What is a qualified privilege in the context of given case

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Reference no: EM131281691

On remand after a trial and after an appeal, a retrial was held; the jury found for Dr. Ortega in all respects, awarding him $436,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. The defendants appealed.] REINHARDT, C. J.... [T]he plaintiff and the defendants jointly proposed to the district court, and the court accepted, a jury instruction that applied a "reasonableness" test, not as the district court had suggested, to the search itself, but instead to the defendants' beliefs regarding the search. More important, that instruction stated that the reasonableness inquiry as to public officials' beliefs is determined under an objective standard- whether a reasonable officer would have believed he had a reasonable basis for the search.

The instruction, as it was read to the jury, provided as follows: [The Defendants] contend that any actions they took relative to the search of the Plaintiff's office were justified by their reasonable belief that these actions were permitted or required and, therefore, were lawful.... If a Defendant reasonably believed that a search or seizure was lawful, and acted on the basis of that belief, then his reasonable belief would constitute a complete defense to the Plaintiff's claim even though, in fact, the search or seizure was not lawful.

Put another way, even if you find that a Defendant violated Plaintiff's constitutional rights by an unlawful search or seizure, the Defendant cannot be liable if he reasonably believed at the time he acted that his actions were in accordance with the law. But keep in mind that his reasonableness inquiry is an objective one. [The question is whether a] reasonable officer under those same circumstances would believe that he had a basis, a reasonable basis for searching consistent again with these instructions....

The instruction ... provided a classic qualified immunity instruction.... ... In light of the clearly established law in 1981 and the parties' factual disputes regarding the justification for the search and the intended and actual scope of the search and seizure, the defendants were entitled to an instruction that told the jury two things:

(1) that the law provided that they were entitled to search Dr. Ortega's office for work-related reasons, or to look for evidence of specific work-related misconduct, subject essentially to Terry's [Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)] minimum requirement that the search and seizure be "reasonable" in both its inception and scope; and

(2) that if, given the facts as proved at trial, reasonable officials in the defendants' position could have believed that their conduct was in conformity with that law, the defendants could not be held liable. That is exactly what the district judge told the jury in the instructions she gave. Because the jury found in Dr. Ortega's favor, we must assume that it accepted his version of the facts, which was supported by substantial evidence-i.e.,

(1) that the defendants, under the pretense of conducting an "inventory" of state property in order to separate personal from official materials, conducted instead a purely indiscriminate fishing expedition through his most personal belongings in hopes of discovering some evidence that might be useful at an adversary administrative hearing;

(2) that the repeated intrusions and examinations of Dr. Ortega's private possessions, including his purely personal belongings, clearly exceeded the scope of a reasonable work-related search;

(3) that the defendants retained all of the property that had been in his office, both personal and official, in one undivided mass; and

(4) that when their first explanation was exposed as false, the defendants then offered other equally untruthful rationales for their conduct.

A reasonable official in the defendants' position could not have believed that a search and seizure conducted under the circumstances and in the manner described by Dr. Ortega was reasonably work-related or otherwise consistent with established law. The defendants, therefore, could not have prevailed on their qualified immunity defense under any set of lawful qualified immunity instructions.... It is now seventeen years since the search of Dr. Ortega's office occurred and his most personal letters and possessions were examined and seized. It is time to bring this matter to a conclusion. We have considered the defendants' remaining assertions regarding the district court's evidentiary rulings, the jury's damage awards, and the district court's award of attorney's fees, and we find them to be without merit. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

Case Questions

1. What is a qualified privilege in the context of this case?

2. Did the court find that a qualified privilege existed in this case?

Reference no: EM131281691

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