Coffin, et al. v. Brandau, et al., No. 08-14538 (11th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CasePlaintiffs, a husband and wife, sued defendants, two sheriff's deputies, seeking damages under 42 U.S.C. 1983 on the grounds that the deputies' warrantless entry into their garage, and wife's subsequent arrest for obstruction of justice, violated their Fourth Amendment rights. Wife attempted to shut her open garage door to prevent the deputies from serving a court order on her husband, as the garage door closed, one of the deputies stepped into the threshold, breaking the electronic-eye safety beam on the garage door and caused the door to retreat to its open position. At issue was whether the warrantless seizure inside plaintiffs' garage violated their Fourth Amendment rights and, if so, whether those rights were clearly established when the incident occurred, such that the deputies should be stripped of qualified immunity. The court held that although the deputies' entrance into the garage did violate plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment rights, the boundaries of the right violated were not clearly established and therefore, the deputies were entitled to qualified immunity. Accordingly, the district court properly granted summary judgment in favor of the deputies both on plaintiffs' arrest claim and on plaintiffs' challenge of the entrance of the garage.
This opinion or order relates to an opinion or order originally issued on February 24, 2010.
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