HARTMAN v. MOORE

Legal Principle at Issue

This is a Bivens action against criminal investigators for inducing prosecution in retaliation for speech. The question is whether the complaint states an actionable violation of the First Amendment without alleging an absence of probable cause to support the underlying criminal charge. 

Action

Reversed and remanded. Petitioning party received a favorable disposition.

Facts/Syllabus

Seeking to convince the U.S. Postal Service to incorporate multiline optical scanning technology, a company that manufactured multiline optical readers, Recognition Equipment Inc. (REI), commenced an extensive lobbying and public-relations campaign. Although REI had received some $50 million from the United States Postal Service to develop this technology for reading and sorting mail, the Postmaster General and other top officials of the Postal Service were urging mailers to use nine-digit zip codes (Zip + 4), which would provide enough routing information on one line of text to allow single-line scanning machines to sort mail automatically by reading just that line. In the end, the Postal Service begrudgingly embraced the multiline technology, but awarded the lucrative equipment contract to a competing firm. 

Not only did REI lose out on the contract, but Moore and REI were soon entangled in two investigations by Postal Service inspectors. into REI and its chief executive, respondent William G. Moore, Jr., for their alleged involvement in a consulting-firm kickback scandal and for their alleged improper role in the search for a new Postmaster General. Notwithstanding very limited evidence linking Moore and REI to any wrong-doing, an Assistant U.S. Attorney decided to bring criminal charges against them, and in 1988 the grand jury indicted Moore, REI, and the company's vice president. After six weeks of trial, however, the District Court concluded that there was a "complete lack of direct evidence" connecting the defendants to any of the criminal wrongdoing alleged, and it granted the REI defendants' motion for judgment of acquittal. Moore then filed an action against the federal prosecutor and petitioner postal inspectors, arguing, as relevant here, that they had engineered the prosecution in retaliation for his lobbying efforts. The claims against the prosecutor were dismissed in accordance with the absolute immunity for prosecutorial judgment. Ultimately, the entire suit was dismissed, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reinstated the retaliatory-prosecution claim against the inspectors. 

With the remainder of the case back in District Court, the Post Office inspectors moved for summary judgment, urging that because the underlying criminal charges were supported by probable cause they were entitled to qualified immunity from a retaliatory-prosecution suit. The District Court denied the motion, and the DC Circuit affirmed.