In Davis v. United States, published April 13, 2017, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed denial of a federal agent's motion for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds in a Bivens action. The plaintiff, a small 74-year-old woman, sought to sell a paperweight containing a rice-grain-sized sliver of moon rock that she believed Neil Armstrong gave her husband in recognition of her husband's service to NASA. She needed the money for treatment of her ill son. She contacted NASA to ask if they knew of possible buyers. A NASA agent organized a sting operation in which he met the plaintiff at a family restaurant in daylight hours, posing as a buyer. He seized the rock and he and other law enforcement personnel took the plaintiff into the parking lot. En route, the plaintiff urinated in her pants. According to the plaintiff, the agent interrogated her in the parking lot for one-and-a-half to two hours while she stood in urine-soaked pants.
The 9th Circuit held that, based on the plaintiff's version of events, the plaintiff raised genuine issues of triable facts on whether the detention was unreasonably prolonged and degrading, and therefore violated the Fourth Amendment. The agent had already seized the paperweight, the circumstances made it unlikely that the plaintiff was armed, and the agent knew the circumstances behind the plaintiff's acts.
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