Kidis v. Reid

• Decision Date: 25 September 2020
• Docket Number: No. 19-1673,19-1673
• Citation: 976 F.3d 708
• Parties: Nikos KIDIS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Jean REID; John Moran, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

976 F.3d 708

Nikos KIDIS, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.Jean REID; John Moran, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 19-1673

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: April 29, 2020

Decided and Filed: September 25, 2020

CHAD A. READLER, Circuit Judge.

A jury found that Officer John Moran used excessive force in arresting Nikos Kidis, in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The jury's conclusions regarding harm and compensatory damages, however, were difficult to square with its conclusion on punitive damages. On the one hand, the jury found that Moran's conduct did not injure Kidis, and accordingly awarded Kidis $1 in nominal compensatory damages. But on the other, the jury found Moran's actions so unjustified as to warrant $200,000 in punitive damages. When measured against the jury's harm and compensatory damage findings, the punitive damages award runs afoul of the due process principles articulated in State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Campbell , 538 U.S. 408, 123 S.Ct. 1513, 155 L.Ed.2d 585 (2003). We accordingly reverse the punitive damages portion of the judgment, and remand that portion of the judgment to the district court with instructions to enter an order of remittitur reducing the punitive damages award to no more than $50,000. We affirm the remaining aspects of the judgment.

BACKGROUND

After a day of heavy drinking at a Labor Day festival, Nikos Kidis drove himself and a friend home from the festivities. Along the way, Kidis sideswiped another vehicle, causing a minor accident. Nervous from the incident, Kidis exited his vehicle and fled. He then encountered Officer Jean Reid. When she attempted to arrest Kidis, he again became nervous and fled, this time with a handcuff attached to his right hand. He proceeded to run through a parking structure and jump multiple barbed-wire fences before entering a wooded area.

Eventually, Kidis gave up fleeing the police. He surrendered, lying face down on the ground, his hands stretched out above his head. Despite his attempt to surrender, Kidis asserts that Officer John Moran, upon arriving at the scene, thrust his knee into Kidis and started to choke him. Kidis further claims that although he offered no resistance, Moran continued to punch and strangle Kidis, yelling that he was going to "teach [him] to ... run."

Kidis was charged and pleaded guilty to resisting and obstructing a police officer, operating a motor vehicle with a high blood-alcohol content, and failing to stop at the scene of an accident. Following his plea, Kidis filed a § 1983 action against Reid and Moran. Kidis alleged that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure by employing excessive force against him during the arrest and exhibiting deliberate indifference to his medical needs.

At the close of discovery, the district court granted in part Defendants’ motion for summary judgment. With respect to Kidis's deliberate indifference claim, the district court found that Kidis could not prove that either officer was actually aware of Kidis's medical needs, meaning Kidis could not satisfy the subjective element of a deliberate indifference claim. The district court likewise rejected Kidis's excessive force claim against Reid due to the absence of evidence that she was present or involved in the arrest that served as the basis for Kidis's excessive force claim. But the district court denied summary judgment as to Kidis's excessive force claim against Moran, concluding that a reasonable jury could find that Moran engaged in excessive force.

At trial, that possibility came to pass. The jury found that Moran used excessive force against Kidis. Yet the jury also found that Kidis did not prove that this excessive force caused his injuries, and therefore awarded Kidis $1 in nominal compensatory damages. Somewhat puzzlingly, the jury then proceeded to find that Kidis was entitled to $200,000 in punitive damages.

A series of post-trial motions ensued. In the first of those, Moran sought to alter or amend the judgment or, alternatively, to obtain a remittitur or a new trial on the grounds that Kidis had not established as a matter of law that Moran violated a clearly established constitutional right, and that even if he had, the jury's punitive damages award was so disproportionate to the compensatory damages that it amounted to a violation of Moran's due process rights. The district court denied the motion. It held that Moran could not re-litigate the qualified immunity issue that he had lost on summary judgment and, separately, that the punitive damages award was constitutional when measured against the standards adopted in BMW of North America , Inc. v. Gore , 517 U.S. 559, 575–85, 116 S.Ct. 1589, 134 L.Ed.2d 809 (1996), and State Farm , 538 U.S. at 416, 123 S.Ct. 1513.

Having prevailed on all claims at summary judgment, Reid filed a motion for attorney's fees against Kidis pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988, and a similar motion for fees against Kidis's counsel pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1927. The district court rejected the motions. Reid's § 1988 motion failed, the district court concluded, because Kidis's claims against Reid were not sufficiently frivolous or unreasonable to warrant a fee award. And Reid's § 1927 motion failed because Kidis's counsel did not unreasonably and vexatiously multiply the litigation.

Kidis, for his part, filed a motion seeking attorney's fees and costs from Defendants in accordance with § 1988. Agreeing that Kidis was the prevailing party in his § 1983 action, the district court awarded Kidis $143,787.97 in fees and costs. Defendants timely appealed.

ANALYSIS

Punitive damages. Following its award of $1 in compensatory damages, the jury awarded Kidis $200,000 in punitive damages. Despite a tremendous disproportionality between those awards, the district court rejected a due process challenge to the punitive damages award. We review that determination de novo. Clark v. Chrysler Corp. , 436 F.3d 594, 600 (6th Cir. 2006) (citing Cooper Indus., Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Grp., Inc. , 532 U.S. 424, 431, 121 S.Ct. 1678, 149 L.Ed.2d 674 (2001) ).

Like its counterpart in the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause "prohibits the imposition of grossly excessive or arbitrary punishments on a tortfeasor." State Farm , 538 U.S. at 416, 123 S.Ct. 1513 (citing Cooper Indus., Inc. , 532 U.S. at 433, 121 S.Ct. 1678 and Gore , 517 U.S. at 562, 116 S.Ct. 1589 ); see also Williams v. First Advantage LNS Screening Sols. Inc. , 947 F.3d 735, 750 n.12 (11th Cir. 2020) (noting that although the Supreme Court has only explicitly considered whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause restricts penalties imposed by a State, the same principle under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause restricts penalties imposed in the context of a federal cause of action); EEOC v. Fed. Express Corp. , 513 F.3d 360, 376 (4th Cir. 2008) ("A punitive damages award is subject to review for compliance with the procedural and substantive constitutional limitations of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment ...."). Due process thus requires that before a punitive damages award may issue, one must have received "fair notice" both of what conduct is prohibited as well as "the severity of the penalty that a State may impose" when a person commits the prohibited conduct. State Farm , 538 U.S. at 417, 123 S.Ct. 1513. Otherwise, the award "furthers no legitimate purpose" and "constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of property." Id.

We utilize three guideposts to measure whether a punitive damages award satisfies due process. They are: "(1) the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant's misconduct; (2) the disparity between the actual or potential harm suffered by the plaintiff and the punitive damages award; and (3) the difference between the punitive damages awarded by the jury and the civil penalties authorized or imposed in comparable cases." Id . at 418, 123 S.Ct. 1513 (citing Gore , 517 U.S. at 575, 116 S.Ct. 1589 ). These guideposts tightly constrain the range of constitutionally acceptable awards. For even where the jury has found an entitlement to punitive damages, the appropriate punitive damages award may still be zero. Chicago Title Ins. Corp. v. Magnuson , 487 F.3d 985, 1001 (6th Cir. 2007) (applying the State Farm factors and holding that the district court erred in upholding a jury verdict for any punitive damages following the jury's $32.4 million punitive damages and $10.8 million compensatory damages award). In making that threshold assessment, the "most important indicium of the reasonableness of a punitive damages award is the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant's conduct." State Farm , 538 U.S. at 419, 123 S.Ct. 1513 (quoting Gore , 517 U.S. at 575, 116 S.Ct. 1589 ). That a defendant engaged in tortious or other wrongful conduct is thus not enough, standing alone, to justify a punitive damages award. And where few, if any, of the indicia of reprehensibility are present, the defendant's conduct is not considered sufficiently "reprehensible," for purposes of due process, to support any award. Id. ; see also Carroll v. Clifford Twp. , 625 F. App'x 43, 46 (3d Cir. 2015) (holding that the district court did not err in vacating a punitive damages award where the defendant's conduct was not sufficiently reprehensible to support punitive damages and the plaintiff was awarded only nominal damages).

In more extreme cases, where many or all of the reprehensibility factors are satisfied, due process still constrains an ensuing punitive damages award. In those cases, a punitive damages "award of more than four times the amount of compensatory damages might be close to the line of constitutional impropriety." State Farm , 538 U.S. at 425, 123 S.Ct. 1513. A higher ratio may be justified where the compensatory damages award is relatively low, see id ., yet even then, a nine-to-one ratio between punitive and compensatory damages is...