Editor’s Note: Law Week Colorado edits court opinion summaries for style and, when necessary, length.
Halima Culley loaned her car to her son, who was later pulled over by Alabama police officers and arrested for possession of marijuana. Lena Sutton loaned her car to a friend, who was stopped by Alabama police and arrested for trafficking methamphetamine. In both cases, the cars were seized under an Alabama civil forfeiture law that permitted seizure of a car “incident to an arrest” so long as the state then “promptly” initiated a forfeiture case.
The state of Alabama filed forfeiture complaints against Culley’s and Sutton’s cars just 10 and 13 days, respectively, after their seizure. While their forfeiture proceedings were pending, Culley and Sutton each filed purported class-action complaints in federal court seeking money damages under Section 1983 of Title 42 of the U.S. Code, claiming state officials violated their due process rights by retaining their cars during the forfeiture process without holding preliminary hearings. In a consolidated appeal, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of the claims, holding a timely forfeiture hearing affords claimants due process and no separate preliminary hearing is constitutionally required.
The U.S. Supreme Court held in civil forfeiture cases involving personal property, the due process clause requires a timely forfeiture hearing but doesn’t require a separate preliminary hearing. Due process ordinarily requires states to provide notice and a hearing before seizing real property. But states may immediately seize personal property subject to civil forfeiture when the property (for example, a car) otherwise could be removed, destroyed or concealed before a forfeiture hearing. When a state seizes personal property, the high court explained due process requires a timely post-seizure forfeiture hearing.
The court noted its decisions in United States v. $8,850 and United States v. Von Neumann make it clear due process doesn’t require a separate preliminary hearing to determine whether seized personal property may be retained pending the ultimate forfeiture hearing. In $8,850, the court addressed the process due when customs seized currency from an individual entering the U.S. but didn’t immediately file for civil forfeiture of the currency. The court concluded a post-seizure delay “may become so prolonged that the dispossessed property owner has been deprived of a meaningful hearing at a meaningful time,” and prescribed factors for courts to consider in assessing whether a forfeiture hearing is timely.
In Von Neumann, a property owner failed to declare the purchase of his new car upon driving it into the U.S., and a customs official seized the car after determining that it was subject to civil forfeiture. The plaintiff filed a petition for remission of the forfeiture — in essence, a request under federal law that the government exercise its discretion to forgive the forfeiture — which the government didn’t answer for 36 days. The plaintiff sued, arguing the government’s delay in answering the remission petition violated due process.
The court rejected that claim, broadly holding that due process didn’t require a pre-forfeiture-hearing remission procedure in the first place. Instead, Von Neumann held a timely forfeiture hearing satisfies due process in civil forfeiture cases, and $8,850 specifies the standard for when a forfeiture hearing is timely.
The court noted the argument in this case for a separate preliminary hearing appears to be a backdoor argument for a more timely forfeiture hearing to allow a property owner with a good defense to recover property quickly. But the court’s precedents already require a timely hearing, and a property owner can raise $8,850-based arguments to ensure a timely hearing.
The Supreme Court found petitioners’ efforts to distinguish Von Neumann on the ground the statutory remission procedure in that case was discretionary failed because that fact played no role in the court’s constitutional analysis. It found petitioners also can’t distinguish the relevant language in Von Neumann as dicta, as the court ruled for the government on the ground that a timely “forfeiture proceeding, without more, provides the postseizure hearing required by due process” in civil forfeiture cases. Similarly, it determined petitioners’ contention that Mathews v. Eldridge should govern petitioners’ request for a preliminary hearing failed given the court decided $8,850 and Von Neumann after Mathews.
According to the opinion, petitioners also pointed to the court’s Fourth Amendment decisions in the criminal context to support the contention a preliminary hearing is required in the civil forfeiture context. But the high court found that analogy fails. It explained Fourth Amendment hearings are not adversarial and address only whether probable cause supports the arrestee’s detention.
It found the due process clause doesn’t require more extensive preliminary procedures for the temporary retention of property than for the temporary restraint of persons.
The Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s decision.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the court, in which Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito Jr., Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined. Gorsuch filed a concurring opinion, in which Thomas joined.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined.
In the dissenting opinion, Sotomayor asserted in most states during a civil forfeiture, the resulting proceeds from the car’s sale go to the police department’s budget. Petitioners claim the due process clause requires a prompt, post-seizure opportunity for innocent car owners to argue to a judge why they should retain their cars pending that final forfeiture determination.
When an officer has a financial incentive to hold onto a car and an owner pleads innocence, they argue, a retention hearing at least ensures that the officer has probable cause to connect the owner and the car to a crime.
The dissenting opinion noted the court held the due process clause never requires that minimal safeguard. In doing so, the dissenting justices assert it sweeps far more broadly than the narrow question presented and hamstrings lower courts from addressing myriad abuses of the civil forfeiture system.
Sotomayer explained she would have decided only which due process test governs whether a retention hearing is required and left it to the lower courts to apply that test to different civil forfeiture schemes.
Warner Chappell Music, Inc. v. Nealy
Under the Copyright Act, a plaintiff must file suit “within three years after the claim accrued.” On one understanding of that limitations provision, a copyright claim “accrue[s]” when “an infringing act occurs.” But under an alternative view, the so-called discovery rule, a claim accrues when “the plaintiff discovers, or with due diligence should have discovered,” the infringing act. That rule enables a diligent plaintiff to raise claims about even very old infringements if he discovered them within the three years prior to suit.
In this case, respondent Sherman Nealy invoked the discovery rule to sue Warner Chappell Music for copyright infringements going back 10 years. Nealy argued his claims were timely because he first learned of the infringing conduct less than three years before he sued.
In the district court, Warner Chappell accepted the discovery rule governed the timeliness of Nealy’s claims. But it argued that, even if Nealy could sue under that rule for older infringements, he could recover damages or profits for only those occurring in the last three years. The district court agreed. On interlocutory appeal, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, rejecting the notion of a three-year damages bar on a timely claim.
The U.S. Supreme Court held the Copyright Act entitles a copyright owner to obtain monetary relief for any timely infringement claim, no matter when the infringement occurred. The act’s statute of limitations establishes a three-year period for filing suit, which begins to run when a claim accrues (here, the court assumed without deciding, upon its discovery). That provision establishes no separate three-year limit on recovering damages. If any time limit on damages exists, it must come from the act’s remedial sections. But those provisions merely state that an infringer is liable either for statutory damages or for the owner’s actual damages and the infringer’s profits. There is no time limit on monetary recovery. So a copyright owner possessing a timely claim is entitled to damages for infringement, no matter when the infringement occurred.
The court’s decision in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. also doesn’t support a three-year damages cap. There, the court noted that the Copyright Act’s statute of limitations allows plaintiffs “to gain retrospective relief running only three years back from” the filing of a suit.
Taken out of context, that line might seem to address the issue here, the court noted in its opinion. But it noted that statement merely described how the limitations provision worked in Petrella, where the plaintiff had long known of the defendant’s infringing conduct and so could not avail herself of the discovery rule to sue for infringing acts more than three years old. The court didn’t go beyond the case’s facts to say that even if the limitations provision allows a claim for an earlier infringement, the plaintiff may not obtain monetary relief.
Unlike the plaintiff in Petrella, Nealy has invoked the discovery rule to bring claims for infringing acts occurring more than three years before he filed suit. The court granted certiorari in this case on the assumption that such claims may be timely under the act’s limitations provision. If Nealy’s claims are thus timely, the court found he may obtain damages for them.
The Supreme Court affirmed the decision.
Justice Elena Kagan delivered the opinion of the court, in which Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined.
Justice Neil Gorsuch filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr. joined.
In the dissenting opinion, Gorsuch asserted the Copyright Act doesn’t tolerate a discovery rule. Gorsuch wrote he would have dismissed this case as improvidently granted and awaited another squarely presenting the question whether the Copyright Act authorizes the discovery rule.