Guillen v. City of New York

Background

Edward Guillen sued the City of New York and New York Police Department Officers Yeraldy Bonifacio, Michael Dappolonia, Jose Toribio, Amanda Knapp, and John Does 1–10. He asserted federal claims under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, 1985, 1986, and 1988, a municipal-liability claim under Monell v. Department of Social Services, and state-law claims.

The case arose from a January 31, 2018 traffic stop. Officers Bonifacio and Dappolonia stopped Guillen while he was driving. Defendants said the vehicle had an unilluminated license-plate lamp. Guillen disputed that explanation and said the officers were looking for his vehicle after a dispatcher reported 911 calls from a woman who said she had been held at gunpoint and that a firearm was in a vehicle matching Guillen’s vehicle description and license plate.

The officers smelled marijuana when they approached the vehicle, directed Guillen to exit, frisked him, and searched the vehicle. Bonifacio found a backpack containing an all-black, air-powered gun with a laser pointer. The gun was not loaded with ammunition but contained an operable carbon-dioxide canister. Guillen was arrested and charged with possessing an air pistol and an imitation firearm. The New York County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the criminal complaint on November 8, 2019.

Summary-judgment ruling

The court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Summary judgment is appropriate when the evidence shows no genuine dispute about a fact that could affect the result and the moving party is entitled to judgment under the law.

The court first dismissed all claims against Officer Knapp because her involvement was limited to securing and examining the air-powered gun after Guillen’s arrest. She was not involved in the traffic stop, vehicle search, arrest, prosecution, or alleged strip search. The court also dismissed all claims against Officer Toribio because the record did not show that he was personally involved. The court dismissed the John Doe defendants because Guillen had ample time to identify them but had not done so.

The court held that Bonifacio and Dappolonia had reasonable suspicion and probable cause to stop Guillen’s vehicle based on the alleged unilluminated license-plate lamp. The court also stated that, even if the officers stopped Guillen because of the 911 reports, those reports supplied reasonable suspicion because they identified a specific vehicle and license plate and came from a person claiming to be the victim of a crime. The court further held that the officers had probable cause to search the vehicle because they smelled marijuana. That probable cause allowed them to search containers in the vehicle that could hold drugs, including Guillen’s backpack.

The court found two separate bases for probable cause to arrest Guillen: the unilluminated license-plate lamp and the air-powered BB gun found in the backpack. The court concluded that probable cause defeated Guillen’s federal and state false-arrest and false-imprisonment claims, as well as his federal malicious-prosecution claim. It also rejected his unlawful-search-and-seizure claims. Regarding the alleged strip search, the court found that Guillen had not provided evidence showing that he was naked or that any named defendant authorized, conducted, or was present for the search. The court did not decide whether a strip search would otherwise have been justified.

The court dismissed Guillen’s malicious-abuse-of-process claim because he presented no evidence that the officers pursued a collateral objective outside the legitimate purposes of the criminal process. His failure-to-intervene claim also failed because the underlying claims did not survive and the officers had probable cause to arrest him.

The court dismissed the excessive-force claim, which was based on tight handcuffing, because Guillen did not allege that he told a defendant the handcuffs were too tight and did not claim physical injury. The court also treated the claim as abandoned because Guillen did not defend it in his opposition to summary judgment. The court similarly dismissed his fair-trial claim because he offered no evidence or argument supporting it.

The court rejected Guillen’s equal-protection claims under the Fourteenth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1981 because his allegations that officers acted because of his race were conclusory and unsupported by evidence. It dismissed his conspiracy claims under §§ 1983 and 1985, and his related claim under § 1986, because he offered no evidence of a conspiracy or discriminatory animus. The court dismissed his Monell claim because Guillen had not shown an underlying constitutional violation or identified a specific City policy or custom that caused one.

Most of Guillen’s state-law claims were dismissed on procedural grounds because he did not timely serve the required notice of claim, and a state court had denied permission to file a late notice for those claims. His state-law malicious-prosecution claim failed on the merits because probable cause is a complete defense to that claim under New York law. The court did not address qualified immunity because it dismissed the claims on other grounds.

Disposition

The court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment in its entirety, dismissed the complaint in its entirety, directed the Clerk to enter judgment for defendants, terminated the motion at ECF No. 45, and closed the case. Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald signed the memorandum and order on March 17, 2023.