Posts tagged “Qualified-Immunity Appeals”

In two appeals—Clark v. Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government and Salter v. City of Detroit, the Sixth Circuit spoke at length about its jurisdiction to review certain Brady issues as part of qualified-immunity appeals. The cases produced a total of six opinions, several of which dove into this jurisdictional issue.…

I’ve frequently written about the problem of fact-based qualified-immunity appeals both on this website and in my research. I recently decided to collect some new data on how much needless delay these appeals add to civil-rights litigation.

I had done something similar a few years ago when writing about the need to sanction defendants for taking fact-based qualified-immunity appeals.…

In Fleming v. United States, the Eleventh Circuit became the fifth court of appeals to reject pure Bivens appeals. The court held that federal officials cannot immediately appeal the Bivens question without also appealing the denial of qualified immunity. Unlike some of the prior decisions, this one was unanimous. And it puts the government’s record at 0-5 on this issue.…

In New Albany Main Street Properties v. Watco Companies, LLC, the Sixth Circuit held that it could not review a decision granting leave to amend as part of a qualified-immunity appeal. The leave-to-amend decision was not itself immediately appealable. Nor could it tag along with the denial of immunity (which technically involved qualified immunity under Kentucky law).…

In Blackwell v. Nocerini, the Sixth Circuit held that a motion to reconsider reset the time to take a qualified-immunity appeal. The denial of immunity was immediately appealable and thus a “judgment” under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. So a motion to reconsider that denial was effectively a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), despite the motion’s relying on a local rule rather than Rule 59(e).…

In Asante-Chioke v. Dowdle, the Fifth Circuit reviewed an order refusing to limit the scope of discovery to qualified-immunity issues. The court said that it could immediately review this sort of order via the collateral-order doctrine. But I have my doubts. The Fifth Circuit relied on a line of cases holding that defendants can appeal decisions to defer ruling on qualified immunity until after discovery.…

The federal government appears to be on a mission to get immediate appeals for orders recognizing a Bivens remedy. So far, those efforts have been unsuccessful. Two courts of appeals—the Third and the Sixth Circuits—have rejected these pure Bivens appeals.

In Mohamed v. Jones, the Tenth Circuit became the third.…

In Chaney-Snell v. Young, the Sixth Circuit held that Heck v. Humphrey issues are outside the scope of qualified-immunity appeals. In doing so, the Sixth Circuit joined the majority of circuits in the (lopsided) split on this matter. The court went on, however, to extend pendent appellate jurisdiction to a judicial-estoppel argument.…

As I’ve said many times on this site and in my scholarship, the genuineness of any factual disputes is normally not within the scope of interlocutory qualified-immunity appeals. There are some widely recognized exceptions to this rule. Two Eleventh Circuit cases from last month—Nelson v. Tompkins and Dempsey v.…

In Argueta v. Jaradi, the Fifth Circuit created a new exception to the bar on reviewing the genuineness of fact disputes in qualified-immunity appeals. In most of those appeals, the court must take as given the district court’s determination of what facts a reasonable jury could find. But according to the Fifth Circuit, an appellate court doesn’t have to do that when video evidence exists.…