ALVAREZ, COOK COUNTY STATE‘S ATTORNEY v. SMITH ET AL.
No. 08-351
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 14, 2009—Decided December 8, 2009
558 U.S. 87
BREYER, J.
William M. Jay argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae in support of petitioner. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Kagan, Assistant Attorneys General Breuer and West, Deputy Solicitor General Katyal, Harry Harbin, Michael S. Raab, David A. Martin, and Alfonso Robles.
Thomas Peters argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were Craig B. Futterman and Richard Epstein.*
We granted certiorari in this case to determine whether Illinois law provides a sufficiently speedy opportunity for an individual, whose car or cash police have seized without a warrant, to contest thе lawfulness of the seizure. See
I
Illinois law provides for forfeiture of movable personal property (including cars and cash) used “to facilitate” a drug crime.
On November 22, 2006, six individuals (respondents or plaintiffs) brought this federal civil rights action against defendants the city of Chicago, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, and the Cook County State‘s Attorney (the petitioner here, whom we shall call the “State‘s Attorney“). See
The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground that Seventh Circuit precedent made clear that “the Constitution does not require any procedure prior to the actual forfeiture proceeding.” Jones v. Takaki, 38 F. 3d 321, 324 (1994) (citing Von Neumann, supra, at 249). On February 22, 2007, the District Court granted the motion to dismiss. It also denied the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. The plaintiffs appealed.
On May 2, 2008, the Seventh Circuit decided the appeal in thе plaintiffs’ favor. Smith v. Chicago, 524 F. 3d 834. It reconsidered and departed from its earlier precedent. Id., at 836-839. It held that “the procedures set out in” the Illinois statute “show insufficient concern for the due process right of the plaintiffs.” Id., at 838. And it added that, “given the length of time which can result between the seizure of property and the opportunity for an owner to contest the seizure under” Illinois law, “some sort of mechanism to test the validity of the retention of the property is required.” Ibid. The Court of Appeals reversed the judgment of thе District Court and remanded the case for further proceedings. Id., at 839. Its mandate issued about seven weeks thereafter.
On February 23, 2009, we granted certiorari to review the Seventh Circuit‘s “due process” determination. The Court of Appeals had already recalled its mandate. The parties filed briefs in this Court. We then recognized that the case might be moot, and we asked the parties to address the question of mootness at the forthcoming oral argument.
II
The Constitution permits this Court to decide legal questions only in the context of actual “Cases” or “Controversies.”
The State‘s Attorney argues that there is a continuing controversy over damages. We concede that the plaintiffs filed a motion in the District Court seeking damages. But the plaintiffs filed their motion after the Seventh Circuit issued its opinion. And, before this Court granted certiorari, the Court of Appeals recalled its mandate, taking the case away from the District Court before the District Court could respond to the motion. Thus, we have before us a complaint that seeks only declaratory and injunctive relief, not damages.
The plaintiffs point out that they sought certification of a class. And a class might well contain members who continue to dispute ownership of seized property. But that fact is beside the point. The District Court denied the plaintiffs’
The parties, of course, continue to dispute the lawfulness of the State‘s hearing procedures. But that dispute is no longer embedded in any actual controversy about the plaintiffs’ particular legal rights. Rather, it is an abstract dispute about the law, unlikely to affect these plaintiffs any more than it affects other Illinois citizens. And a dispute solely about the meaning of a law, abstracted from any concrete actual or threatened harm, falls outside the scope of the constitutional words “Cases” and “Controversies.” See, e. g., Lewis v. Continental Bank Corp., 494 U. S. 472, 477 (1990); North Carolina v. Rice, 404 U. S. 244, 246 (1971) (per curiam); Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Haworth, 300 U. S. 227, 241 (1937); Mills v. Green, 159 U. S. 651, 653 (1895).
We can find no special circumstance here that might warrant our continuing to hear the case. We have sometimes heard attacks on practices that no longer directly affect the attacking party, but are “capable of repetition” while “evading review.” See, e. g., Federal Election Comm‘n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U. S. 449, 462 (2007); Southern Pacific Terminal Co. v. ICC, 219 U. S. 498, 515 (1911). Yet here, unlike those cases, nothing suggests that the individual plaintiffs will likely again prove subject to the State‘s seizure procedures. See Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 109 (1983) (“[T]he capable-of-repetition doctrine applies only in exceptional situations, and generally only where the named plaintiff can make a reasonable showing that he will again be subjected to the alleged illegality“); DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U. S. 312, 318-319 (1974) (per curiam). And in any
III
It is less easy to say whether we should order the judgment below vacated. The statute that enables us to vacate a lower court judgment when a case becomes moot is flexible, allowing a court to “direct the entry of such appropriate judgment, decree, or order, or require such further proceedings to be had as may be just under the circumstances.”
In Bancorp, however, we described circumstances where we would not do so. We said that, “[w]here mootness results from settlement” rather than “happenstance,” the “losing party has voluntarily forfeited his legal remedy . . . [and] thereby surrender[ed] his claim to the equitable remedy of vacatur.” 513 U. S., at 25. The plaintiffs, pointing out that the State‘s Attorney agreed to return all three cars and some of the cash, claim that, with rеspect to at least four of the plaintiffs, this case falls within Bancorp‘s “settlement” exception.
In our view, however, this case more closely resembles mootness through “happenstance” than through “settlement“—at least the kind of settlement that the Court considered in Bancorp. Bancorp focused upon a bankruptcy-
Recognizing that the reorganization plan that the Bankruptcy Judge confirmed in the case amounted to a settlement that mooted the case, this Court did not vacate the lower court‘s judgment. The Court‘s reason for leaving the lower court‘s judgment in place was that mootness was not a result of “the vagaries of circumstance.” Id., at 25. Rather the party seeking review had “caused the mootness by voluntary action.” Id., at 24 (emphasis added). By virtue of the settlement, that party had “voluntarily forfeited his legal remedy by the ordinary processes of appeal or certiorari.” Id., at 25. Hence, compared to mootness caused by “happenstance,” considerations of “equity” and “fairness” tilted against vacatur. Id., at 25-26.
Applying these principles to the case before us, we conclude that the terminations here fall on the “happenstance” side of the line. The six individual cases proceeded through a different court system without any procedural link to the federal case before us. To our knowledge (and we have examined the state-court docket sheets), no one in those cases raised the procedural question at issue here. Rather, the
For these reasons, we believe that the presence of this federal case played no significant role in the termination of
We consequently conclude that we should follow our ordinary practice, thereby “clear[ing] the path for future relitigation of the issues.” Munsingwear, 340 U. S., at 40. Thus, nothing in this opinion prevents the plaintiffs from bringing a claim for damages based on the conduct alleged in their complaint. Id., at 37-40.
We therefore vacate the judgment of the Court of Appеals and remand the case to that court with instructions to dismiss.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE STEVENS, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
While I agree that this case is moot and join Parts I and II of the Court‘s opinion, I would not vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals. Following the teaching of our decision in U. S. Bancorp Mortgage Co. v. Bonner Mall Partnership, 513 U. S. 18 (1994), I would apply the general rule against vacating appellate judgments that have become moot because the parties settled.
Bancorp sеt forth the basic principles for determining whether to vacate a case that has become moot. The overriding concern is equitable: “From the beginning we have disposed of moot cases in the manner ‘most conso-
In my view, the Court has misapplied these рrinciples. To be sure, the “settlement” between the parties in this case might be distinguished from the more conventional settlement reached by the parties in Bancorp. And we have no evidence to suggest that the State returned respondents’ property prior to the conclusion of our review with the pur-
There was a third option for disposing of this case: We could have dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. Like denying the petition in the first place, that disposition would have preserved the judgment below. At the time we granted certiorari on February 23, 2009, petitioner had already resolved the underlying property disputes for five of the six named respondents. See ante, at 91-92, 95-96. It was entirely predictable that the final settlement would soon follow. Moreover, the briefing in this case has revealed a disagreement over basic descriptive questions of Illinois law, questions that were not passed upon below. Compare Brief for Petitioner 60-66 with Brief for Respondents 41-44. And, of course, we have no way of knowing how the District Court would have applied the Court of Appeals’ remand order, which left it great discrеtion to “fashion appropriate procedural relief” “with the help of the parties.” Smith v. Chicago, 524 F. 3d 834, 838 (CA7 2008). It has become clear that the Court was overhasty in deciding to review this case; the improvidence of our grant provides an additional reason why we should not vacate the work product of our colleagues on the Court of Appeals.
I respectfully dissent from Part III of the Court‘s opinion and from its judgment.