Johnson-El v. Schoemehl

Page 1043

878 F.2d 1043

Tyrone Antonio JOHNSON-EL, Arnold Fredrick Hamilton-El David Scott Hill-El, Appellees, v. Vincent C. SCHOEMEHL, Edward F. Tripp, L.T. Brown, Kelly Parks, Appellants The City of St. Louis.

No. 88-1252.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

Submitted Sept. 23, 1988.

Decided May 22, 1989.

As Modified July 17, 1989.

Elkin Kistner, St. Louis, Mo., for appellants.

Mary B. Schultz, St. Louis, Mo., for appellees.

Before HEANEY ^* and BOWMAN, Circuit Judges, and ROSS, Senior Circuit Judge.

HEANEY, Senior Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs have brought suit against the City of St. Louis (City) and officials of the City, seeking injunctive relief and $30,000 in damages. They allege the existence of specific conditions at the St. Louis City Jail (Jail) which violate the constitutional rights of pre-trial detainees. The individual defendants appeal a magistrate's decision denying them qualified immunity against these claims, sometimes allowed under Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). We affirm the magistrate's ruling, in part, and hold that at this stage of the proceedings summary judgment would be premature. For the reasons we set forth, we grant summary judgment in favor of Mayor Schoemehl. We stress that the other defendants may renew their motions when sufficient discovery has been conducted to enable the magistrate to assess the plaintiffs' ability to substantiate their claims.

FACTS

Plaintiffs are three recent detainees at the Jail. Tyrone Johnson-El was detained for three months pending extradition to New York State. Arnold Hamilton-El and David Hill-El were both held in the Jail for over one year awaiting trial. During this time, they allege that they submitted or attempted to submit three grievances to prison officials regarding conditions at the Jail. They allege that their grievances went unanswered and that on one occasion they were threatened by defendant Parks for attempting to submit a grievance. In May of 1986, they filed a pro se complaint in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, alleging violations of their constitutional rights pursuant to the Civil Rights Act of 1871. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983.

In summary, plaintiffs allege that they: were denied meaningful access to a telephone, injuring their ability to communicate with counsel; were not allowed to worship as they chose; were not provided with adequate medical care; were given only very limited access to an inadequate law library; had outgoing legal mail misplaced or lost; were threatened for filing grievances; were subjected to rodent-infested food, living quarters and cafeteria; and were kept in closed areas during ineffectual but toxic pesticide spraying. They allege that these conditions either singularly or in their entirety violated their constitutional rights and amount to punishment of those charged but not convicted of crimes. Plaintiffs named as defendants Vincent C. Schoemehl, the Mayor of the City, Edward F. Tripp, the Commissioner of Welfare and Adult Correctional Services for the City, L.T. Brown, Superintendent of the Jail, and Kelly Parks, a guard.

The defendants filed a motion to dismiss, accompanied by affidavits in July of 1986, alleging that the plaintiffs' complaint failed to allege cognizable constitutional or civil rights violations. Judge Gunn treated it as a motion for summary judgment and denied it, because "there remain genuine issues as to material facts * * *." Order and Memorandum at 3 (Jan. 22, 1987). By agreement, the case was assigned to a magistrate with the right of direct appeal to us. On August 4, 1987, the defendants amended their answer to assert qualified immunity as a defense. They subsequently filed a motion for summary judgment claiming that the plaintiffs' request for injunctive relief was moot and that the plaintiffs' claims for money damages were barred by qualified immunity. Appointed counsel for the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint while the defendants' motion was under consideration, adding the City as a defendant. On December 30, 1987, the magistrate denied this second motion in its entirety. On January 25, 1988, the individual defendants filed a third motion directed at the new complaint on the same grounds as before because they were afraid that an appeal from the second order would be improper in light of the amendment of the complaint. Appellants' Brief at 4-5, n. 6. On January 27, the magistrate denied this third motion by a handwritten notation referring to his December order and memorandum.

On February 3, the individual defendants filed a notice of appeal and halted discovery. They argue that we have jurisdiction to review the magistrate's last order in its entirety because qualified immunity is a collateral matter and mootness is a pendant issue. We denied the plaintiffs' request to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction and heard oral argument on these pre-trial matters in September, 1988. The individual defendants have not yet been deposed and the interrogatory process is not completed.

DISCUSSION

I. Jurisdiction

Our jurisdiction to hear appeals from district court orders is limited by statute to those orders that are final or certified by the district court for our review. 28 U.S.C. Secs. 1291 and 1292. These laws express a strong policy against piecemeal appeals. United States v. Hollywood Motor Car Co., 458 U.S. 263, 265, 102 S.Ct. 3081, 3082, 73 L.Ed.2d 754 (1982). The Supreme Court has nevertheless construed these statutes to permit appellate review of a "small class" of "collateral" orders. Cohen v. Benefical Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546-47, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 1225-26, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). Collateral orders are those decisions that "finally determine claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action, too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated." Id. at 546, 69 S.Ct. at 1225. Cohen and its progeny have established four requirements for collateral order review: the order must conclusively determine the disputed question, it must resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits, the order must be effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment, and the "order must presen[t] a serious and unsettled question." Richardson-Merrell, Inc. v. Koller, 472 U.S. 424, 431, 105 S.Ct. 2757, 2761, 86 L.Ed.2d 340 (1985) (quoting Coopers v. Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 468, 98 S.Ct. 2454, 2457, 57 L.Ed.2d 351 (1978)); see also Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731, 742, 102 S.Ct. 2690, 2697, 73 L.Ed.2d 349 (1982) (quoting Cohen, 337 U.S. at 547, 69 S.Ct. at 1226).

In this case, the district court's orders were not certified for review nor are they final orders. The effect of the district court's action is to continue the parties' discovery. Moreover, the individual defendants are not prevented from reasserting either claim later on in the proceedings, nor are novel issues presented.

A plurality of the Supreme Court has held, however, that the denial of a summary judgment motion based on a qualified immunity defense, to the extent that it turns on an issue of law, is always a collateral order. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2817, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). The Mitchell plurality reasoned that the purpose of qualified immunity was to protect a government official not only from liability for her actions, but also from the rigors of litigation. Id. at 526, 105 S.Ct. at 2815. The value of the immunity would be lost absent immediate review of its applicability. Therefore, government officials who lose their motions for summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity are now entitled to an immediate review solely to determine whether the plaintiff's claims allege a violation of clearly established law. Id.; see Runge v. Dove, 857 F.2d 469, 471 n. 1 (8th Cir.1988) (discussion of law and fact questions under Mitchell ). Thus, in Craft v. Wipf, 836 F.2d 412 (8th Cir.1987), and Drake v. Scott, 812 F.2d 395, reh'g denied and modified on other grounds, 823 F.2d 239 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 108 S.Ct. 455, 98 L.Ed.2d 395 (1987), we considered whether the alleged property interests were clearly established. In Trapnell v. Ralston, 819 F.2d 182 (8th Cir.1987), and in Wright v. South Arkansas Regional Health Center, Inc., 800 F.2d 199 (8th Cir.1986), we reversed the denial of dismissals where, after discovery, the plaintiffs were entirely unable to substantiate that the defendants' discretionary decisions were improperly motivated. Harlow was an attempt to prevent complaints based upon "bare allegations of malice" from proceeding to trial. 457 U.S. at 817-18, 102 S.Ct. at 2737-38.

In this case, all the parties agree that we have jurisdiction to review the district court's denial of summary judgment on the grounds of qualified immunity. The individual defendants, however, go further, arguing that because a reversal on the issue of mootness as well would spare all the defendants from a trial, we should also review the district court's denial of their summary judgment motion on grounds of mootness. We decline to do so.

The exception created in Mitchell was a limited one, connected to the underlying purposes of the qualified immunity defense. In Mitchell, Craft, Drake, Trapnell and Wright, appellate review was confined exclusively to prima facie legal and factual issues. Mootness by contrast, does not implicate the underlying rationale for qualified immunity review--the protection of government officials from lawsuits where their actions might be discretionary, or where a reasonable person would not know that the challenged conduct was illegal. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. at 2738; see Chicago & Northwestern Transp. Co. v. Ulery, 787 F.2d 1239 (8th Cir.1986) (...