United States Seventh Circuit
Portis v. City of Chicago, 09-1498
In a class action lawsuit against the city of Chicago, alleging that taking more than two hours to perform the steps needed to get from the generation of a Central Booking number to an arrestee's release makes the detention unreasonable and violates the Fourth Amendment, district court's two-hour rule in agreeing with the plaintiffs is reversed where: 1) the district court did not explain why it set a time limit for a particular part of the process; 2) further, what is reasonable or not is how much time passes between arrest and release, in relation to the reasons for detention; the time for each step along the way is not subject to an independent limit; and 3) because reasonableness is a standard rather than a rule, and because one detainee's circumstances differ from another's, common questions do not predominate and class certification is inappropriate.
Appellate Information
- Argued 09/14/2009
- Decided 07/23/2010
- Published 07/23/2010
Judges
Court
- United States Seventh Circuit