Boudreau v. Lussier
Opinion
Jason Boudreau worked for Automated Temperature Controls, Inc. (ATC), in Cranston, Rhode Island. His employers came to suspect that he was viewing child
*69
pornography at work. As a result, they covertly installed screenshot-capturing software on Boudreau's work computer, which confirmed these suspicions. This led them to contact law enforcement. To make a long story short-a story we will explain in much greater detail below-this culminated in Boudreau's arrest and plea of
nolo contendere
in state court to one count of possession of child pornography. Boudreau then brought a host of claims under
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on all of Boudreau's claims. Boudreau has appealed. We affirm.
I.
We view the facts in the summary judgment record in the light most favorable to Boudreau, and draw all reasonable inferences in his favor.
See
Mu
v.
Omni Hotels Mgmt. Corp.
,
A.
Boudreau worked for ATC from September 2009 to June 2011. At some point during the second week of June 2011, Boudreau asked Sorel to help recover email records that had been deleted from Boudreau's work computer. The file recovery software that Sorel employed compiled a list of "recoverable" files that had been deleted from that computer. This list included a number of pornographic movies and photos. Sorel brought this to Steven Lussier's attention. In response, Steven Lussier directed Sorel to install the screen-capture software System Surveillance Pro (SSP) on Boudreau's work computer. Sorel did so-unbeknownst to Boudreau-on June 16, 2011. SSP captures and saves screenshots of whatever is being displayed on the monitor of the computer on which it is installed. Sorel configured SSP to take screenshots whenever the user of Boudreau's computer typed certain keywords, including, for example, "yahoo." Sorel also arranged for SSP to send these screenshots to an email account that he had set up specifically for that purpose.
On June 20, 2011, SSP captured screenshots of what Sorel-who reviewed those screenshots two days later-believed to be images of child pornography. The ATC Defendants conferred, and decided to contact law enforcement. On June 23, Steven Lussier delivered a USB drive containing the offending screenshots to Detective Kevin Petit of the Warwick Police Department. Detective Petit also requested to analyze Boudreau's work computer. So, the following morning, John Lussier and Sorel brought him that computer, and John Lussier signed a consent form for Detective Petit to search the computer. Detective Petit's ensuing search revealed numerous files containing child pornography.
John Lussier also mentioned to Detective Petit that ATC had provided a company laptop to Boudreau, and Detective Petit responded that he wanted to examine that laptop as well. That afternoon, Detective Petit spoke to John Lussier about Boudreau's company laptop again. John Lussier *70 told Detective Petit that Boudreau was out golfing with Steven Lussier, but that he would be returning to ATC later on. During this conversation, Detective Petit also told John Lussier that he had become aware that Boudreau's driver's license had been suspended. Detective Petit then contacted Cranston Police Officer Nathan Bagshaw, relaying information about his investigation of Boudreau and that Boudreau would be driving back to ATC on a suspended license. Officer Bagshaw, Officer Kim Carrol, and Sergeant Gregg Weller then dispatched to ATC headquarters. They arrested Boudreau for driving on a suspended license upon his arrival to ATC.
After arresting Boudreau, the Cranston Police impounded the blue Toyota Corolla in which he had returned to ATC headquarters. John Lussier also requested that the Cranston Police impound Boudreau's green Ford Explorer, which he had left parked at ATC headquarters. John Lussier explained that ATC had terminated Boudreau's employment, and that, fearing retaliation, he did not want Boudreau to have any reason to return to ATC's premises. The officers acquiesced, impounding that vehicle as well. They then conducted inventory searches of both of Boudreau's impounded vehicles, seizing various electronic devices from them.
Detective Petit then applied for and received warrants to search Boudreau's electronic devices, Yahoo! accounts, and residence. The searches that these warrants authorized yielded additional child pornography. On January 2, 2014-after this litigation had commenced-Boudreau entered a plea of nolo contendere in state court to one count of possession of child pornography, and was sentenced to five years' imprisonment.
B.
Boudreau filed a pro se complaint in the District of Rhode Island on May 28, 2013, and amended it exactly three months later. His amended complaint contained five counts. Count One alleged Steven Lussier, John Lussier, and Steven Sorrel, along with Detective Petit, illegally searched his office and office computer, and that the ATC Defendants and Cranston Defendants illegally seized and searched his two vehicles. Count Two alleged that the ATC Defendants conspired with Detective Petit to deprive Boudreau of his Fourth Amendment rights, and with Officer Carrol, Officer Bagshaw, and Sergeant Weller to entrap him into driving on a suspended license. Count Three alleged that Detective Petit made false statements in and omitted material facts from his affidavit in support of a warrant to search Boudreau's property. Count Four alleged that the ATC Defendants unlawfully intercepted his electronic communications, in violation of ECPA. Count Five alleged municipal liability against the Cities of Cranston and Warwick. Boudreau appears to have brought all of his claims against state actors (that is, everyone except for the ATC Defendants) under
Boudreau moved for leave to file a second amended complaint that would include a new claim under the Stored Communications Act,
II.
We review a district court's summary judgment ruling
de novo
, affirming only if-after construing the facts in the light most favorable to the non-movant and drawing all possible reasonable inferences from those facts-no genuine material dispute of fact exists.
Cooper
v.
D'Amore
,
On appeal, Boudreau argues that the district court erred in holding that: (1) the Cranston Defendants did not violate Boudreau's Fourth Amendment rights when they impounded and searched his two automobiles; (2) The Warwick and Cranston Defendants did not conspire to entrap Boudreau into driving on a suspended license; (3) Detective Petit did not violate Boudreau's Fourth Amendment rights upon searching his work computer; (4) Detective Petit did not violate Boudreau's Fourth Amendment rights by making allegedly false statements in his search warrant affidavits; and (5) the ATC Defendants did not violate ECPA. We consider these arguments in turn.
A.
1.
We begin with Boudreau's arguments concerning the Cranston Defendants' impoundment and search of his two vehicles. The district court held that the "community caretaking function" justified the decision to impound those vehicles.
The "community caretaking function" is one of the various exceptions to the Fourth Amendment's requirement that law enforcement officers have probable cause and obtain a warrant before effecting a search or seizing property.
United States
v.
Coccia
,
*72
South Dakota
v.
Opperman
,
In
Coccia
, the defendant argued that the community caretaking exception did not justify the officers' decision to impound his car "because the government failed to establish that the car was towed ... pursuant to standard operating procedures."
As is usually the case, "[t]his reasonableness analysis does not hinge solely on any particular factor," but rather takes into account "all the facts and circumstances[.]"
Coccia
,
Here, the Cranston Defendants' impoundment of Boudreau's vehicles was reasonable under the circumstances. First,
Coccia
forecloses Boudreau's argument that the Cranston Defendants' investigatory motive tainted their decision.
See
The district court also held that the Cranston Defendants' subsequent inventory searches of Boudreau's impounded vehicles comported with the Fourth Amendment. It grounded that holding in our recognition in
United States
v.
Richardson
that "[t]he Fourth Amendment permits a warrantless inventory search if the search is carried out pursuant to a standardized policy."
On appeal, Boudreau does not directly challenge the district court's determination that the Cranston Defendants properly carried out their search in conformity with the Department's inventory search policy. Rather, he tells us that this is irrelevant here, because the Cranston Defendants' investigatory motives are what actually animated their decision to conduct inventory searches. This argument, however, does not succeed. For, we have previously held that "[t]he subjective intent of the officers is not relevant so long as they conduct a search according to a standardized inventory policy."
United States
v.
Hawkins
,
2.
We turn now to Boudreau's contention that the Cranston and Warwick Defendants-pursuant to a conspiracy that they formed-entrapped him into driving on a suspended driver's license. At the outset, we note that the Cranston Defendants
*74
have
not
taken the position that Boudreau's claim of entrapment does not allege a constitutional violation for purposes of § 1983 liability.
Cf.
Stokes
v.
Gann
,
In the criminal context, the defense of entrapment comprises two elements: "(1) government inducement of the criminal conduct; and (2) an absence of predisposition on the part of the defendant to engage in the criminal conduct."
United States
v.
González-Pérez
,
3.
Next, we address Boudreau's claim that-pursuant to a conspiracy with the ATC Defendants-Detective Petit impermissibly searched Boudreau's office at ATC and the desktop computer located there. In rejecting this claim, the district court and Magistrate Judge both noted the Warwick Defendants' argument that "there is no evidence that Det[ective] Petit searched Plaintiff's office." But, neither the district court nor the Magistrate Judge explicitly addressed Detective Petit's alleged search of Boudreau's office in rejecting Boudreau's Fourth Amendment claim against Detective Petit. On appeal, however, Boudreau does not direct us to any evidence in the summary judgment record that would engender a dispute of fact as to whether Detective Petit searched his office. This, therefore, does not provide grounds for overturning the district court's holding.
As for Detective Petit's search of Boudreau's computer, the district court likewise found no Fourth Amendment violation. It reasoned that "Plaintiff is correct that Det[ective] Petit could not have conducted a warrantless search of Plaintiff's office computer without his employer's permission; but here, there is uncontroverted evidence that the owner of Plaintiff's work computer gave Det[ective] Petit permission to search it." The district court cited the Ninth Circuit's decision in
United States
v.
Ziegler
as supporting the proposition that-while Boudreau may have had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his work computer-his employer could nonetheless provide valid consent to search the computer.
*75
the government "may show that permission to search was obtained from a third party who possessed common authority over or other sufficient relationship to the premises or effects sought to be inspected");
see also
Illinois
v.
Rodríguez
,
Boudreau argues that
Ziegler
's logic does not control here, because in that case the employer enjoyed "complete administrative access" to the defendant's computer, conducted "routine" monitoring of employees' computers, and provided notice to employees that their work computers "were company-owned and not to be used for activities of a personal nature."
This fails to convince us, though, that the district court committed reversible error. We first recall that, consistent with
Rodríguez
, our inquiry is whether John Lussier had, to Detective Petit's mind, apparent authority to consent to the search of Boudreau's computer.
See
4.
Boudreau also presses that the district court erred in granting summary judgment of his claim that Detective Petit made false statements in the affidavits he submitted with his application for warrants to search Boudreau's electronic devices and residence. The crux of Boudreau's argument is that Detective Petit did not mention the SSP-captured screenshots that the ATC Defendants provided him, in addition to falsely claiming that Yahoo! had not responded to a subpoena. 2
*76
A § 1983 plaintiff may make out a Fourth Amendment violation by showing that officers acted with at least "reckless disregard" of the "probable falsity" of their statements in support of a warrant application.
Burke
v.
Town of Walpole
,
That final requirement proves an insurmountable obstacle for Boudreau. Even if we assume that Boudreau is correct that Detective Petit intentionally or recklessly misrepresented that Yahoo! had not responded to the subpoena, and omitted that the ATC Defendants had shown him the SSP-captured screenshots, his warrant application would nonetheless have conferred probable cause. Among other things, that warrant application explained that the ATC Defendants contacted Detective Petit after discovering that Boudreau was viewing child pornography on his work computer, and that Detective Petit's "forensic preview" of that computer revealed "numerous images" of child pornography. This information is sufficient to give rise to probable cause. Therefore, even assuming favorably to Boudreau that Detective Petit's warrant affidavit included misrepresentations and omissions, a Fourth Amendment violation cannot have resulted, because these things would not have been material to the magistrate's probable cause determination. 3
B.
We now take up Boudreau's claim that the ATC Defendants violated ECPA when, using SSP, they captured screenshots of his activity on his work computer. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the ATC defendants on this claim, holding (1) that to make out a violation of ECPA, Boudreau needed to show a material dispute of fact that the ATC Defendants intercepted his electronic communications "contemporaneously [to their] transmission," and (2) Boudreau could not, relying only on non-expert evidence, make that showing. Boudreau asserts that the district court erred at both steps.
1.
EPCA prohibits the "intercept" of "any wire, oral, or electronic communication."
"All of the circuit courts that have considered the issue" have concluded that, to constitute an "intercept" within the meaning of ECPA, "the acquisition of a communication must be contemporaneous with its transmission."
Luis
v.
Zang
,
In arguing for such a functional approach Boudreau relies heavily on a pair of cases from the Seventh Circuit. But, he misapprehends those cases, neither of which provide support for an approach of that sort. Boudreau tells us that in
Epstein
v.
Epstein
, the Seventh Circuit found the interception of an email to have been contemporaneous despite "a three-hour delay between when the message was sent and intercepted."
See
Boudreau also cites
United States
v.
Szymuszkiewicz
,
Boudreau's reliance on the Sixth Circuit's decision in
Luis
in advocating for that "functional approach" is similarly unavailing. There, the Sixth Circuit that the plaintiff had adequately stated a claim that the defendant's use of the communications-monitoring software known as "WebWatcher" had violated ECPA.
Luis
,
In the end, that proposed approach is untenable, as it is in tension with ECPA's definition of "intercept," which includes the "acquisition of any ... electronic ... communication," but does not mention "electronic storage," despite the statute defining that term alongside "electronic communications."
See
2.
Having determined that ECPA does require that communications be intercepted contemporaneously, and rejected his functional approach to contemporaneity, we now consider whether, as Boudreau asserts, he nonetheless brought forth sufficient evidence of contemporaneity for his complaint to survive summary judgment. Boudreau leans primarily on SSP-captured screenshots depicting, among other thing, the contents of his Yahoo! Mail inbox, opened emails from others, and emails that Boudreau was in the process of drafting. It is of no consequence, says Boudreau, that he may never have sent these incomplete emails, because "[e]ven unsent Yahoo! Mail email drafts are auto-saved over the internet." Furthermore, in some of these screenshots, the web browser's "progress bar" indicates that the page displayed on Boudreau's screen was in the process of loading at the time of the screenshot. Additionally, the screenshots' timestamps *79 match the times that Boudreau's desktop clock displays-though the screenshot timestamps include seconds (e.g., 9:51:28), and the desktop clock shows only hours and minutes (e.g., 9:51 AM).
The district court correctly ruled that the screenshots "[do] not, on [their] face, prove contemporaneity." And it granted summary judgment of Boudreau's ECPA claim on the grounds that expert evidence was necessary to determine whether these screenshots showed that SSP had intercepted Boudreau's communications, and that Boudreau had failed to provide evidence of that sort. On appeal, Boudreau asserts that the district court was incorrect, because lay jurors, without the aid of expert testimony, "would have been well equipped to review the key evidence in this case [and] infer that SSP intercepted electronic communication." He argues that "[s]creen-capture and webmail technology are commonplace." Thus, he says, they "fall[ ] within the realm of knowledge of the average lay person."
See
United States
v.
Caldwell
,
We disagree. It may be so that a majority of individuals in the United States use and are familiar with email. And so too may a great number of people understand the concept of capturing a screenshot on an electronic device. But that isn't the inquiry here. Instead, we ask whether Boudreau could have shown that SSP contemporaneously intercepted his electronic communications relying entirely on evidence "not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge." See Fed. R. Evid. 701(c). We answer this question in the negative because apprehending whether SSP contemporaneously intercepted his communications requires more than a lay understanding of email and the concept of capturing a screenshot. Indeed, while Boudreau insists that the screenshots in the record-some of which depict a partially loaded "status bar" and all of which feature a timestamp showing the same number of minutes Boudreau's desktop clock-necessarily evince contemporaneous interception, this is not so. Rather, making this determination would require an understanding of, for example, among other things, what SSP actually does (and on what sort of time-scale it does it) when it captures a screenshot, what a web browser's progress bar actually indicates, and how exactly Yahoo! Mail auto-saves emails as a user drafts them. That level of knowledge, we feel comfortable holding, is beyond that of lay jurors. 4
This conclusion finds ample support in the body of case law that, in analyzing claims similar to Boudreau's, engages in substantial detail with the nature and workings of the technology at issue.
In re Pharmatrack, Inc. Privacy Litig.
-an ECPA case in which we concluded that software designed to collect information about visitors to pharmaceutical companies' websites had contemporaneously intercepted the communications of those visitors-is one such example.
5
See
We, therefore, agree with the district court that for Boudreau's ECPA claim to survive summary judgment, he needed to adduce expert evidence concerning SSP's purported interception of his communications.
III.
We detect no error in the district court's decision to grant summary judgment in favor of the defendants on all of Boudreau's claims. The judgment of the district court is therefore affirmed.
Affirmed .
The Supreme Court of Oregon has explained the justification for the exception in this way: "Our society ... is an impersonal one. Many of us do not know the names of our next-door neighbors. Because of this, tasks that neighbors, friends or relatives may have performed in the past now fall to the police."
State
v.
Bridewell
,
Boudreau also asserts that the resulting warrants were impermissibly broad in scope. Boudreau, however, does not argue that any misdoing by Detective Petit led to the magistrate issuing an overbroad warrant. As a result, his protest that the warrant was overbroad has no bearing on his claims against Detective Petit or any of the other Defendants here.
Boudreau's claim of municipal liability against the City of Cranston necessarily fails for want of a predicate constitutional violation. As for the City of Warwick-while resolving that claim on qualified immunity grounds means that we need not reach the question of whether Detective Petit's search of Boudreau's computer violated the Fourth Amendment-Boudreau's municipal liability claim fails because he has not met his burden of showing that the alleged constitutional violation was the result of Warwick policy or custom.
See
Monell
v.
Dept. of Soc. Servs. of City of N.Y.
,
Because we find the SSP-captured screenshots to have been, standing alone, categorically insufficient to show contemporaneous interception, we need not take up Boudreau's assertion that the ATC Defendants spoliated evidence by failing to preserve all of the screenshots that SSP captured.
In
Pharmatrack
, we found it unnecessary to determine whether ECPA requires contemporaneous interception because the evidence showed that, in any event, the communications at issue had been intercepted contemporaneously.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Jason BOUDREAU, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Steve LUSSIER; John Lussier; Steve Sorel; Kevin Petit; Officer Kim Carroll; Officer Nathan Bagshaw; Sergeant Weller; City of Cranston; City of Warwick; Donald Lussier, Defendants, Appellees, Officer James Needham, Defendant.
- Cited By
- 47 cases
- Status
- Published