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Poe v. Leonard

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Argued: June 5, 2001

Plaintiff-Appellee sued, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. � 1983, a Connecticut State Trooper and his supervisor in their individual capacities after she discovered that the trooper surreptitiously videotaped her undressing at the Connecticut State Police Training Center. The supervisor appealed from an order of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Alan H. Nevas, Judge) denying his motion for summary judgment, which asserted a defense of qualified immunity, and denying his motion in limine to exclude Plaintiff-Appellee’s expert witness.

We hold that in order for a supervisor to be liable under section 1983, both the law allegedly violated by the subordinate and the supervisory liability doctrine under which the plaintiff wishes to hold the supervisor liable must be clearly established. By 1993, it was clearly established that a police officer violates a person’s Fourteenth Amendment right to bodily privacy when that officer views, photographs or otherwise records another’s unclothed or partially unclothed body, without the person’s consent. By 1993, it was also clearly established that a supervisor could be liable if he had actual or constructive notice that it was highly likely his subordinate, while on duty, might violate another’s right to privacy in his or her unclothed body, but the supervisor deliberately or recklessly disregarded that risk by failing to take reasonable action to prevent such a violation, and that failure caused the constitutional injury to the plaintiff. We conclude that the defendant supervisor is entitled to qualified immunity in this case because the plaintiff has failed to proffer sufficient facts to meet this standard and because reasonable supervisors in the defendant’s position could disagree about whether his inaction violated clearly established law.

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