Vincent v. City of Chester

• Decision Date: 28 October 2015
• Docket Number: No. 15–30182.,15–30182.
• Citation: 805 F.3d 543
• Parties: Carol J. VINCENT, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. CITY OF SULPHUR; Lewis Coats; Chester Gremillion; Glenn Martin, Defendants–Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

805 F.3d 543

Carol J. VINCENT, Plaintiff–Appellee

v.CITY OF SULPHUR; Lewis Coats; Chester Gremillion; Glenn Martin, Defendants–Appellants.

No. 15–30182.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Oct. 28, 2015.

Carol J. Vincent, Sulphur, LA, pro se.

Robin J. Magee, Esq., Patrick B. McIntire, Oats & Marino, Lafayette, LA, for Defendants–Appellants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

Before HIGGINBOTHAM, JONES, and SMITH, Circuit Judges.

Opinion

JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge:

After an altercation at a bank during which Carol Vincent allegedly threatened violence against the mayor of Sulphur, Louisiana, and a city council member, police issued an “Official Notification of Trespass Warning” prohibiting Vincent from entering city-owned property, including City Hall. After the district attorney determined that the allegations did not support prosecution, police lifted the order. Claiming civil-rights violations, Vincent sued Sulphur Police Chief Lewis Coats, Officers Chester Gremillion and Glenn Martin, and the city under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

Defendants moved for summary judgment on all claims, asserting qualified immunity. The district court held that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity as to the majority of Vincent's claims. The court denied qualified immunity, however, on Vincent's procedural-due-process and direct-municipal-liability claims, concluding that issuance of the no-trespass order without notice and an opportunity to be heard violated Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 96 S.Ct. 893, 47 L.Ed.2d 18 (1976), and its progeny and that the pertinent law was clearly established at the time of the incident. Defendants appeal the denial of qualified immunity. Because we agree with them that the law was not clearly established, we reverse and remand.

I.

On August 7, 2012, Vincent went to a bank to discuss a financial matter on a friend's behalf. The meeting became acrimonious, and Vincent left. Later that day, the Sulphur Police Department received information that, in the course of the argument, Vincent had threatened to get a gun and kill Mayor Christopher Duncan and City Councilman Mike Koonce. Because that alleged incident occurred outside the city limits, the information was referred to the sheriff's department for investigation. The next day, a sheriff's detective called Vincent and requested that he come to the station for questioning; Vincent complied. The detective interrogated him and specifically asked whether Vincent had threatened to kill the two city officials, which Vincent denied.

Two days later, Gremillion pulled Vincent's car over, explaining that he was being stopped to inform him that a no-trespass order had been issued and that he was prohibited from entering onto certain city property. Vincent specifically indicated that the ban, as he understood it, encompassed “ ‘city hall,’ ‘old city hall,’ ‘city council chambers/building,’ ‘city of sulphur city council meetings,’ ‘city of Sulphur police station,’ ‘city of sulphur court house,’ ‘city of Sulphur business center across from the new city hall,’ ‘West Calcasieu business center,’ and ‘ward 4 marshal's office’ ” but excluded “public thoroughfares and right-of-ways.”

In early September, Vincent wrote Coats inquiring why the no-trespass order had been issued. Coats tried to respond by phone but did not reach Vincent and left a message. Vincent did not call back but on September 27 requested a written answer from Coats, who responded on October 4, indicating that the order was to prevent Vincent from coming into contact with the two individuals that he had allegedly threatened. Vincent answered by letter of October 11 requesting a meeting at a “neutral” location (so as not to violate the order by entering the police station).

At about the same time, Coats followed up with the district attorney's office regarding its investigation of the August 7 incident. That office indicated in response that it had not found sufficient evidence to prosecute. After consultation with the mayor, Coats decided to terminate the no-trespass order and notified Vincent of that by letter on October 16.

II.

Vincent sued pro se, alleging violations of his rights under the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV and the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Defendants moved for summary judgment, asserting qualified immunity. The district court addressed the motion for summary judgment in two stages—in an initial ruling, it granted the motion on the substantive-due-process, equal-protection, Fourth Amendment, and right-to-travel claims and denied summary judgment as to Vincent's procedural-due-process claims,¹ identifying what it deemed to be clearly established law prohibiting state officials from banning individuals from public areas without notice and an opportunity to be heard. The court also stayed the First Amendment claims for additional briefing. In a later ruling, it disposed of the remaining summary judgment issue, granting qualified immunity on the First Amendment claims.

After the court had finally disposed of all issues arising from the motion for summary judgment, defendants filed what they styled a second motion for summary judgment on the procedural-due-process issue, contending that the individual defendants were entitled to qualified immunity and that the claims against the city were barred by that immunity. Treating that as a motion to reconsider, the court rejected both arguments; the defendants appealed.

III.

A.

We have jurisdiction over this denial of qualified immunity because such an order is immediately appealable to the extent that the appeal turns on an issue of law. Morgan v. Swanson, 659 F.3d 359, 370 (5th Cir.2011) (en banc). Vincent suggests that we lack jurisdiction because the individual officers' qualified-immunity argument was initially rejected, as to the due-process claims, in the district court's May 15, 2014, Order and Memorandum Ruling, and the officers did not appeal until February 27, 2015—more than the thirty days allotted under Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. Vincent reasons that the appeal is thus untimely. But the May 15 order ruled only on certain summary judgment items; it stayed final disposition of other issues to receive additional briefing. The court did not finally determine qualified immunity until October 21, 2014, when it resolved the remaining immunity issues and ordered that the matter proceed to trial on the claims as to which qualified immunity had been denied. On November 4, 2014, the officers filed a renewed motion urging summary judgment on the procedural-due-process issues; on January 29, 2015, the court, treating the motion as one for reconsideration, denied it.

The appeal is therefore timely. The May 15 order was interlocutory, because it did not dispose of all pending qualified-immunity issues presented in the motion for summary judgment but rather stayed final resolution of the motion for further briefing. The denial of summary judgment on qualified-immunity grounds did not become final until the October 21 order, which disposed of the pending qualified-immunity issue; that was the point at which the court conclusively determined the officers' entitlement vel non to immunity and sent the case to trial. Therefore, that is the date from which the relevant time to take an appeal should be calculated. The November 4 motion urging the court to revisit the procedural-due-process claims was timely under the 28–day limit of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e)² and was sufficient to toll the 30–day clock for an appeal from the October 21 order.³ The officers filed a notice of appeal within 30 days of the denial of the second motion, rendering this appeal timely. See Fed. R.App. P. 4(a)(1)(A).

B.

The plaintiff has the burden of demonstrating that the defendant official is not entitled to qualified immunity. Wyatt v. Fletcher, 718 F.3d 496, 502 (5th Cir.2013). Qualified immunity protects “government officials performing discretionary functions ... from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). This demands a two-step analysis: whether a constitutional right was violated and whether the allegedly violated right was “clearly established.” McClendon v. City of Columbia, 305 F.3d 314, 322–23 (5th Cir.2002) (en banc) (per curiam). This court has discretion to perform either prong first.

To defeat qualified immunity, the plaintiff must show that the official's conduct was objectively unreasonable in light of a clearly established rule of law. See id. at 323. This is a demanding standard: Because qualified immunity protects “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law,” Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986), we do not deny its protection unless existing precedent places the constitutional question “beyond debate,” Morgan v. Swanson, 659 F.3d 359, 371 (5th Cir.2011) (en banc) (quoting Ashcroft v. al–Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 2083, 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (2011) ). The court must “ask whether the law so clearly and unambiguously prohibited [the official's] conduct that every reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates [the law].” Id. (citing al–Kidd, 131 S.Ct. at 2083 ) (second alteration in original).

Although a case directly on point is not necessary, there must be adequate authority at a sufficiently high level of specificity to put a reasonable official on notice that his conduct is definitively unlawful. See id. at 372. Abstract or general statements of legal principle untethered to analogous or near-analogous facts are not sufficient to establish a right “clearly” in a given context; rather, the inquiry must focus on whether a right is clearly...