Perkins

Lawrence, Clara, and April Perkins appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment in their 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suit against the city of West Covina, and the court’s grant of qualified immunity to individual police officers. City detectives searched Perkins’ home in connection with a murder investigation involving a former boarder. Perkins had difficulty securing the recovery of his property seized during the search, including cash and a starter pistol.

Perkins claims the individual officers violated his clearly established Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights during the search. He also claims that the city’s notice of the procedure for retrieving the property, and the procedure itself, were inadequate, and therefore violated his right to due process. We affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the individual defendants on the ground of qualified immunity. We reverse the summary judgment in favor of the City, however, because we conclude that the City’s policy violated due process by failing to notify Perkins of the means of retrieving his seized property.

FACTS

On May 18, 1993, Julio Alberto Clark was shot to death at the home of Lashaun McDuffy in West…

concurring in part and dissenting in part:

I concur in all of Judge Boochever’s opinion except section II.B. I dissent from that section because I do not believe that due process requires “that the police notify Perkins of the availability of a judicial remedy should he wish to claim his property, and provide some guidance for invoking that remedy.” By imposing a duty on the police officers to advise Perkins on matters of state law, the opinion adds a due process requirement that has support neither in the case law nor in the Due Process Clause.

I would agree that in circumstances requiring a predeprivation hearing, notice of such a hearing or process is necessary. The Supreme Court’s standard of “notice reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action,” Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306, 314 , 70 S.Ct. 652, 657 , 94 L.Ed. 865 (1950), has been developed and applied in the context of predeprivation procedures. See e.g., Mullane, (publication notice of proceeding to settle trust fund accounts found to be inadequate); Memphis Light, Gas & Water Div. v. Craft, 436 U.S. 1 , 98 S.Ct. 1554 , 56…