Justia Civil Procedure Opinion Summaries

Carrie Pueblo brought an action against her former domestic partner, Rachel Haas seeking joint custody and parenting time for a child whom Haas conceived through in vitro fertilization and gave birth to in 2008, during the parties’ relationship. Haas moved for summary judgment, arguing that because the parties had never married and Pueblo had no biological or adoptive relationship to the child, Pueblo lacked standing to sue and also failed to state a claim for which relief could be granted. The trial court granted the motion and dismissed the case without prejudice. After Haas moved for reconsideration, the trial court dismissed the action with prejudice. Pueblo then filed her own motion for reconsideration, arguing that she had standing as a natural parent, despite the lack of genetic connection, following the Court of Appeals decision in LeFever v. Matthews, 336 Mich App 651 (2021), which expanded the definition of “natural parent” to include unmarried women who gave birth as surrogates but shared no genetic connection with the children. Pueblo also argued the trial court order violated her Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection, as well as those of the child. Furthermore, Pueblo argued that any dismissal should have been without prejudice. The trial court denied reconsideration, distinguishing LeFever on the ground that Pueblo had not given birth to the child. Pueblo appealed, reasserting her previous arguments and further asserting that the equitable-parent doctrine should extend to the parties’ relationship, which had been solemnized in a civil commitment ceremony when it was not yet legal in Michigan for same-sex partners to marry. The Court of Appeals rejected these arguments and affirmed the trial court. Because Michigan unconstitutionally prohibited same-sex couples from marrying before Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 US 644 (2015), the Michigan Supreme Court narrowly extended the equitable-parent doctrine as "a step toward righting the wrongs done by that unconstitutional prohibition. A person seeking custody who demonstrates by a preponderance of the evidence that the parties would have married before the child’s conception or birth but for Michigan’s unconstitutional marriage ban is entitled to make their case for equitable parenthood to seek custody." The trial court's judgment was reversed and the case remanded for that court to apply the threshold test for standing announced here. View "Pueblo v. Haas" on Justia Law

Plaintiff was repeatedly tased while he was a pretrial detainee at the McLennan County jail in Waco, Texas. Plaintiff insists that he did nothing to warrant the use of force—that he was neither threatening nor resisting the officer who tased him. The principal question on appeal is whether Plaintiff has presented sufficient evidence to defeat summary judgment on his ensuing civil rights claims.   The Fifth Circuit reversed summary judgment on Plaintiff’s excessive force claim against Defendant and remanded that claim to the district court for trial. The court reversed and remanded the district court’s grant of summary judgment on Plaintiff’s policy and practice claims to afford Plaintiff the opportunity to discover evidence relevant to those claims. But the court affirmed the dismissal of Plaintiff’s deliberate indifference claim. The court denied the motion to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. The court held that a rational jury could find that Defendant’s decision to tase Plaintiff was not justified by any exigency, in which case Defendant’s qualified immunity defense would not shield him from liability because the court’s precedents clearly establish that resort to force in such circumstances is unconstitutional.   Further, the court wrote that it was inappropriate for the court to then dismiss Plaintiff’s policy and practice claims on the ground that Plaintiff failed to present “adequate summary judgment evidence of any official or unofficial policy,” depriving him of his rights. If a jury finds, as it could, that Defendant tased a non-threatening, compliant inmate, then he is not entitled to qualified immunity. View "Boyd v. McNamara" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs sued police officers under Sec. 1983 after the officers made warrantless entry into their apartment. The district court granted summary judgment to Plaintiffs and Defendants appealed.On appeal, the Eighth Circuit reversed. While warrantless searches are presumptively unreasonable, there is an exception when officers act with probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and an objectively reasonable basis to believe that exigent circumstances exist.Here, the officers were dispatched to the scene in response to a report of domestic violence. The report received by the officers explained that the 911 call came from a neighbor who thought “abuse” was occurring and heard a “verbal argument,” “someone being thrown around,” and “yelling and screaming” in the upstairs apartment. The neighbor stated that a woman, her boyfriend, and a child lived in the apartment. This created anm exigency, justifying warrantless entry. View "Benedda Cotten v. Ryan Miller" on Justia Law

Plaintiff received his third citation for Driving While Intoxicated (“DWI”). As a term of his probation, Plaintiff, an alcoholic, was required to attend weekly substance abuse classes. Some of these classes conflicted with shifts that Plaintiff was scheduled to work as an operator at a plant owned by Defendant-Appellee La Grange Acquisitions, L.P. Plaintiff informed his supervisors that he was an alcoholic and that several of the court-ordered substance abuse classes would conflict with his scheduled shifts. When Plaintiff was unable to find coverage for these shifts, La Grange, citing this scheduling conflict, terminated Plaintiff. After exhausting his administrative remedies, Plaintiff sued La Grange under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), for intentional discrimination, failure to accommodate, and retaliation. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of La Grange on all three claims. Plaintiff appealed.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that the evidence does not create a triable issue of fact as to whether the given reason for his termination was pretextual, that is, “false or unworthy of credence.” Nothing in the record supports such a finding. There is no dispute that, while La Grange may have been able to do more to find coverage for the shifts Plaintiff needed to miss, La Grange did attempt to coordinate coverage for him and, while partially successful, eventually, these efforts failed. It was only at this point when some of Plaintiff’s shifts were left uncovered, that La Grange dismissed Plaintiff. Given this context, no reasonable jury could find that La Grange’s legitimate, non-discriminatory reason—the shift conflict—for Plaintiff’s suspension and termination was pretext for discrimination. View "Mueck v. La Grange Acquisitions" on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling denying the Deputy’s motion for qualified immunity in Plaintiff’s lawsuit, alleging that the Deputy’s conduct amounted to deliberate indifference to her seizure condition after she was arrested for driving while intoxicated. The Deputy asserted qualified immunity in his motion for summary judgment, which the district court denied.   The Eighth Circuit reversed. The court explained that the Deputy promptly attended to Plaintiff and asked her whether she was hurt or suffered from medical problems. She said no and did not advise him of her seizure disorder. Emergency medical personnel also observed Plaintiff and were content not to take her to the hospital, advising the Deputy that she had refused further treatment. He then took Plaintiff and her medications to jail. Barton I did not provide the Deputy with fair notice that his failure to seek further medical treatment for Plaintiff or to speak with the jailors about what Plaintiff’s boyfriend told him constituted deliberate indifference. Thus, Plaintiff failed to show that clearly established law prohibited the Deputy’s conduct, and the Deputy is entitled to qualified immunity. View "Kelly Martin v. Jordan Turner" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs, who operate small venue theaters in New York City, brought claims for declaratory and injunctive relief and nominal damages, alleging that the City’s Key to NYC program—which required certain indoor venues to check the COVID-19 vaccination status of patrons and staff before permitting entry—violated their rights to free speech and equal protection under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Following the expiration of the Key to NYC program, the district court dismissed as moot Plaintiffs’ claims for declaratory and injunctive relief. The district court also dismissed Plaintiffs’ claim for nominal damages for lack of standing, concluding that Plaintiffs failed to plausibly allege an injury in fact. Plaintiffs now appeal that order.   The Second Circuit concluded that Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged Article III standing. However, the court affirmed the judgment of dismissal on the alternative ground of failure to state a claim. The court explained that Key to NYC does not impair a fundamental right because it does not violate Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights. Nor does it target a suspect class. These are locations where large numbers of unassociated individuals are likely to gather and spend significant amounts of time exposed to one another, thereby posing a relatively high risk of spreading COVID-19. Requiring individuals in those settings to be vaccinated mitigated that risk and incentivized vaccination among the people most likely to be in a position to spread the virus. Accordingly, Plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged an equal protection violation. View "Clementine Co. v. Adams" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs claimed law enforcement officers violated the Constitution when they responded to a detainee’s epileptic seizure in a jail cell by restraining and tasing him several times. The district court either dismissed or granted summary judgment on all claims in favor of the Defendants.   The Fifth Circuit reversed the grant of qualified immunity for the individual Defendant Officers as to the Section 1983 claims and the grant of summary judgment on the claims for bystander liability. The court affirmed the grant of summary judgment on municipal liability and on the claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act. The court explained that the record is insufficient to support a jury question that the use-of-force and ECW policies were so vague that they amounted to no policy at all. These policies “may have been inadequate,” and while a jury might conclude that the City was negligent in not requiring Plaintiffs’ specified actions, “that, of course, is not enough under Section 1983.” The court explained that without evidence showing that the higher level of care was obviously necessary, we cannot see how the jury could conclude that the use-of-force and ECW policies were deliberately indifferent. Accordingly, there was no substantial evidence that such a policy would obviously lead to the violation of pre-trial detainees’ constitutional rights. Further, the court found that Plaintiffs cite no binding caselaw in which liability under the ADA and RA has been extended to a context similar to this one. View "Austin v. City of Pasadena" on Justia Law

According to the complaint, Plaintiff John Jordan alleged he was thrown to the ground and arrested for criticizing the police. Moments before the arrest, Jordan stood across the street from Deputies Michael Donnellon and Chad Jenkins listening as the Deputies questioned his nephew about a car accident involving a truck owned by Jordan’s company. Jordan grew frustrated with what he was hearing and started criticizing the two Deputies. The Deputies retaliated with their own disparaging remarks about Jordan. Eventually, Deputy Jenkins became fed up with Jordan’s criticisms and performed a takedown maneuver on Jordan, placing him under arrest for obstruction of justice. As relevant to this appeal, Jordan sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for unlawful arrest, malicious prosecution, and excessive force. The magistrate judge granted the Deputies’ motion for summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity and dismissed each of these claims. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded granting summary judgment to the Deputies was improper: under the "Graham" factors, it was clearly established that the takedown maneuver utilized by the Deputies here was excessive as applied to Jordan at the time of his arrest. View "Jordan v. Adams County Sheriff's Office, et al." on Justia Law

Courage to Change Recovery Ranch, recently known as Soaring Hope Recovery Center, provided treatment and housing for people recovering from drug and alcohol addictions in a single-family neighborhood in El Paso County, Colorado. But Soaring Hope claimed the County’s strict occupancy limits, standards for group homes for disabled persons, and policies restricting what treatment options Soaring Hope could provide in a single-family zone led Soaring Hope to close its home in a single-family neighborhood (the Spruce Road home). The Tenth Circuit determined the County violated the Fair Housing Act Amendments (FHAA) by imposing facially discriminatory occupancy limits on group homes for disabled persons without a legally permissible justification. Though Soaring Hope showed standing to challenge the occupancy limits which directly injured it, Soaring Hope did not show standing to challenge the standards for group homes for disabled persons—no evidence shows that the County enforced the standards against Soaring Hope. The Tenth Circuit also held that the district court erred by granting summary judgment against Soaring Hope on its zoning-out claim for intentional discrimination: Soaring Hope raised a genuine issue of material fact about whether the County had prohibited certain therapeutic activities in its Spruce Road home while allowing those same activities in other structured group-living arrangements and residential homes. The case was remanded for the district court to further address the zoning-out claim. The judgment was affirmed in all other respects. View "Courage to Change, et al. v. El Paso County" on Justia Law

Plaintiff and her friend, both dressed in “sexy cop” costumes, posed with pedestrians on the Strip and accepted tips in exchange for photos. Defendant police officers, working a plain-clothes Strip enforcement assignment, arrested Plaintiff and her friend for doing business without a license after the officers were asked to pay a tip or delete a photo. The charges against Plaintiff were ultimately dropped. Plaintiff sued various people involved in her arrest, asserting eleven federal and state causes of action. She sought declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as damages for injuries suffered during detention and attorney’s fees. The district court granted the Officers’ summary judgment motion and denied Plaintiff’s.   The Ninth Circuit filed (1) an order denying a petition for panel rehearing, denying a petition for rehearing en banc, and amending the opinion filed on May 24, 2017; and (2) an amended opinion reversing in part the district court’s summary judgment in favor of Defendants. The panel concluded that the First Amendment protections accorded to Plaintiff’s own activities did not lapse because of what her friend said or did without Plaintiff’s direct participation. There was no evidence at all, for example, of a prior agreement between the women to require a quid-pro-quo payment for posing in photos, nor of a demonstrated pattern of demanding quid-pro-quo payments during performances together. The panel held that the district court erred by deciding that the officers had probable cause to arrest Plaintiff despite the First Amendment protections afforded to her expressive association. View "MICHELE SANTOPIETRO V. CLAYBORN HOWELL, ET AL" on Justia Law