Helton v. Clements, 85-1568
Citation | 787 F.2d 1016 |
Decision Date | 23 April 1986 |
Docket Number | No. 85-1568,85-1568 |
Parties | , 4 Fed.R.Serv.3d 1180 John J. HELTON, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. William P. CLEMENTS, Jr., Governor of Texas, et al., Defendants-Appellants. |
Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit) |
Frank W. Stenger, Asst. Atty. Gen., Austin, Tex., for Clements, et al.
John J. Helton, pro se.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
Before REAVLEY, RANDALL and W. EUGENE DAVIS, Circuit Judges.
A number of state officials appeal a district court's refusal to rule before trial on motions asserting official immunity. We reverse and remand to the district court for that court's consideration and ruling on the motions.
Plaintiff-appellee John Helton brought suit against the state officials alleging generally that they conspired to deprive him of his constitutional rights. The district court, pursuant to the direction of this court in Elliot v. Perez, 751 F.2d 1472 (5th Cir.1985), ordered Helton to "amend his original complaint to state with particularity the alleged illegal actions in which each defendant participated, the specific acts that he claims constitute a conspiracy and [A]ll parties and attorneys are here notified that any further motions in this case will not be ruled upon by the court prior to trial but will be carried along with the trial of the case on the merits. This ruling applies to any pending motions....
which defendants were involved ... and the facts which show that official immunity does not shield certain defendants." Helton amended his complaint, and the defendants moved to dismiss asserting the defenses of absolute and qualified immunity. The district court, by order dated August 1, 1985, granted summary judgment in favor of Tom Nivens, a private citizen, alleged to have participated in the conspiracy. The district court further ordered
The defendants now appeal the action of the trial court in declining to rule on their motion to dismiss.
The threshold issue we must address is whether an order which declines or refuses to rule on a motion to dismiss based on the defense of governmental immunity is an immediately appealable order. We hold that it is.
The analysis of whether a refusal to rule on a claim of immunity until trial is appealable was stated in Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. ----, ----, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2817, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). In Mitchell, the Court stated that a denial of a substantial claim of absolute immunity is an order appealable before final judgment and held that a denial of claim of qualified immunity, to the extent that it turns on an issue of law, is also an appealable final decision. The Court considered three factors in its determination that the denial of a claim of qualified immunity is immediately appealable, and analysis of the trial court's action in this case in light of those three factors reveals that a refusal to rule on a claim of immunity, like the explicit denial of a claim of immunity, is also immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine.
First, like an explicit denial of a claim of absolute or qualified immunity, the refusal to rule on a claim of immunity until trial is "effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final...
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