CA7: Reused civil eviction order was without legal authority and qualified immunity denied

Defendants used a civil eviction order twice. The first time was lawful and based on a court order. The landlord let the plaintiffs back in. Then the first order was somehow stamped by the clerk to reuse it to evict again. Defendants obtained summary judgment but it’s reversed. Zoretic v. Darge, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 14537 (7th Cir. Aug. 8, 2016):

With regard to the argument that the clerk’s new date stamp empowered the deputies to undertake the second eviction, the defendants failed to provide authority that the clerk’s office had the power to issue an eviction order on its own, and we have found none. Certainly there is no evidence here that the clerk’s office was adjudicating private rights between parties when it re-stamped a used court order. See, e.g., Snyder, 380 F.3d at 287 (no immunity because entering pleadings into a docket not the type of discretionary function normally attributed to judges). The clerk’s act of stamping the order was more akin to a ministerial act that did not require a judge’s involvement at all. So we do not see a path for the deputies to bootstrap a quasi-judicial immunity defense for themselves to a theory that the clerk possessed quasi-judicial powers to adjudicate a new eviction order.

It is possible the deputies at the scene on June 5 believed they were enforcing a judge’s eviction order. But they were not, and their mistake—even if reasonable—does not entitle them to quasi-judicial immunity. Even more problematic for the defendants, their entire argument as to why the manner in which they carried out the eviction was lawful is predicated on the legality of the eviction order. With nothing more than an order that had already been executed, they had no right to enter the residence, or to search Zoretic’s belongings. And while it may have been reasonable to enter the apartment with guns drawn for safety reasons if they had been enforcing an actual order, the same is not true for entering a civilian’s home with guns pointed for no reason at all. So they failed to meet their burden of showing that, as a matter of law, it was objectively reasonable to enter Zoretic’s apartment, search it, point their guns at the Zoretics, and detain them. Perhaps a reasonable officer would not have known that the order was not enforceable, but that is not the argument the defendants made. We reverse and remand for further proceedings on the Fourth Amendment claims.