Annabel K Melongo Response To Cook County Motion To Dismiss
Annabel K Melongo Response To Cook County Motion To Dismiss
Annabel K Melongo Response To Cook County Motion To Dismiss
______________________________________________________________________________
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
______________________________________________________________________________
ANNABEL K. MELONGO,
)
)
Plaintiff,
)
)
)
v.
)
)
)
ASA ROBERT PODLASEK; ASA JULIE
)
GUNNINGL; INVESTIGATOR KATE
)
OHARA (Star No. 423); INVESTIGATOR
)
JAMES DILLON (Star No. 1068);
)
INVESTIGATOR ANTONIO RUBINO (Star
)
No. 5043); INVESTIGATOR RICH LESIAK
)
(Star No. 5000); UNKNOWN COOK COUNTY )
SHERIFF OFFICERS; DR. MATTHEW S.
)
MARKOS; LAREUL LAUDIN; KYLE
)
FRENCH; AMBER HAQQANI; LISA
)
MADIGAN; COOK COUNTY; COOK
)
COUNTY SHERIFFS OFFICE.
)
______________________________________________________________________________
PLAINTIFFS RESPONSE TO COOK COUNTY DEFENDANTS
MOTION TO DISMISS
To state a claim upon which relief can be granted, the plaintiffs complaint need only
contain a short plain statement of the claim showing that [the plaintiff] is entitled to relief. Fed.
R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). The plaintiff is not required to make detailed factual allegations. Ashcroft v.
Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009). Rather, the complaint must contain only enough facts to
state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face. Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombley, 550 U.S.
544, 570 (2007). A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that
allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct
alleged. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1949, citing Twombley, 550 U.S. at 556. When determining whether
Plaintiff has met the standard, this Court must tak[e] all well-pleaded allegations of the
complaint as true and view [] them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Santiago v. Walls,
599 F. 3d 749, 756 (7th Cir. 2010), quoting Zimmerman v. Tribble, 226 F. 3d 568, 571 (7th Cir.
2000). The Seventh Circuit has interpreted the Supreme Courts Iqbal decision to mean that the
plaintiff must merely give enough details about the subject-matter of the case to present a story
that holds together. Swanson v. Citibank, N.A., 614 F. 3d 400, 405 (7th Cir. 2010). The court
asks itself, could these things have happened, not did they happen. Id.
Plaintiffs complaint unquestionably satisfies this pleading standard.
I.
Count II of Plaintiffs Complaint. However, Plaintiff did not allege that Cook County is liable
for the actions of the County Defendants under a theory of Respondeat Superior. Rather, Plaintiff
alleges that Cook County is directly liable under Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658
(1978), for Plaintiffs damages due to its custom and practice of condoning, acquiescing, and
even promoting the unconstitutional conduct of its law enforcement officials to arrest and charge
citizens under the now unconstitutional eavesdropping statute as retaliation for exercising their
First Amendment rights. Pl. Comp. 95-96. Critically, Defendant Cook County makes no claim
that Plaintiff has failed to adequately plead her Monell claim against the County.
Notably, Plaintiff specifically pled that City of Chicago Employees regularly recorded
conversations without consent of all parties and neither the Illinois Attorney General nor the
Cook County States Attorneys office investigated, arrested, or prosecuted these violators. Pl.
Comp. 66. In contrast, the County promoted a practice among its law enforcement personnel to
single out individuals, like Plaintiff, for prosecution under the eavesdropping statute when it
sought to retaliate against individuals for exercising their First Amendment rights. Pl. Comp.
65-66; 94-98. Accordingly, the Defendants motion to dismiss Count II of the Complaint
because the County is not liable for the actions of the Sheriff Defendants under a theory of
Respondeat Superior must be denied.
II.
Plaintiff Sets Forth A Detailed Factual Narrative That Specifically Identifies the
Actions of the Individual Defendants that Form the Basis of Her Claims
The Sheriff and ASA Defendants claim that Plaintiff merely listed a myriad of
constitutional violations with no factual support. The Defendants overlook or ignore the 12 pages
of factual allegations contained in Plaintiffs Complaint which Plaintiff incorporat[ed], in their
entirety in support of Counts I and IV of her Complaint.
Specifically, ASAs Podlasek and Gunnigle, along with Sheriff Defendants Dillon, Lesiak,
Rubino and OHara arrested Plaintiff for threatening a public official after Plaintiff exercised
her First Amendment Right to create a website that chronicled the States malicious prosecution
of her for computer tampering. Pl. Comp. 58-62. After Plaintiff posted on her website that she
had a big surprise for the court in its attempt to push her out of the case by pretending that she is
psychologically unbalanced. The surprise will be known on April 14, 2010, the Sheriff
Defendants, at the direction of ASAs Podlasek and Gunnigle, arrested her for the offense of
threatening a public official, even though, no probable cause existed to support the arrest. Pl.
Comp. 57-62. As pled in Plaintiffs complaint, while Plaintiff was being examined by
Defendant Markos at the Criminal Court Building for fitness to stand trial, the Sheriff
Defendants interrupted Defendant Markos examination of Plaintiff and directed Defendant
Markos to question Plaintiff about her posts on her website. Pl. Comp. 59-60. Plaintiff
explained to Defendant Markos that her statement merely referred to her intent to hire a new
attorney on the next court date in her computer tampering charge. Pl. Comp. 58. Despite
possessing this knowledge, the Sheriff Defendants at the direction of ASAs Podlasek and
Gunnigle arrested Plaintiff for threatening a public official, even though Plaintiffs statement
could not be reasonably construed as a threat; was not directed at a public official; and could not
have placed any public official in apprehension of immediate future harm. 720 ILCS 5/12-9(a)
(West 2010).
Police officers have probable cause to arrest an individual when the facts and
circumstances within their knowledge and of which they [have] reasonable trustworthy
information are sufficient to warrant a prudent [person] in believing that the [suspect] had
committed or was committing an offense. Sheik-Abdi v. McClellan, 37 F. 3d 1240, 1246 (7th
Cir. 1994). The existence of probable cause or arguable probable cause depends, in the first
instance, on the elements of the predicate criminal offense(s) as defined by state law. Abbott v.
Sangamon Conty., 705 F. 3d 706, 715 (7th Cir. 2013). A person commits the offense of
threatening a public official when that person knowingly and willfully delivers, directly or
indirectly, to a public official a communication containing a threat that would place the public
official or a member of his immediate family in reasonable apprehension of immediate or future
bodily harm, sexual assault, confinement, or restraint. 720 ILCS 5/12-9(1)(1)(i). See also People
v. Hale, 2012 IL App (4th) 100949 at 20 (March 29, 2012). Critically, when the threat is
conveyed to a sworn law enforcement officer, the threat must contain specific facts indicative of
a unique threat to the person, family, or property of the officer and not a generalized threat of
harm. Id. at 23.
As pled in Plaintiffs Complaint, the Sheriff and ASA Defendants could point to no facts
that justified the arrest of Plaintiff for threatening a public official, and therefore, the Sheriff
Defendants arrest of Plaintiff was lawless, unsupported by probable cause, and in violation of
Plaintiffs Fourth Amendment right to be free from the constitutional guarantees outlined in
Plaintiffs Complaint at Paragraph 92.
Notably, the Sheriff and ASA Defendants abandoned charges of threatening a public
official and opted to charge Plaintiff for violating the eavesdropping statute equally lawless
under the Fourth Amendment. Relevant here, [p]robable cause is lacking if an officer has
knowledge of matter tending to establish that the arrestee is entitled . . . to a statutory exemption .
. . Moore v. City of Chicago, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 58402, *9 (N.D. Ill. 2014). See also,
Hodgkins ex rel. Hodgkins v. Peterson, 355 F. 3d 1048, 1061 (7th Cir. 2004). At the time of
Plaintiffs arrest, Illinois eavesdropping statute prohibited a person from knowingly and
intentionally using an eavesdropping device for the purpose of recording any part of any
conversation unless that person did so with the consent of all the parties to the conversation1.
However, exempt from criminal liability was the recording of a conversation made by . . . a
person, who is a party to the conversation, under reasonable suspicion that another party to the
conversation is committing . . . a criminal offense . . . and there is reason to believe that evidence
of the criminal offense may be obtained by the recording. [T]he exemption required (1) a
1
The Illinois Eavesdropping Statute was subsequently struck down as unconstitutional. People v.
Melongo, 2014 IL 114852 (Ill. 2014).
5
subjective suspicion that criminal activity is afoot, and (2) that the suspicion be objectively
reasonable. Carroll v. Lynch, 698 F. 3d 561, 566 (7th Cir. 2012).
As pled in Plaintiffs Complaint, Plaintiff reasonably believed that the office of the
Official Court Reporter had falsified an official report of proceedings that erroneously reflected
her presence at an arraignment on a superceding indictment and bond hearing. Pl. Comp. 4450. In an effort to document this crime, Plaintiff secretly recorded her phone conversations with
Pamela Taylor, supervisor of the Official Court Reporters office. Plaintiffs subjective belief
that she was statutorily exempt from gaining Taylor's consent to record their conversations was
patently obvious, since Plaintiff posted her conversations with Taylor on her website, expressly
noting the statutory exemption. Plaintiff also proactively contacted the FBI to report her belief
that the transcripts were falsified. Pl. Comp. 52-53.
Given these facts, known to the Sheriff and ASA Defendants at the time charges were
levied against Plaintiff, and as pled in Plaintiffs Complaint, the Sheriff Defendants had no
probable cause to arrest or charge Plaintiff for violating the eavesdropping statute. Pl. Comp.
64-67. Accordingly, the Sheriff and ASA Defendants violated Plaintiffs Fourth Amendment
guarantees as set out in paragraph 92 of Plaintiffs complaint.
Moreover, as pled in Plaintiffs complaint, the Sheriff and ASA Defendants arrested
Plaintiff and instituted charges against her purely out of vindictiveness and retaliation for
maintaining a website that purported to expose corruption in the Cook County Criminal justice
system in violation of Plaintiffs First Amendment Rights. Pl. Comp. 66, 92(f & g).
To establish a prima facie case of a First Amendment retaliatory arrest, a plaintiff must
that: (1) she engaged in activity protected by the First Amendment; (2) she suffered a
deprivation that would likely deter First Amendment activity, and (3) the First Amendment
activity was at least a motivating factor in the police officers decision. Thayer v. Chiczewski,
705 F. 3d 237, 251 (7th Cir. 2012). If a plaintiff can make out a prima facie case, the burden
shifts to the defendant to show that the harm would have occurred anyway. Greene v. Doruff,
660 F. 3d 975, 977 (7th Cir. 2011). If the defendant meets its burden of production, then the
burden shifts back to the plaintiff to demonstrate the proffered reason was pretextual and that the
real reason was retaliatory animus. Thayer, 705 F. 3d at 252.
Plaintiffs complaint lays out a detailed narrative, explaining her basis for believing that
the Sheriff and ASA Defendants retaliated against her for exercising her First Amendment rights.
In addition to adequately pleading her federal claims, Plaintiff provided a sufficient
factual basis to support her state tort claims set forth in Count IV of the Complaint, false arrest
(Pl. Comp. 62-67), false imprisonment (Pl. Comp. 62-67), malicious prosecution (Pl. Comp.
62-67), conspiracy (Pl. Comp. 56-86), slander (Pl. Comp. 56-86), fraud (Pl. Comp. 5686), intentional infliction of emotion distress ((Pl. Comp. 56-86), and negligent infliction of
emotion distress (Pl. Comp. 56-86).
Defendants generally state that Plaintiff has failed to satisfy her pleading requirement
with respect to the state law tort claims, but fails to specifically identify which state tort claims
they object to There is no question that consistent with the holding of Swanson v. Citibank, N.A.,
614 F. 3d 400, 405 (7th Cir. 2010). Plaintiff has give[n[ enough details about the subject-matter
of the case to present a story that holds together.
III.
outset, it is unusual to dismiss a claim as time-barred under Rule 12(b)(6) because the
statute of limitations is an affirmative defense that a complaint need not anticipate or overcome.
Hollander v. Brown, 457 F. 3d 688, 691 n.1 (7th Cir. 2006). Notwithstanding the above,
Plaintiff's claims were timely filed. Plaintiff filed this Amended Complaint on June 5, 2014. The
County Defendants were served with a summons and copy of the amended complaint on June 24,
2014. Claims related to Plaintiff's prosecution under the Illinois eavesdropping statute did not
accrue until July 26, 2012 when the charges were officially dismissed. Claims related to the
computer tampering charge did not accrue until July 28, 2014 when the State dismissed two
counts of the indictment and Cook County Judge Joyce granted Plaintiff's motion for a directed
finding on the final count of the indictment. Because Plaintiff filed her complaint and served all
defendants within two years of the accrual of both charges, Defendants' motion to dismiss on
statute of limitations grounds must be dismissed.
Even Plaintiff's false arrest and false imprisonment claims related to her arrest for
violating the Illinois eavesdropping statute are not subject to dismissal on statute of limitations
grounds. Although Plaintiff's original complaint, alleging false arrest and false imprisonment,
was filed more than two years after she was arraigned on the eavesdropping charges, the doctrine
of equitable tolling precludes the Court from dismissing Plaintiff's false arrest and imprisonment
charges. Under Illinois law, equitable tolling may be invoked to suspend the running of the
statute of limitations when (1) a defendant has actively misled the plaintiff; and (2) extraordinary
circumstances have prevented the plaintiff from asserting her rights; or (3) the plaintiff timely
but mistakenly asserted her rights in the wrong forum Clay v. Kuhl, 727 N.E.2d 217, 223 (Ill.
Sup. Ct. 2000)
Plaintiff has alleged while she was in custody on the eavesdropping charges and
representing herself pro se, she was ordered to tender her entire file to Defendant Podlasek which
remained in his possession for over four months. (Pl. Comp. 77-78) Plaintiff has also alleged
that Defendant Podlasek removed vital documents from her file. Defendant Podlasek's egregious
conduct and the extraordinary circumstances justify invocation of the equitable tolling doctrine
and dismissal on statute of limitations grounds at this juncture is inappropriate.
IV.
grounds. Like the statute of limitations, immunity is an affirmative defense, which Plaintiff
ordinarily need not anticipate in her complaint. Cooney v. Casady, 652 F. Supp. 2d 948, 956
(N.D. Ill 2009). Because an "immunity defense usually depends on the facts of the case,
dismissal at the pleading stage is inappropriate." Hortsman v. County of DuPage, 284 F. Supp.
2d 1125, 1133 (N.D. Ill 2003), quoting Alvarado v. Litscher, 67 F. 3d 648, 651-52 (7th Cir.
2001)
A.
Absolute Immunity
The ASA Defendants are not entitled to absolute immunity. The ASA Defendants status
As prosecutors alone do not afford them blanket protection from suit by way of absolute
immunity. "prosecutor are absolutely immune from suits for monetary damages under 1983 for
conduct that 'intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process." Smith v.
Power, 346 F. 3d 740, 742 (7th Cir. 2003), quoting Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 430
(1976). "A prosecutor is shielded by absolute immunity when he acts 'as an advocate for the
State' but not when his acts are investigative and unrelated to the preparation and initiation of
judicial proceedings." Id., citing Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 272 (1993). Thus,
absolute immunity is only for acts they commit within the scope of their employment as
prosecutors. Fields v. Wharrie (Fields II), 740 F. 3d 1107, 1110-1111 (7th Cir. 2014), citing
Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273-276. Often their employment duties go beyond the strictly prosecutorial
to include investigation, and when they do non-prosecutorial work they lose their absolute
immunity and have only the immunity, called "qualified," that other investigators enjoy when
engaged in such work. Id. Thus, the level of immunity to which the ASA Defendants are entitled
turns on the function that they were performing at the time of the alleged misconduct. See
Binachi v. McQueen, No. 12-cv-00364, 2014 WL 700628 at *7 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 24, 2014)
Plaintiff's Complaint clearly sets forth facts that show that the ASA Defendants were
functioning as investigators when Carol Spizzirri first contacted her "friend" Dick Devine and
asked him to direct an investigation into Plaintiff's alleged destruction of SALF computer files,
and later, when the ASA Defendants were monitoring Plaintiff's website and issuing
investigatory subpoenas for records related to Plaintiff's website, a website aimed at exposing
corruption in the Cook County Criminal justice system.. Plaintiff alleges that ASA Roberts
investigated and directed the investigation of Carol Spizzirri's claims of computer tampering
against Plaintiff at the direction of the former Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine. (Pl.
Comp. 39-40) Further, Plaintiff alleges that while she was undergoing a psychological exam to
determine her fitness to stand trial on the computer tampering charges, ASA Defendants
Podlasek and Gunnigle directed Defendant Dillon to arrest Plaintiff for posting a message on her
website that they construed as "threatening". (Pl. Comp. 58) Plaintiff alleges that ASAs
Podalsek and Gunnigle were investigating Plaintiff's actions as it related to her website, were
10
monitoring her website, and even issued investigatory subpoenas to obtain records related to
Plaintiff's website. (Pl. Comp. 62) Plaintiff also alleged that Defendant ASA Podlasek stole
documents from her files when she was ordered to produce her files to the Podlasek during a
period of time in which she represented herself pro se. (Pl. Comp. 77-78)
These facts demonstrate that the ASA Defendants were functioning in an investigatory
role and the affirmative defense of absolute immunity is unavailable to them.
B.
The Sheriff and ASA Defendants contend that Plaintiff is barred from bring state law tort
claims against them pursuant to the Illinois Tort Immunity Act. Contrary to Defendants'
argument, Plaintiff has alleged that Defendants actions were "unlawful, conscience shocking,
unconstitutional, and performed maliciously, recklessly. fraudulently, intentionally,
willfully, and wantonly." (Pl. Comp. 110) Accordingly, Defendants may not invoke the Illinois
Tort Immunity Act as an affirmative defense and dismissal on this basis would be inappropriate.
C.
Qualified Immunity
11
/S/JENNIFER BONJEAN
Bonjean Law Group, PLLC
1000 Dean St., Ste. 345
Brooklyn, NY 11238
718-875-1840
12