SUMMARY OF REPLY
The only reason that Defendant was able to impose fees and liens, and to ultimately take title to the Plaintiffs’ property, was that police had seized that property and were under a legal obligation to hold it. Defendant’s unilateral contract terms – the deprivations in this case – resulted because the police had taken custody of the Plaintiffs’ property. This coercive action is what enabled Defendant to take custody, without authority from the Plaintiffs, and to then dictate the rates and other terms that would apply.
Defendant’s claim that it is not liable hangs largely on its assertion that it did not impose any deprivation that the police had not already imposed. But this is not the case, for the police could not charge fees or impose liens, nor could they sell the guns for their own benefit. These deprivations could only occur after police chose to transfer custody to Defendant, and Defendant then chose to take those actions. And by all indications, Defendant was quite willing to do so. There is no dispute that, by the time each of the Plaintiffs received their first notice of Defendant’s involvement, the fees needed to transfer the property away from Defendant’s custody was half (or more) of the amount that Defendant realized when it auctioned the items. Defendant, a licensed gun dealer, was able to add guns to its inventory by doing nothing more than picking them up from the police and sending a few notices to their owners.
Defendant is liable as a state actor because the deprivations result from the police action of seizing the guns and the resulting police obligation to store them. Defendant would never have been able to impose its unilateral terms if police had not taken the guns and then had a legal obligation to hold them. Defendant’s attempts to analogize to cases concerning creditor’s remedies is misplaced, for in those cases the aggrieved individuals had voluntarily chosen to make their contracts. Here, Defendant imposed its contract on the Plaintiffs – and it did so precisely because the Plaintiffs were in no position to contract for themselves, owing to the police action.
The remaining defenses of Defendant and the Commonwealth are meritless. No self-executing legislation compelled Defendant to impose its fees and terms. Rather, Defendant chose the fees and other terms on its own, just at it chose to relieve the police of their storage obligations. Furthermore, the (theoretical) availability of a state-court action for conversion is also no defense. This case concerns actions that state law expressly authorizes, not random and unauthorized acts that could not be predicted.