Russell JARVIS, James Jarvis, Robert Crampton, and Commonwealth Second Amendment, Inc., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. VILLAGE GUN SHOP, INC., d/b/a Village Vault, Defendant, Appellee.
No. 14-2249.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Oct. 30, 2015.
Mark I. Zarrow, with whom Lian, Zarrow was on brief, for appellee.
David R. Marks, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Maura Healey, Attorney General, was on brief, for Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, amici curiae.
Before BARRON, SELYA and LIPEZ, Circuit Judges.
SELYA, Circuit Judge.
The district court, ruling at the summary judgment stage, concluded that the storage facility that was sued here was not a state actor and, accordingly, entered summary judgment in its favor. After careful consideration, we affirm.
I. THE STATUTORY SCHEME
We begin our odyssey with a sketch of the key elements of the Massachusetts statutory scheme for firearms ownership.
In Massachusetts, an individual who wishes to own or possess a firearm in his residence or place of business must obtain a Firearms Identification (FID) card. See
One who has surrendered his firearms pursuant to an abuse prevention order yet wishes to challenge the suspension or revocation of his FID card or license, may petition the ordering court for relief—and a hearing must be held within 10 days. See id.
An FID card will expire if the holder does not renew it within the time fixed by law. See
The surrender of firearms pursuant to this statutory scheme does not terminate a gun owner‘s ownership rights. After such a surrender has occurred, the gun owner may arrange for the firearms to be transferred or sold to any person with a valid FID card or other firearms license within one year after the date of surrender. See
See id.
II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
With this foundation in place, we turn to the case at hand. There are three groups of plaintiffs here: we rehearse their facts and circumstances separately.
A. James and Russell Jarvis.
Plaintiff James Jarvis is a gun owner residing in Cheshire, Massachusetts. In the early morning hours of July 9, 2010, Massachusetts State Police troopers arrested him for domestic assault and battery. His wife proceeded to obtain an ex parte temporary abuse protection order. Based on this order and in pursuance of state law, see
That same morning, James Jarvis and his wife appeared in court. A state judge extended the protection order until August 9, 2010, and it was thereafter extended to August 2, 2011.
James Jarvis moved into his parents’ residence in Adams, Massachusetts, where he remained for two years. As long as the order of protection was still velivolant, the state police could not lawfully return his firearms to him. Moreover, his presence in his parents’ home inhibited the ability of the police to return Russell Jarvis‘s firearms (and at any rate, Russell Jarvis did not himself possess a valid FID card or other firearms license at that time).
On August 11, 2010—over a month after the firearms had been taken from James Jarvis‘s home3—the state police transferred custody of the confiscated firearms to defendant Village Gun Shop, Inc., doing business as “Village Vault” (the Gun Shop). As part of its business, the Gun Shop operates a bonded warehouse for the secure storage of firearms and ammunition. See
On September 11, 2010, the Gun Shop sent James Jarvis its initial invoice. This invoice listed out the accumulated storage charges, the administrative fee, and the handling fee. When over 9 months elapsed without payment, the Gun Shop sold the confiscated firearms and associated property at public auction.
B. Robert Crampton.
Plaintiff Robert Crampton is a gun owner domiciled in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. In the spring of 2010, Crampton reported a burglary at his home, and the local police discovered that Crampton owned several firearms for which he did not possess a valid license. In point of fact, Crampton‘s FID card had expired decades earlier. On June 2, 2010, the police confiscated Crampton‘s guns and associated paraphernalia and explained to him that he needed to acquire a new FID card.
Crampton did nothing, and on November 15, 2010—over five months after the firearms had been taken from his home—the police transferred the guns to the Gun Shop for storage. That same day, the Gun Shop wrote to Crampton, furnishing him with an inventory and delineating the sundry charges that he would be incurring. When arrearages mounted and Crampton failed to pay them for a period of more than 90 days, the Gun Shop sold his firearms at public auction.
C. Commonwealth Second Amendment, Inc.
Plaintiff Commonwealth Second Amendment, Inc. (CSA) is a non-profit corporation, which has a stated purpose of “education, research, publishing and legal action focusing on the constitutional right to privately own and possess firearms.” CSA asserts that it “expends significant resources assisting those people whose firearms are held by bonded warehouses under the authority of [Massachusetts law].” It does not allege that any firearms owned by it have been either confiscated or auctioned.
III. TRAVEL OF THE CASE
In 2012, James Jarvis, Russell Jarvis, Robert Crampton, and CSA brought suit in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts against the Gun Shop and Mary E. Heffernan, in her official capacity as Secretary of the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. The plaintiffs sought relief under
In due course, the plaintiffs moved for partial summary judgment against the Gun Shop. They sought a ruling that the Gun Shop was a state actor, which could be held liable for damages under section 1983. The district court demurred, concluding that the Gun Shop was not a state
Following some procedural wrangling—including the dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims against Heffernan—the district court entered a final judgment in favor of the Gun Shop. This timely appeal ensued.4
IV. THE MERITS
We divide our discussion of the merits into two segments. We begin with the standards applicable to appellate review of summary judgments and the essential elements of the section 1983 framework. We then examine the theories of state action undergirding the plaintiffs’ claim.
A. The Legal Landscape.
We afford plenary review to a district court‘s grant of summary judgment. See Santiago v. Puerto Rico, 655 F.3d 61, 67 (1st Cir.2011). Where, as here, “a party moves for summary judgment and the court, sua sponte, grants judgment the other way, the usual approach to appellate oversight of Rule 56 orders must be inverted.” Quaker State Oil Ref. Corp. v. Garrity Oil Co., 884 F.2d 1510, 1513 (1st Cir.1989). Consequently, we view the facts and all reasonable inferences derived therefrom in the light most hospitable to the summary judgment loser (here, the plaintiffs). See id. We will affirm the
entry of summary judgment as long as the record reveals no genuine issue as to any material fact and shows that the prevailing party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Santiago, 655 F.3d at 68;
In this context, an issue is “genuine” if the record permits a rational factfinder to resolve that issue in favor of either party. See Borges ex rel. S.M.B.W. v. Serrano-Isern, 605 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir.2010). Within this rubric, a fact is “material” “if its existence or nonexistence has the potential to change the outcome of the suit.” Id. at 5.
Here, the correctness of the summary judgment ruling depends on the district court‘s application of
“Section 1983 supplies a private right of action against a person who, under color of state law, deprives another of rights secured by the Constitution or by federal law.” Redondo-Borges v. U.S. Dep‘t of Hous. & Urban Dev., 421 F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir.2005) (quoting Evans v. Avery, 100 F.3d 1033, 1036 (1st Cir.1996)). A cause of action under this provision comprises two essential elements: first, the conduct complained of must have been carried out “under color of state law,” and second, that conduct must have worked a deprivation of rights guaranteed by the Constitution or laws of the United States. Grajales v. P.R. Ports Auth., 682 F.3d 40, 46 (1st Cir.2012) (quoting Martinez v. Colon, 54 F.3d 980, 984 (1st Cir.1995)).
B. The Plaintiffs’ Claim.
The centerpiece of the plaintiffs’ section 1983 claim is their allegation that they were deprived of their due process rights by the Gun Shop. Specifically, they allege that their Fourteenth Amendment rights were abridged because they were forced to pay storage charges and, when they did not do so, their property was peremptorily sold at public auction.
It is true—if somewhat of a tautology—that the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to state action performed by “a person who may fairly be said to be a state actor.” Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922, 937, 102 S.Ct. 2744, 73 L.Ed.2d 482 (1982). When the named defendant in a section 1983 case is a private party, the plaintiff must show that the defendant‘s conduct can be classified as state action. See Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, 457 U.S. 830, 838, 102 S.Ct. 2764, 73 L.Ed.2d 418 (1982). The state action inquiry is preliminary to, and independent of, the due process inquiry. If there is no state action, the plaintiff‘s claim fails. See id.
The bar for such a showing is set quite high, and we have cautioned that “[i]t is ‘[o]nly in rare circumstances’ that private parties can be viewed as state actors.” Estades-Negroni v. CPC Hosp. San Juan Capestrano, 412 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir.2005) (quoting Harvey v. Harvey, 949 F.2d 1127, 1130 (11th Cir.1992)) (alterations in original). This inquiry is typically factbound. See Brentwood Acad. v. Tenn. Secondary Sch. Athl. Ass‘n, 531 U.S. 288, 295-96, 121 S.Ct. 924, 148 L.Ed.2d 807 (2001); Burton v. Wilmington Parking Auth., 365 U.S. 715, 722, 81 S.Ct. 856, 6 L.Ed.2d 45 (1961) (explaining that “[o]nly by sifting facts and weighing circumstances can the nonobvious involvement of the State in private conduct be attributed its true significance“).
The Supreme Court has mapped out three routes that can lead to a finding that a private party “may fairly be said to be a state actor.” Lugar, 457 U.S. at 937. State action may be found if the private party “assumes a traditional public function when performing the challenged conduct,” or if the private party‘s conduct is “coerced or significantly encouraged by the state,” or if the private party and the state have become so intertwined that they were effectively “joint participant[s]” in the challenged conduct. Santiago, 655 F.3d at 68 (quoting Estades-Negroni, 412 F.3d at 5). Unless the facts of record here, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, are capable of supporting a finding that the plaintiffs have successfully travelled one or more of these avenues, the entry of summary judgment must stand. See id. at 69. We turn, then, to this inquiry.
1. Joint Action.
We start with the pathway on which the plaintiffs have placed their heaviest emphasis: joint action. To establish state action through this route, a plaintiff must show that the state has “so far insinuated itself into a position of interdependence with the [private party] that it was a joint participant
Here, the record reveals no relationship between the activities of the police and those of the Gun Shop, with one exception: a Massachusetts statute authorizes the police to transfer possession of lawfully confiscated firearms and associated property to licensed storage facilities, see
Nor can the plaintiffs bridge this gap by showing that the state acquiesced in the actions of the Gun Shop. After all, where the state “has merely announced the circumstances under which its courts will not interfere with a private sale,” state action is not present. Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U.S. 149, 164-66, 98 S.Ct. 1729, 58 L.Ed.2d 185 (1978).
Such a tenuous connection between the state and the Gun Shop is surely not enough to ground a finding of state action—and the record discloses nothing more. For example, there is a complete dearth of evidence that the Gun Shop depends on the state in any respect for the day-to-day operation of its business. See Perkins, 196 F.3d at 21. Rather, the Gun Shop operates independently in all relevant respects. Once the police transferred possession of the plaintiffs’ firearms to the Gun Shop, the police ceased to have any involvement with the storage and eventual auctioning of the confiscated property: all correspondence regarding the storage charges and the sale of the confiscated property went directly between the Gun Shop and the various plaintiffs.
By the same token, there is no question but that the Gun Shop wholly owns the facility in which it operates its business. See Burton, 365 U.S. at 723-24. Nor is there anything in the record indicating that the police helped set the Gun Shop‘s storage charges, shared in those charges, or received any part of the auction proceeds collected by the Gun Shop. See Perkins, 196 F.3d at 21. Under the statutory scheme, the state garners proceeds from confiscated property only if the police abjure the use of a private storage facility, retain possession of the confiscated property, and the owner fails to transfer or reclaim the property within one year. See
In an effort to forestall the conclusion that there is no joint activity sufficient to
First, the plaintiffs argue that the activities of the police “led to and facilitated the actions that injured” them. This argument amounts to nothing more than an suggestion that the police are the “but-for” cause of the Gun Shop‘s challenged conduct: had the police not confiscated the plaintiffs’ firearms, the Gun Shop would never have gained possession of the firearms and, thus, could not have imposed storage charges and sold the weapons at public auction. This argument proves too much. If but-for causation could constitute a sufficient basis for a finding of joint action, the line between state and private action would be blurred beyond recognition. Any time the state performs an action that sets in motion some subsequent action by a private party—say, issuing a driver‘s license—the private party could be deemed to have acted jointly with the state. So expansive a definition of “state action” would eviscerate the state action requirement.
The plaintiffs’ second argument begins with the proposition that the Gun Shop “was performing duties that the police would otherwise have been obligated to perform themselves.” This proposition is simply wrong. The plaintiffs rely principally on the decision in West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42, 108 S.Ct. 2250, 101 L.Ed.2d 40 (1988). In that case, however, state action was found because the state had delegated an affirmative constitutional obligation to a private party by contract. See id. at 56-57, 108 S.Ct. 2250. Here, unlike in West, the police had no affirmative obligation to retain possession of the plaintiffs’ property. See
The plaintiffs counter, however, that even if the police were not obliged to keep their firearms, the Gun Shop “inherited” this state obligation when the police transferred the plaintiffs’ firearms. Assuming for argument‘s sake that such an obligation was delegated to the Gun Shop when the Gun Shop took custody of the confiscated firearms,5 that circumstance would not avail the plaintiffs. The statutory scheme at issue here affords gun owners ample alternatives for how to direct their confiscated property and thereby avoid unwanted storage charges. See
tiffs’
The plaintiffs’ third argument is really a subset of their second argument. They attempt to draw sustenance from several cases in which the owner of a towing or impoundment company was found to be a state actor and, thus, potentially liable under section 1983. These cases—like West—are readily distinguishable.
In Smith v. Insley‘s Inc., 499 F.3d 875, 878 (8th Cir.2007), the defendant towed and stored the plaintiff‘s car in connection with an ongoing murder investigation. The defendant was therefore “performing the traditional governmental function of seizing and securing property for a criminal investigation.” Id. at 880. That is not true here. In fact, had a criminal investigation been afoot, the Massachusetts statutory scheme would have required the police to retain possession of the confiscated firearms rather than transferring them to a third party (such as an authorized storage facility). See
In Coleman v. Turpen, 697 F.2d 1341 (10th Cir.1982), the court found it to be of decretory significance that the private towing company had participated in the initial seizure of the affected property. As the Tenth Circuit explained, the towing company there actually seized the plaintiff‘s property but also proceeded to hold the property “for the [s]tate, not for [the plaintiff].” Id. at 1345. Here, by contrast, the Gun Shop had no involvement at all with either the police decision to confiscate the plaintiffs’ property or the implementation of that decision. And unlike in Coleman—where the towing company sold the plaintiff‘s property to satisfy the storage fees incurred by the police, see 697 F.2d at 1343—the transfer of the plaintiffs’ property to the Gun Shop foreclosed any possibility that the state might derive any economic benefit from that property.
To be sure, in Stypmann v. San Francisco, 557 F.2d 1338 (9th Cir.1977)—a case factually similar to Coleman—the state would not have been able to accomplish its larger purpose of removing vehicles from roadways when their presence created a safety risk without the involvement of the towing company. See 557 F.2d at 1340 n. 2, 1341. But that is at a considerable remove from our case, in which the summary judgment record contains nothing to suggest that the police required any assistance from the Gun Shop in order to confiscate and store the plaintiffs’ firearms. The Gun Shop simply provided the police with an alternative to storing the firearms themselves. And the plaintiffs had at least a month (and in Crampton‘s case over 5 months) to choose to store their confiscated property elsewhere before the police transferred the property to the Gun Shop.
That ends this aspect of the matter. After scouring the record, we conclude that there is no showing of joint action sufficient to satisfy section 1983‘s state action requirement.
2. Public Function.
We turn next to the public function pathway. To navigate that route, a plaintiff must show that the private party has performed a service that, traditionally, the state has exclusively undertaken. See Santiago, 655 F.3d at 69. In this regard, we have emphasized both that “[e]xclusivity is an important qualifier” and that “the activities that have been held to fall within the state‘s exclusive preserve for purposes of the public function test are few and far between.” Id.
This avenue does not lead to a finding of state action here. As the plaintiffs themselves have admitted, a licensed
The Supreme Court‘s decision in Flagg Bros. is instructive on this point. There, the petitioner (a storage company) was entrusted with the respondent‘s goods after the respondent was evicted from her apartment. See 436 U.S. at 153, 98 S.Ct. 1729. When several months passed and no storage fees were paid, the petitioner purposed to sell the goods—an action expressly authorized by state statute. See id. at 151-53, 98 S.Ct. 1729. In bringing a section 1983 suit against the storage company, the petitioner alleged that the storage company had become a state actor because the state had delegated to it a power “traditionally exclusively reserved to the [s]tate.” Id. at 157, 98 S.Ct. 1729 (quoting Jackson, 419 U.S. at 352). The Court disagreed, concluding that the facts showed no more than a “purely private dispute” between a debtor and a creditor. Id. at 160, 98 S.Ct. 1729. The respondent could resolve such a dispute, the Court said, through a raft of state-law “rights and remedies.” Id. A section 1983 action was, therefore, unwarranted. See id. at 160-61, 98 S.Ct. 1729.
The facts in this case are of a piece with those of Flagg Bros. The plaintiffs do not challenge here the original confiscation of their firearms by the police but, rather, challenge only the Gun Shop‘s storage charges and its auctioning of their confiscated property. Moreover—as we already have explained—the statutory scheme provides gun owners with a plethora of alternatives for how to direct their confiscated property and thereby avoid unwanted storage charges. See
3. State Compulsion.
This leaves only the state compulsion avenue. Traveling this route demands that an inquiring court ask whether the state has used coercive power or has provided such a substantial degree of encouragement that the private party‘s decision to engage in the challenged conduct should fairly be attributed to the state. See Rendell-Baker, 457 U.S. at 840, 102 S.Ct. 2764 (citing Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 1004, 102 S.Ct. 2777, 73 L.Ed.2d 534 (1982)). Contrary to the plaintiffs’ importunings, the facts of this case make clear that the state compulsion route is a dead end.
We can be brief. Nothing in the Massachusetts statutory scheme either requires or compels the Gun Shop—or any other private storage company—to provide its services to the police. The opposite is true; a firearms dealer, such as the Gun Shop, must affirmatively seek a license to offer such storage services. What is more, the police are at liberty to transfer confiscated firearms to any licensed dealer who satisfies the statutory requirements. Giv-
en
V. CONCLUSION
We summarize succinctly. In their action against the Gun Shop, the plaintiffs do not challenge either the confiscation of their firearms or the police‘s authority to transfer those firearms to a bonded warehouse for storage. Rather, they challenge the imposition of storage charges and the subsequent auctioning of their firearms after they failed to pay those storage charges. But the facts evidenced in the summary judgment record, even when viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, do not show that state action, as opposed to private action, produced these asserted harms. Although the activities undertaken by the Gun Shop were authorized by state law, mere compliance with the strictures of state law cannot transmogrify private action into state action. Nor is it enough that the state set in motion the subsequent actions taken by the Gun Shop: but-for causation is simply insufficient to conjure a finding of state action. Whatever rights (if any) the plaintiffs may have against the Gun Shop, they have made out none under section 1983.
We need go no further. We have combed through the plaintiffs’ arguments in support of their state action rationale and found them wanting. It follows that the judgment of the district court must be
Affirmed.
SELYA
CIRCUIT JUDGE