Posts tagged “Qualified-Immunity Appeals”
I recently wrote about the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Gant v. Hartman, which illustrated Scott v. Harris’s effect on interlocutory appeals. But that wasn’t Scott’s only impact on civil procedure. It has also affected summary-judgment practice. A recent decision from the First Circuit—Underwood v. Barrett—illustrates both of the procedural changes that Scott wrought. And while the changes to summary judgment are hard to avoid (despite a district court’s odd efforts to do so), I think Underwood spoke a bit too broadly about appellate jurisdiction.
Update: My article on this issue—Assumed Facts and Blatant Contradictions in Qualified-Immunity Appeals—is now available to read on SSRN.
Last week, in Gant v. Hartman, the Seventh Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction under Johnson v. Jones to review an interlocutory qualified-immunity appeal when the defendant failed to accept the facts assumed by the district court. In the course of doing so, the court held that Scott v. Harris’s blatant-contradiction exception to Johnson did not apply, as nothing in the summary-judgment record blatantly contradicted the district court’s assumed facts. Most courts have read Scott to create this blatant-contradiction exception. And I’m currently working on an article arguing that this is the best way to reconcile Johnson and Scott. But I also argue that the blatant-contradiction exception is an unpragmatic and unnecessary rule that should be rejected.
This post covers the decision in Gant, including background on Johnson and Scott. It then briefly addresses why Scott’s blatant-contradiction exception is an impractical rule of appellate jurisdiction.
A recent decision out of the Tenth Circuit—Estate of Ceballos v. Husk—illustrates the one of the several persistent problems with interlocutory qualified-immunity appeals. In Ceballos, the Tenth Circuit rightly refused to extend pendent appellate jurisdiction over a city’s appeal from the denial of its motion to dismiss a civil right claims for municipal liability (more commonly known as a “Monell claim). But the court did not disclaim the practice of extending pendent jurisdiction over these appeals; it simply held that doing so was inappropriate in that case. Ceballos (like many other cases in which this issue arises) was a missed opportunity to squarely refuse to entertain these attempts at using pendent appellate jurisdiction. These attempts not only are doctrinally unsound, but they also impose costs on courts and litigants (in the form of wasted time and effort) with no offsetting benefits.
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