Keller-Bee v. State

BARBERA, C.J. This case poses the question of whether absolute judicial immunity bars suit against the State of Maryland for the alleged negligent act of an unspecified clerk of the court when the only injury alleged in the complaint is the direct and proximate result of the judge’s issuance of a body attachment. For the reasons that follow, we answer that question in the affirmative. I. On April 16, 2010, Petitioner, Cynthia Keller-Bee, appeared in the District Court of Maryland sitting in Harford County pursuant to an order requiring her to show cause why she had not answered post-judgment interrogatories in an action in which judgment had been entered against her. For an unknown reason, the judgment creditor did not appear at that hearing, causing the court to dismiss the show cause order.

Ironically, nine months later, the judgment creditor filed a motion requesting that Petitioner be found in contempt for her alleged failure to appear at the hearing on April 16, 2010, and seeking a body attachment against her. 1 The Administrative Judge for the District Court signed the body attachment. On the morning of January 27, 2011, it was executed upon Peti ³⁰³ tioner and she was taken into custody. That same afternoon, Petitioner was brought before a Court Commissioner who released her on her own recognizance with the advisement that she would receive notice of a court date to address her alleged failure to appear. On February 4, 2011, Petitioner went to the District Court Clerk’s Office to ask why she had been arrested and detained.

Following that office’s investigation, Petitioner was advised that she should not have been arrested because she had appeared at the hearing as ordered and, for that reason, she would not need to appear again in court. On December 27, 2013, Petitioner filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City a two-count complaint against the State of Maryland. The complaint alleged “negligence and malfeasance of one or more of the State’s employees in the District Court System for Harford County in presenting body attachment papers to [the Administrative Judge] for signage and issuance.” Count I alleged that “drafting and or presenting body attachment papers to [the judge] for issuance of the same” constituted negligence on the part of some unnamed “employee/agent or employees/agents” of the District Court of Maryland. Count II alleged that those same acts violated Petitioner’s rights under Article 24 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights.

Petitioner further alleged that “she was harmed and lost her liberty” and “experienced severe mental anguish, pain and suffering, loss of freedom, liberty, and/or other recoverable losses and damages associated with the violation of her rights.” The State moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground of absolute judicial immunity. Following a hearing, the Circuit Court denied the motion. While noting that a clerk would be entitled to the defense of absolute judicial immunity if acting at the direction or under the supervision of a judge, the Circuit Court questioned whether the clerk was acting with such authority based upon the time that had elapsed between Petitioner’s appearance in court and the clerk’s generating the body attachment. ³⁰⁴ The State appealed the denial of the motion to dismiss. The Court of Special Appeals, in a reported opinion, reversed the judgment of the Circuit Court. 2 State v. Keller-Bee, 224 Md.App. 1, 3 , 119 A.3d 80 (2015).

Observing that “absolute judicial immunity attaches to the function and not the person,” id. at 11 , 119 A.3d 80 , the intermediate appellate court agreed with the State that the action complained of was the judge’s judicial act of signing the body attachment, rather than any action by court personnel in presenting the body attachment to the judge for signature or thereafter transmitting the signed body attachment to the sheriff for execution. Id. at 6 , 119 A.3d 80 (“The harm [Petitioner] alleges emanated from the judge’s issuance of the warrant. It is this judicial function that is really the subject of [her] tort claim.”). The Court of Special Appeals added that “presentment of warrants to judges for approval and signature is a task that regularly occurs during the performance of a clerk’s employment,” and therefore “the issuance of arrest warrants is a judicial act.” Id. at 13 , 119 A.3d 80 .

Petitioner filed a petition for writ of certiorari, which asked us to decide: Whether the Court of Special Appeals properly found that District Court clericals who are neither supervised by a Judge or State’s Attorney nor directed to take certain actions by a Judge or State’s Attorney are entitled to absolute judicial immunity for negligent torts which result in injury to a citizen? [ 3 ] ³⁰⁵ We granted the petition, Keller-Bee v. State, 445 Md. 487 , 128 A.3d 51 (2015), and affirm the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals, but do so without regard to whether the clerk was supervised or directed to take certain actions by a judge. Instead, we hold that Petitioner’s claims against the State of Maryland are barred by absolute judicial immunity because the clerk’s role in transmitting the application for a body attachment to the judge for signature was not the proximate cause of Petitioner’s wrongful arrest. Rather, the judge’s act of signing the body attachment caused Petitioner’s injury, and that act is protected by absolute judicial immunity. II. “The principle that judicial officers should be immune from all civil liability for their judicial acts has been part of the common law since very early days.” Parker v. State, 337 Md. 271, 277 , 653 A.2d 436 (1995).

The doctrine of absolute judicial immunity bars civil suits against judges “for acts done by them in the exercise of their judicial functions.” Id. at 280 , 653 A.2d 436 (quoting Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. 335, 347 , 13 Wall. 335 , 20 L.Ed. 646 (1872)). The reasoning behind the doctrine is sound: for judges to exercise fully the independent judgment and discretion vested to them in furtherance of the administration of justice, they must rest assured that they will not be exposed to liability to “everyone who might feel himself aggrieved” by the judges’ decisions. Id. at 281, 653 A.2d 436 (quoting Bradley, 80 U.S. at 347 ). Thus, “a judge who has a general judicial authority to perform the kinds of acts for which he is sued is absolutely immune from civil liability for those acts.” Id. at 282, 653 A.2d 436 .

The only exception to the broad grant of absolute immunity is if an act is performed when “there is clearly no jurisdiction over the subject-matter” and “the want of jurisdiction is known to the judge.” Bradley, 80 U.S. at 351-52 . ³⁰⁶ The State advances two alternative theories for why Petitioner’s suit is barred by the doctrine of absolute judicial immunity. The State first points out that issuance of a body attachment is a “judicial act” protected by judicial immunity and, as such, “ ‘cannot form the basis of a recovery against the State under the Tort Claims Act.’ ” (Quoting Parker, 337 Md. at 286 , 653 A.2d 436 ). The State argues that, “because the gravamen of Ms. Keller-Bee’s complaint consists of harm she claims to have suffered from [the judge’s] issuance of the body attachment — a judicial act protected by judicial immunity— this suit against the State is barred by the rule recognized in Parker.” It therefore follows, the State further argues, that, “to uphold the dismissal of the complaint brought against the State based on absolute judicial immunity, this Court need not look beyond the but-for cause of Ms. Keller-Bee’s injury, which was [the judge’s] judicial act of issuing the body attachment.” The State argues, in the alternative, that “judicial immunity extends beyond judges to protect other individuals whose public duties are ‘necessary to the proper administration of justice,’ ” (quoting D’Aoust v. Diamond, 424 Md. 549, 598 , 36 A.3d 941 (2012)), and that “ ‘those individuals, when performing tasks that are integral to the judicial process, enjoy the same immunity that is applicable to the judges,’ ” (quoting Gill v. Ripley, 352 Md. 754, 771 , 724 A.2d 88 (1999)). For both arguments, the State relies on the settled proposition that it is “the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who performed it,” that drives the immunity analysis.

See Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 229 , 108 S.Ct. 538 , 98 L.Ed.2d 555 (1988). Petitioner accepts the general proposition that judicial immunity applies not only to acts performed by judges in carrying out their judicial duties but also to those judiciary personnel “who act under the direction of a judge or who implement judicial orders of one kind or another.” (Quoting Gill, 352 Md. at 771 , 724 A.2d 88 ). She argues, however, that our case law does not provide “a blanket extension of judicial immunity to all [clerks] in the District Court Clerks’ offices.” ³⁰⁷ Consequently, “the clerk who initiated the process that led to [Petitioner’s] wrongful arrest and incarceration does not have such protection.” We need not resolve the parties’ dispute over whether judicial immunity covers the acts of the unnamed District Court clerk or clerks who prepared the body attachment for the Administrative Judge’s signature, as it is clear to us that the judicial act that was the direct and proximate cause of Petitioner’s alleged injury was the judge’s issuance of the body attachment directing that Petitioner be taken into custody.

III

In