Ricardo Rodríguez-Tirado; Angelica Tirado-Velázquez v. Speedy Bail Bonds

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 16-2412
RICARDO RODRÍGUEZ-TIRADO; ANGELICA TIRADO-VELÁZQUEZ,
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
v.
SPEEDY BAIL BONDS,
Defendant, Appellee,
AMERICAN RELIABLE BAIL BONDS, LLC; MICHELLE ROMÁN; DANNY
DOMÍNGUEZ; ELIOENAI FERNANDEZ,
Defendants.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Bruce J. McGiverin, U.S. Magistrate Judge]
Before
Howard, Chief Judge,
Torruella and Boudin, Circuit Judges.
Guillermo Ramos Luiña on brief for appellants.
Jorge Martínez-Luciano, with whom ML & RE Law Office,
Heriberto Güivas-Lorenzo, and Güivas-Lorenzo Law Office were on
brief, for appellee.
May 30, 2018

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BOUDIN, Circuit Judge. The present case concerns
cross claims arising out of an attempt by a bail bondsman to seize
a bailed man who had failed to appear for a court hearing. In
2010, Ricardo Rodríguez-Tirado ("Rodríguez") was charged with a
criminal offense in New Jersey and was later released on bail to
await further proceedings.
Instead, Rodríguez left New Jersey to return to his home
in Puerto Rico, itself a violation of the bail agreement. When
Rodríguez thereafter missed a court date in New Jersey, the bail
bond, posted by American Reliable Insurance ("Reliable"), was
declared forfeited by the New Jersey Superior Court. Reliable was
an Arizona-based company acting as a corporate surety in New Jersey
in concert with its local agent, Speedy Bail Bonds ("Speedy").
Following the bond forfeiture, Speedy undertook to retrieve
Rodríguez and deliver him to New Jersey, aiming to have the
forfeited bail money returned to Reliable. This, it appears, is
a minuet well known to the world of bail bonds.
Agents acting for Speedy traveled to Puerto Rico where,
aided by an off-duty policeman, they confronted Rodríguez, seized
him, and bundled him into a car. Speedy later claimed that its
agents calmly explained to Rodríguez that they were there to take
him back to New Jersey because he had jumped bail, that no weapons
were used to menace him, and that the agents escorted Rodríguez to
their car, using handcuffs only as a precaution. Rodríguez claims

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that he was violently seized at gunpoint without any explanation,
shackled, and thrown into the car, and that he had no knowledge of
the missed court date.
This episode was witnessed by Rodríguez's mother,
Angélica Tirado-Velázquez ("Tirado"). She telephoned a local
attorney, who learned that no outstanding warrant or extradition
request had been lodged with Puerto Rico authorities against
Rodríguez. On behalf of Tirado, the attorney filed a complaint
with the police.
A warrant was issued for the arrest of the bounty
hunters, who were staying in a hotel next to the airport with their
captive, awaiting a flight to New Jersey. The bounty hunters
surrendered to the authorities, Rodríguez was released, and the
bounty hunters were charged with kidnapping and gun offenses--
charges ultimately dropped.
Rodríguez filed suit in federal court in Puerto Rico
against Speedy and various other defendants, seeking damages for
his seizure and detention by the defendants; his mother as co-
plaintiff claimed mental anguish from having witnessed her son's
"kidnapping" and "violent removal" from the house. The plaintiffs
voluntarily dismissed all defendants save Speedy, which
counterclaimed for breach of the bail agreement.
Following a four-day trial, the jury returned a verdict
in favor of Speedy, dismissing the tort claims by Rodríguez and

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his mother with prejudice and awarding Speedy $1,500 on its
counterclaim for damages caused by Rodríguez's breach of his
obligations under his bail agreement. A central question at the
trial, resolved in Speedy's favor in the jury instructions, was
the right of a bounty hunter to pursue, seize, and return to the
bailing jurisdiction a bail-jumper like Rodríguez. Much of the
argument at trial, renewed on this appeal, centered around an
oft-cited Supreme Court case, Taylor v. Taintor, 83 U.S. 366
(1873), which ruled that at common law the authority of the bounty
hunter to pursue, seize, and return the bail jumper was well
established. Whether this was holding or dicta was disputed.
The waters were further muddied because the Supreme
Court has occasionally cited and never repudiated Taylor, but a
number of states have, by statute or otherwise, narrowed the rights
of the bailer to pursue and seize a bail jumper. The parties in
this court have not cited anything that cleanly resolves the
question of what Puerto Rico judges would say about Taylor.
This appeal followed the district court judgment and,
not surprisingly, much of the parties' briefing renews the debate
about the current status of Taylor. Both sides seem to assume
that, if only the Supreme Court would make clear its current view
of the rights of bondsmen and their agents to pursue bail-jumpers
into other jurisdictions, the matter would be settled. We take a
different view.

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What the parties have overlooked is that the Supreme
Court decided Taylor during the regime of Swift v. Tyson, 41 U.S.
1 (1842), in which courts conceived of the common law as a
"brooding omnipresence in the sky," S. Pac. Co. v. Jensen, 244
U.S. 205, 222 (1917) (Holmes, J., dissenting), to which federal
and state courts alike accorded respect unless altered by statute
or otherwise in a particular jurisdiction; and the Supreme Court
was itself the final arbiter of disputes about the content of the
common law.
This attitude persisted into the twentieth century until
it was definitively and dramatically discarded by Erie R.R. Co. v.
Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938). See Henry Friendly, In Praise of
Erie: And of the New Federal Common Law, 39 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 383
(1964). Absent some federal interest not claimed by any party or
apparent to us, what the Puerto Rico courts or legislators decide
should be the law governing conduct within its own jurisdiction
will control regardless of what view of bailer authority is today
taken by the Supreme Court. See Restatement (Second) of Conflict
of Laws § 145(1).
The question of Puerto Rico law and out-of-state bounty
hunters has not been briefed and we therefore remand the case to
the district court to consider that issue in the first instance,
resolving as far as feasible now the first of two issues on appeal.

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The second issue is whether the district court erred by
failing to decide for itself whether certain damages claimed by
Speedy were foreseeable under the terms of the bail agreement.
The bail agreement stipulated that Rodríguez would be "responsible
for any costs incurred by Speedy Bail Bonds for [his] re-arrest,"
and Rodríguez argues that Speedy never presented the jury with
concrete evidence as to the damages it suffered; the suggestion is
that the jury's modest damages award was based on an estimate of
the costs that the company incurred bailing out its bounty hunters
and defending them in the initial court proceedings in Puerto Rico.
Because those costs flowed from the intervening actions of a third
party when his mother called the police, Rodríguez claims they
were not foreseeable under the contract.
While the costs incurred by Speedy for bailing its agents
out of jail might arguably not be foreseeable contractual
damages--Tirado having broken the chain of causation--the jury did
not award $1,500 for such costs. The Fugitive Fee Contract,
incorporated into the Bail Agreement and signed by Rodríguez the
day he was released on the bond, specified that Rodríguez was to
pay "the greater of $1,500 or 10 percent of the amount of the Bond"
to Speedy if he was deemed to be a fugitive, meaning if he failed
to appear for a court hearing or had his bail forfeited. If
apprehended or located outside of New Jersey as a fugitive,
however, the contract stated that Rodríguez was to pay "the greater

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of $1,500 or 20 percent of the amount of the Bond." This document
was shown to the jury, and the damages award was almost certainly
pegged directly to this fugitive fees clause, operating as a
liquidated damages provision.
The damages award on the counterclaim is affirmed, and
the case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings
on the question of whether the jury instructions as to the tort
claims accurately reflected Puerto Rico law. Each side shall bear
its own costs.
It is so ordered.

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