Hartman v. Moore

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Hartman v. Moore, 547 U.S. 250 (2006), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the pleading standard for retaliatory prosecution claims against government officials. After a successful lobbying attempt by the CEO of a manufacturing company against competing devices that the US Postal Service supported, the CEO found himself the target of an investigation by US postal inspectors and a criminal prosecution that was dismissed for lack of evidence. The CEO then filed suit against the inspectors and other government officials for seeking to prosecute him in retaliation for exercising his First Amendment rights to criticize postal policy. The Court ruled 5-2 that to prove that the prosecution was caused by a retaliatory motive, the plaintiff bringing such a claim must allege and prove that the criminal charges were brought without probable cause .

Contents

• 1 Background

  • 1.1 Campaign against USPS policies

  • 1.2 Investigation and prosecution

  • 1.3 Moore's lawsuit

• 2 Opinion of the Court

  • 2.1 Souter's majority opinion

  • 2.2 Ginsburg's dissent

• 3 References

• 4 External links

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hartman_v._Moore&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

Campaign against USPS policies

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hartman_v._Moore&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Campaign against USPS policies")

In the 1980s, William G. Moore, Jr. was the chief executive officer of Recognition Equipment Inc. (REI), which manufactured a multiline optical character reader for interpreting multiple lines of text. REI initially received some $50 million from the United States Postal Service to develop this technology for reading and sorting mail, but the U.S. Postmaster General and other postal officials were urging mail senders 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 by reading just that line.

Many Members of Congress and federal research officers had reservations about the Postal Service's Zip + 4 policy and its intended reliance on single-line readers, in part because of the foreign sources of the equipment. Moore built on this opposition by lobbying Congress, testifying before congressional committees , and supporting a "Buy American " rider to the Postal Service's 1985 appropriations bill . Moore alleged that he and REI had received requests from the Postmaster General to be quiet, yet his company proceeded to support its agenda and hired a public relations firm recommended by a Postal Service official.

Investigation and prosecution

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hartman_v._Moore&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: Investigation and prosecution")

The campaign succeeded, and in July 1985 the Postal Service embraced multiline technology. However, the Postal Service's ensuing order of multiline equipment (valued between $250–400 million) went to a competing firm. Moore and REI were also soon the target of two investigations by postal inspectors . The first looked into the purported payment of kickbacks by the PR firm to the official who recommended its services, and the second sought to document REI's possibly improper role in the search for a new Postmaster General.

Notwithstanding very limited evidence linking Moore and REI to any wrongdoing, an Assistant United States Attorney decided to bring criminal charges against them, and in 1988 the grand jury indicted Moore, REI, and REI's vice president. At the close of the Government's case, 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's lawsuit

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hartman_v._Moore&action=edit&section=4 "Edit section: Moore's lawsuit")

Moore then brought an action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas for civil liability under _Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents _, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), against the prosecutor and five postal inspectors. His complaint raised five causes of action , including the claim that the prosecutor and the inspectors had engineered his criminal prosecution in retaliation for criticism of the Postal Service, thus violating the First Amendment . Moore argued that the postal inspectors launched a criminal investigation against him well before any suspicion of the two schemes actually arose, that the inspectors targeted him for his lobbying activities, and that they pressured the United States Attorney's Office to have him indicted. He also sought recovery from the federal government of the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The District Court dismissed the claims against the Assistant United States Attorney in accordance with the absolute immunity for prosecutorial judgment, and rejected an abuse of process claim against the inspectors.

The remaining claims were transferred to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia , where Moore's suit was dismissed in its entirety, only to have the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reinstate the retaliatory prosecution claim. The District Court then permitted limited discovery on that matter regarding the inspectors, but again dismissed the remaining charges against the United States and the prosecutor. Although Moore succeeded in having the District of Columbia Circuit reinstate his FTCA claim against the United States, the dismissal of his claims against the prosecutor was affirmed.

With the remainder of the case back in District Court, the inspectors moved for summary judgment , urging that because the underlying criminal charges were supported by [probable cause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probable_cause "Pro

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