statements from that proceeding as proving the truth of disputed facts in this civil case.

Federal Defendants

The court dismissed Turner’s constitutional claims against Agent Dellapia because Turner acknowledged that Dellapia did not enter or participate in the apartment search. Possession of Turner’s keys and wallet, without more, did not adequately allege Dellapia’s personal involvement in a constitutional violation.

The court denied the Federal Defendants’ motion based on qualified immunity as to Agent Gjelaj. Qualified immunity can protect officials from damages when their conduct did not violate clearly established law or when their actions were objectively reasonable. The court concluded that Turner’s allegations—that Gjelaj helped forge the consent or obtained consent through coercion—described conduct that would violate clearly established rights. The court also found that the allegations raised a plausible question about whether Hudson voluntarily consented or had apparent authority to authorize the search.

The court rejected the argument that Turner’s warrantless-search claims were barred under Ziglar v. Abbasi. At the pleading stage, the court concluded that the alleged search by federal agents in New York City was sufficiently similar to the search-and-arrest claim recognized in Bivens and therefore did not present a new Bivens context.

The court dismissed Turner’s separate constitutional claims based on the alleged failure to secure his apartment door. It reasoned that the alleged loss of property caused by later third-party conduct did not state a Fourth Amendment claim. To the extent Turner asserted a due-process claim, the court found that available post-deprivation remedies, including possible remedies under the Federal Tort Claims Act or 31 U.S.C. § 3724, prevented the claim from proceeding.

The court also dismissed Turner’s common-law claims against Agents Dellapia and Gjelaj. Because Turner did not allege that the agents acted outside the scope of their employment, any tort claim against the federal employees had to proceed under the Federal Tort Claims Act against the United States. The court had previously dismissed Turner’s Federal Tort Claims Act claims for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The dismissal was without prejudice to refiling or amending after exhaustion.

County Defendants

The court denied the County Defendants’ argument that Turner had not plausibly alleged a constitutional violation. Turner alleged that the County Defendants entered his apartment without a search warrant and assisted in the allegedly unlawful search. The court also denied their argument that Turner had not alleged their personal involvement, because the amended complaint attributed the entry and search to the officers remaining in that case.

The court denied the County Defendants’ qualified-immunity argument. It concluded that Turner had alleged a violation of the clearly established right not to undergo a warrantless search of his home and that the qualified-immunity issue required a more developed factual record.

The court dismissed Turner’s state-law claims against the County Defendants because he did not allege that he had filed the required timely notices of claim under New York General Municipal Law § 50-e. The dismissal was without prejudice to seeking leave to amend if Turner had in fact filed timely notices.

Disposition

The Federal Defendants’ motion to dismiss was granted in part and denied in part. The court dismissed all claims against Agent Dellapia, dismissed the common-law claims against Agents Dellapia and Gjelaj, and otherwise denied the motion. The County Defendants’ motion was granted in part and denied in part: the state-law claims were dismissed without prejudice, and the motion was otherwise denied. The court allowed Turner until November 30, 2020, to move to amend his pleadings regarding exhaustion of Federal Tort Claims Act remedies, timely notices of claim, or both.