Justia Civil Procedure Opinion Summaries

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

Appellees worked as non-emergency medical transportation drivers. In July 2017, they brought a putative class action and Fair Labor Standards Act collective action against Medical Transportation Management, Inc. (“MTM”). Their complaint alleged that MTM is their employer and had failed to pay them and its other drivers their full wages as required by both federal and District of Columbia law. MTM appealed the district court’s certification of an “issue class” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(c)(4) and its denial of MTM’s motion to decertify plaintiffs’ Fair Labor Standards Act collective action.   The DC Circuit remanded the district court’s certification of the issue class because the court failed to ensure that it satisfies the class-action criteria specified in Rules 23(a) and (b). The court declined to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction to review the district court’s separate decision on the Fair Labor Standards Act collective action. The court explained that because the resolution of the action will bind absent class members, basic principles of due process require that they be notified that their individual claims are being resolved and that they may opt out of the action if they so choose. So if the district court certifies the issue class under Rule 23(b)(3) on remand, it must direct “the best notice that is practicable” as part of any certification order. View "Isaac Harris v. Medical Transportation Management, Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a Section 1983 civil rights suit in Louisiana state court against Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections Secretary James LeBlanc. Among other claims, Plaintiff argued that LeBlanc violated his constitutional rights by misclassifying him as a sex offender and thereby illegally extending his detention in prison for 337 days past his release date. LeBlanc sought dismissal based on qualified immunity, but the district court denied the motion. LeBlanc argued that this complaint did not adequately allege the requisite “pattern” of constitutional violations by untrained employees “ordinarily necessary” under Connick to establish deliberate indifference for purposes of failure to train.   The Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court agreed with Plaintiff that his complaint sufficiently alleges the requisite “pattern” of constitutional violations by untrained employees to establish deliberate indifference for purposes of failure to train. Further, the court held that there is sufficient clearly established law regarding the constitutional right to a timely release from prison and that Plaintiff has sufficiently argued a violation of the right. Accordingly, construing the allegations in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, the court agreed they are sufficient to support the argument that LeBlanc had fair warning’ that his failure to address this delay would deny prisoners like Plaintiff their immediate or near-immediate release upon conviction. View "Parker v. LeBlanc" on Justia Law

Plaintiff claimed that because of circumstances beyond his control, he did not receive notice of the district court’s judgment for over 90 days after it was entered, and he filed a notice of appeal shortly after he did receive notice. In response, the Fourth Circuit found his notice of appeal untimely, but the court construed the notice as a timely motion to reopen the appeal period pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(6), which implements an exception found in 28 U.S.C. Section 2107(c), and remanded the case to the district court. The district court then entered an order under Rule 4(a)(6), reopening the time for noticing an appeal for 14 days from the date of its order. Plaintiff, however, failed to file a notice of appeal within the window so provided.   The Fourth Circuit dismissed his appeal. The court explained that Section 2107(c) of Title 28, which is the statute prescribing the timing requirements for filing appeals in civil actions, provides that a would-be appellant who does not receive timely notice of a judgment and thereafter fails to file a timely notice of appeal may nonetheless request — not more than 180 days after the judgment is entered — that the district court exercise its discretion to reopen the time for appeal by providing a new 14-day window within which to file a notice of appeal. Compliance with this narrow supplemental opportunity for filing a timely notice of appeal is especially significant because the times specified by statute for filing appeals in civil actions are jurisdictional. View "Donte Parrish v. US" on Justia Law

Plaintiff brought a Section 1983 claim against prison officials for their conduct during an electrical fire at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Meanwhile, the prison officials claim that Plaintiff received a denial but failed to appeal. The district court determined that Plaintiff had not exhausted his administrative remedies and granted summary judgment to the officials. Plaintiff claimed that he received a denial and then appealed through the second and third stages of review.The Second Circuit vacated. The court explained that drawing all reasonable inferences in Plaintiff’s favor, there is a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether Plaintiff exhausted his administrative remedies. The prison officials may have mistakenly failed to consolidate Plaintiff’s grievance with those of the other inmates who were affected by the electrical fire—in a possible violation of state regulations requiring full consolidation. Plaintiff’s declaration is consistent with a belief that his grievance was denied as part of the consolidated group of grievants. He may have appealed that denial, but the prison system might not have a record of his appeal because it failed to record the denial of his initial grievance in the first place. Plaintiff’s declaration—combined with (1) the undisputed evidence that he filed an initial grievance, (2) the absence of documentary evidence that his complaint was ever denied, and (3) the apparent failure of the prison officials to consolidate his complaint with those of the other inmates—creates a dispute of material fact as to whether Plaintiff actually did pursue all administrative remedies that were “available” to him. 42 U.S.C. Section 1997e(a). View "Garcia v. Heath" on Justia Law