Grant v. City of Pittsburgh
| Decision Date | 18 October 1996 |
| Docket Number | 95-3600,Nos. 95-3599,s. 95-3599 |
| Citation | 98 F.3d 116 |
| Parties | William GRANT; Ike Harris; Ambassador Development Corporation; Lazer Development Group, Inc.; The Aspen Group v. CITY OF PITTSBURGH; Eugene Ricciardi; Jack Wagner; James Ferlo; Daniel Cohen; Michelle Madoff; Duane Darkins; Bernard Regan; Pittsburgh City Council; City of Pittsburgh Planning Commission; City of Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission; Jane Downing; Thomas W. Armstrong; John Desantis; Michael Eversmeyer; John Raham; The South Side Planning Forum; The South Side Local Development Co.; The South Side Community Council of Pittsburgh, Inc.; The Brashear Association; South Side Antiques; Arts & Crafax Association; Gerald Morosco; Rebecca Flora; Cynthia Esser; John A. Johnston; Hugh J. Brannan, III; Thomas Tripoli; Private Party Defendants, City of Pittsburgh; Eugene Ricciardi; Jack Wagner, James Ferlo; Daniel Cohen; Michelle Madoff; Duane Darkins (deceased); Bernard Regan (deceased); Pittsburgh City Council; City of Pittsburgh Planing Commission; City of Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission; Jane Downing; Thomas W. Armstrong; John DeSantis; Michael Eversmeyer and John Rahaim, Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
George R. Specter, City of Pittsburgh, Department of Law, Pittsburgh, PA, Joseph E. Linehan (argued), Kevin F. McKeegan Meyer, Unkovic & Scott, Pittsburgh, PA, for Appellants.
Charles H. Saul (argued), Rosenberg & Kirshner, Pittsburgh, PA, Edwin J. Strassburger, Strassburger, McKenna, Gutnick & Potter, Pittsburgh, PA, for Appellees.
Before: SLOVITER, Chief Judge, COWEN and ROTH, Circuit Judges.
The question presented in this appeal is whether the district court properly applied the test set forth by the Supreme Court in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982), as refined by Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987), in denying summary judgment to twelve individual defendants on qualified immunity grounds. Specifically, we must determine whether the district court improperly failed to analyze separately the specific conduct of each defendant in the context of determining whether plaintiffs had adduced evidence sufficient for a factfinder to conclude that a reasonable public official would have known that his or her conduct had violated clearly established constitutional rights. Because we conclude that the district court's analysis was deficient, we will remand to the district court for a redetermination of the qualified immunity issue as to each individual City Defendant under the proper legal standard. We also clarify the extent to which courts, in resolving qualified immunity on summary judgment, should consider the motivations of public officials when those motivations are an essential element of the underlying substantive constitutional claim.
The instant civil rights action arises out of actions taken by certain public officials in the City of Pittsburgh, primarily members of the City Council, Historic Review Commission and Planning Commission ("City Defendants"), and certain private individuals and organizations, in nominating two buildings for historic preservation under Pittsburgh's Historic Structures, District, Sites and Objects Ordinance. PITTSBURGH, PA., CODE Title 1007, § 513. 1 That nomination prevented the buildings from being demolished and, thereby, thwarted plaintiffs William Grant's and Ike Harris' plans to develop the property on which the buildings were located. Claiming to have lost $400,000 due to the nomination, Grant sought protection under Chapter Eleven of the Bankruptcy Code.
On August 24, 1992, Grant and Harris filed a complaint in the District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, which was subsequently twice amended, alleging violations of their rights to equal protection of the laws, procedural and substantive due process, and asserting various theories of recovery under Pennsylvania common law. They alleged, inter alia, that in acting upon the proposed nomination, the City Defendants were motivated not by the public interest but by partisan political or personal reasons having nothing to do with historic preservation. Specifically, the district court characterized the plaintiffs' allegations in the following manner:
Plaintiffs' central theory of the case is that the private party defendants and the city defendants orchestrated a scheme to thwart plaintiffs' project in order to keep the mayoral administration from receiving credit in the upcoming election for the project's projected economic revenue and jobs and to assure that the property was developed by a local developer.
Grant v. City of Pittsburgh, No. 92-CV-1837, slip op. at 24-25 (W.D.Pa. Sept. 28, 1995).
The City Defendants initially moved to dismiss Grant's complaint and amended complaint under FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(6), raising among other issues the defense of qualified immunity. On August 17, 1993, the district court issued an opinion and order granting in part and denying in part the City Defendants' motion; the district court rejected their claim of qualified immunity, and the City Defendants did not appeal that decision. After engaging in considerable pretrial discovery, all defendants subsequently moved for summary judgment, claiming that the plaintiffs' evidence failed to demonstrate a disputed issue of material fact on liability. Additionally, the City Defendants moved for summary judgment on the issue of qualified immunity.
On September 28, 1995, the district court issued an opinion and order granting summary judgment to the City Defendants on all theories of liability except substantive due process. As to that theory of recovery, the district court stated that "[t]he instant record contains sufficient evidence from which the finder of fact could conclude that defendants' actions were undertaken for improper political motives and partisan political reasons." Id. at 40. The court then cited evidence in the record suggesting that some City Defendants may have acted for improper purposes. The district court did not address the qualified immunity issue.
The City Defendants therefore filed a motion requesting that the district court clarify its summary judgment ruling with respect to the issue of qualified immunity. Approximately three weeks after handing down its summary judgment ruling, the district court granted the City Defendants' motion for clarification, but denied their claims of qualified immunity, ruling as follows:
Here, the substantive due process rights allegedly violated by the City [D]efendants clearly were established at the time of the alleged violation.... At the time of the alleged violation, it was well-settled in this jurisdiction that the arbitrary and capricious application of applicable law by an administrative body violates an individual's substantive due process rights. Accordingly, a reasonably competent public official would have known that the alleged conduct violated Grant's and Harris' substantive due process rights. In addition, plaintiffs have produced affirmative evidence sufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether each City [D]efendant knowingly violated Grant and Harris' substantive due process rights by assisting in the administration of the relevant ordinances for political or personal motives unrelated to the merits of the matter under consideration.
Grant v. City of Pittsburgh, No. 92-CV-1837, slip op. at 3-4 (W.D.Pa. Oct. 16, 1995) (citations omitted). This appeal followed.
The district court had subject-matter jurisdiction over plaintiffs' civil rights claims pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1343(a)(3). To the extent that they turn on an issue of law, decisions denying public officials qualified immunity are considered final under the collateral order doctrine recognized in Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985); see also Johnson v. Jones, --- U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 2151, 132 L.Ed.2d 238 (1995). Because the question whether the district court applied the correct legal standard is purely one of law, we exercise appellate jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
Plaintiffs contend, however, that the City Defendants' failure to appeal from the district court's denial of their Rule 12(b)(6) motion, insofar as it rejected their claim of entitlement to qualified immunity, somehow divests us of our appellate jurisdiction. Plaintiffs' contention is essentially that a party is not entitled to appeal the denial of a motion for summary judgment where that motion raises the same legal arguments as a prior motion to dismiss, and where that party has failed timely to appeal the denial of the prior motion. This argument is without merit.
Plaintiffs cite three cases to support this proposition. The first of those, Kenyatta v. Moore, 744 F.2d 1179 (5th Cir.1984), is inapposite. In that case, the defendants had made two motions for summary judgment that were both denied, the first based on absolute immunity and the second, made several years later, based on qualified immunity. See id. at 1181-82. The bulk of the court's opinion is concerned with rejecting the defendants' argument that the later ruling, on qualified immunity, is appealable on an interlocutory basis pursuant to the collateral order doctrine (Defendants' position ultimately was embraced, of course, by the Supreme Court in Mitchell, 472 U.S. at 530, 105 S.Ct. at 2817). See id. at 1182-86. In the remainder of the opinion, the court rejected the defendants' argument that they could appeal the denial of the earlier motion, even though that appeal would otherwise be untimely, on the ground that interlocutory appeals are not governed by the time provisions of FED. R.APP. P. 4. See id. at 1186-87. Nowhere...
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