Cain v. City of New Orleans
| Decision Date | 08 December 2016 |
| Docket Number | CIVIL ACTION NO. 15-4479 SECTION "R" (2) |
| Parties | ALANA CAIN ET AL. v. CITY OF NEW ORLEANS ET AL. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Louisiana |
The sole remaining defendants at present1 are the thirteen judges of the Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans, State of Louisiana, and Robert Kazik, the Judicial Administrator for that court. They filed a Motion for Protective Order, Record Doc. No. 185, seeking an order that plaintiffs may conduct no discovery in this potential class action involving claims that defendants unconstitutionally use threats of imprisonment, imprisonment and arrest warrants issued by the court's collections department, rather than by judges themselves, to collect court debts from indigent criminal defendants. Plaintiffs' claims include an allegation that because some of the assessed fees go to the statutorily authorized "Judicial Expense Fund," which the judges use for financing some of the court's and their expenses, the judges have "an intolerable financial conflict of interest" that deprived plaintiffs of their due process rights to neutral judicial action. Record Doc. No. 7, First Amended Class Action Complaint, ¶¶ 92-99 & Count Four, ¶¶ 151-52. The only claims remaining in this case are for declaratory reliefagainst the judges and Kazik in his individual capacity. Record Doc. No. 119 at p. 28; Record Doc. No. 123 at p. 4.
Plaintiffs filed a timely memorandum in opposition to the motion for protective order, Record Doc. No. 195, and both sides filed supplemental memoranda. Record Doc. Nos. 210, 211. In their supplemental memorandum, defendants alternatively request that discovery be stayed at least until the court decides their pending motion for summary judgment, Record Doc. No. 202, based on plaintiffs' alleged lack of standing.
In addition, plaintiffs filed a Motion to Compel, Record Doc. No. 192, in which they seek additional responses and document production as to certain of their interrogatories and requests for production. Defendants filed a timely written opposition memorandum. Record Doc. No. 200. Thereafter, in response to my orders re-noticing and setting plaintiffs' motion for submission and providing counsel with an opportunity to advise the court what issues in plaintiffs' motion remain to be determined, plaintiffs filed supplemental memoranda. Record Doc. Nos. 209 - 213.
Discovery is currently stayed until January 1, 2017, and the deadlines on all other pending motions have been suspended pending further orders of the court, to give the presiding district judge time to determine plaintiffs' pending motion for review of my prior denial of plaintiffs' motion to amend their complaint and to facilitate settlement negotiations and efforts to formulate a stipulation of facts that may streamline further proceedings. Record Doc. No. 205.
Having considered the record, the applicable law and the written submissions of counsel, IT IS ORDERED that the motions are determined as follows.
Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c)(1) governs motions for protective orders. The Rule provides in pertinent part:
Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c)(1) (emphasis added).
The requirement "of a showing of good cause to support the issuance of a protective order indicates that '[t]he burden is upon the movant to show the necessity of its issuance, which contemplates a particular and specific demonstration of fact as distinguished from stereotyped and conclusory statements.'" In re Terra Int'l, Inc., 134 F.3d 302, 306 (5th Cir. 1998) (quoting United States v. Garrett, 571 F.2d 1323, 1326 n.3 (5th Cir. 1978)); see also United States v. Talco Contractors, Inc., 153 F.R.D. 501, 513 (W.D.N.Y. 1994) ().
Defendants have not met their burden to show good cause. First, they have cited no authority mandating that discovery should be stayed pending the court's decision on their motion for summary judgment. Whether to stay discovery pending resolution of a dispositive motion is within the court's discretion. Rynearson v. United States, 601 F.App'x 302, 305 (5th Cir. 2015), cert. denied sub nom. Rynearson v. Lands, 136 S. Ct. 1448 (2016) (citing Brazos Valley Coal. for Life, Inc. v. City of Bryan, 421 F.3d 314, 327 (5th Cir. 2005)); Carder v. Cont'l Airlines, Inc., 595 F. App'x 293, 300 (5th Cir. 2014) (citing Itel Corp. v. M/S Victoria U, 710 F.2d 199, 202 (5th Cir. 1983)).
Discovery is stayed until January 1, 2017. Defendants have not articulated good cause for an additional stay until the court rules on their summary judgment motion. If the presiding district judge decides that the named plaintiffs lack standing, the decision would not be dispositive of the merits of the case, and a dismissal of the named plaintiffs' claims without prejudice would not preclude other persons who are members of the proposed class from bringing their similar claims. I therefore consider defendants' motion for a protective order in light of the existing parties and claims.
Second, defendants' argument that discovery is barred by absolute judicial or quasi-judicial (in Kazik's case) immunity is unavailing. The court has already held in ruling on defendants' motions to dismiss that plaintiffs' claims for declaratory relief against the judges and against Kazik in his individual capacity are not subject to judicial or quasi-judicial immunity. Defendants have cited no authority in the instant motion to undermine that holding. In the absence of immunity, plaintiffs are free to pursue relevant and proportional discovery regarding their claims for declaratory relief.
None of the decisions that defendants cite regarding judicial or quasi-judicial immunity are on point. Those cases involved attempted discovery regarding particularcases in which the judge or quasi-judicial official from whom discovery was sought and who was held to be immune had participated in some way in adjudicating the underlying case, a judicial function that was clearly protected by immunity. See, e.g., Gary W. v. State of La., 861 F.2d 1366, 1369 (5th Cir. 1988) ().
In contrast, plaintiffs in the instant matter assert that the discovery they seek is relevant to the Orleans Parish Criminal Court judges' policy-making function, which is administrative or executive rather than judicial in nature. It is well established that judicial and quasi-judicial immunity apply only to "tasks that are an integral part of the judicial process" and "were undertaken in the judge's role of resolving and adjudicating issues, rather than administrative, legislative, or executive functions performed by a judge which are not entitled to immunity." Adams v. Comm. on Judicial Conduct & Disability, 165 F. Supp. 3d 911, 921-22 (N.D. Cal. 2016) )); see also Forrester, 484 U.S. at 228 ().
Defendants next argue that a judicial privilege, sometimes known as the judicial deliberative process or mental processes privilege, precludes plaintiffs from obtaining any discovery from them, including depositions of the judges and Kazik. As the parties' memoranda indicate and my own research confirms, very few decisions discuss this privilege, United States v. Aguilar, 994 F.2d 609, 616 (9th Cir.), as amended (Aug. 9, 1993), opinion withdrawn, 11 F.3d 124 (9th Cir. 1993), and on reh'g, 21 F.3d 1475 (9th Cir. 1994), aff'd in part, rev'd in part, 515 U.S. 593 (1995) (citing Nixon v. Sirica, 487 F.2d 700, 740 (D.C. Cir. 1973) (MacKinnon, J., dissenting)); accord In re Certain Complaints Under Investigation by an Investigating Comm'ee of the Judicial Council of the Eleventh Cir., 783 F.2d 1488, 1519 (11th Cir. 1986), superseded by statute on other grounds as stated in In re McBryde, 120 F.3d 519, 524 (5th Cir. 1997) (citing Nixon, 487 F.2d at 740); see also Charles W. Sorenson, Jr., Are Law Clerks Fair Game? Invading Judicial Confidentiality, 43 Val. U. L. Rev. 1, 66-67 (2008) (footnotes omitted) ( ).
Thus, "a judge may not be compelled to testify concerning the mental processes used in formulating official judgments or the reasons that motivated him in the performance of his official duties," i.e., "matters within the scope of his adjudicative duties." Ciarlone v. City of Reading, 263 F.R.D. 198, 202 (E.D. Pa. 2009) (quotations omitted) (citing United States v. Morgan, 313 U.S. 409, 422 (1941); Fayerweather v. Ritch, 195 U.S. 276, 306-07 (19...
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