Lopez v. Garriga, 90-1422

• Decision Date: 07 September 1990
• Docket Number: No. 90-1422,90-1422
• Parties: Celso LOPEZ, a/k/a Celso Lopez Lopez, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. R.D. GARRIGA, et al., Defendants, Appellants. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 63

917 F.2d 63

Celso LOPEZ, a/k/a Celso Lopez Lopez, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. R.D. GARRIGA, et al., Defendants, Appellants.

No. 90-1422.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

Heard Sept. 7, 1990.

Decided Oct. 17, 1990.

Eduardo E. Toro Font, Asst. U.S. Atty., Bayamon, P.R. with whom Daniel F. Lopez Romo, U.S. Atty., Hato Rey, P.R., was on brief for defendants, appellants.

Charles S. Hey Maestre, Rio Piedras, P.R., with whom Celso E. Lopez Lopez, San Sebastian, P.R., was on brief for plaintiff, appellee.

David J. Vendler, with whom Bryan, Cave, McPheeters & McRoberts and Lenni B. Benson were on brief for National Immigration Project, National Lawyers Guild, amicus curiae.

Before BREYER, Chief Judge, VAN GRAAFEILAND, ^* Senior Circuit Judge, and SELYA, Circuit Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This appeal marks the latest chapter in what has become a crusade: the unremitting effort of plaintiff-appellee Celso Lopez Lopez (Lopez), a native Puerto Rican, to eliminate, or at least curtail, the operations of certain checkpoints established by the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) at the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in Isla Verde, Puerto Rico. ¹ Because we believe that the district court should have closed the book on this case sooner rather than later, we reverse the grant of equitable relief.

Background

The backdrop of the original litigation (which we shall call "Lopez I ") has been vividly portrayed in a series of opinions, see Lopez Lopez v. Aran, 649 F.Supp. 853 (D.P.R.1986), aff'd in part and rev'd in part, 844 F.2d 898 (1st Cir.1988), opinion after remand, 894 F.2d 16 (1st Cir.1990), and it would be pleonastic to rehearse it here. Instead, we refer the reader who hungers for more copious detail to those several opinions. For the purpose at hand, it suffices to say that Lopez, thwarted anew by federal functionaries while attempting to board a flight to Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, brought a fresh suit (which we shall call "Lopez II ") against the INS agents who detained him, various other INS officials, and two local police officers.

In Lopez II, plaintiff's central thesis was that the INS agents acted unlawfully because they had no sufficient authority or reason to question and detain him in connection with an intra-island flight. The pertinent facts are documented in a further rescript of the district court. See Lopez Lopez v. Garriga, 718 F.Supp. 1066 (D.P.R.1989). The case was tried to a jury on plaintiff's claim for money damages. ² Apart from the amount of any damages to be awarded, there was only a single controverted issue before the jury. ³ As the lower court phrased it:

Defendants' actions related to the questioning and detention of plaintiff were lawful only if defendants had a sufficiently reasonable suspicion that plaintiff was an illegal alien. If defendants did not have such a reasonable suspicion, then the preventive measures taken against plaintiff on December 6, 1987, were unlawful and you must find for plaintiff. If you find, on the other hand, that Mr. Lopez' behavior aroused a reasonable suspicion in the minds of the INS agents that he was an illegal alien, then you must then find for the federal defendants.

Lopez II, 718 F.Supp. at 1073 (appendix to district court's opinion; quoting district court's jury instructions).

The jury determined this issue antithetic to Lopez' interests. To borrow the district court's summarization, the jury's verdict signified that plaintiff's rights had not been violated since the defendants "had a sufficiently reasonable suspicion to detain [him]" on the occasion in question. Id. at 1068. The district court upheld the jury's finding, id. at 1069, and Lopez took no appeal from it. The finding has, therefore, become the law of the case. See Raxton Corp. v. Anania Assoc., Inc., 668 F.2d 622, 624 & n. * (1st Cir.1982).

Plaintiff also sought equitable relief which the court below described as comprising "a declaration and an injunction to prevent future violations of his fourth- and fifth-amendment rights." Lopez II, 718 F.Supp. at 1069. The fifth amendment claim was never pressed. The other equitable claims were deferred pending completion of the jury phase. See Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U.S. 500, 510, 79 S.Ct. 948, 956, 3 L.Ed.2d 988 (1959). When the court turned to the matter of equitable redress, the jury's factfinding was, of course, binding upon the trier as to common issues. See Davenport v. DeRobertis, 844 F.2d 1310, 1313-14 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 908, 109 S.Ct. 260, 102 L.Ed.2d 248 (1988); cf. Blake v. Hall, 668 F.2d 52, 54 (1st Cir.1981) (no preclusive effect when purport of jury verdict unclear), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 983, 102 S.Ct. 2257, 72 L.Ed.2d 862 (1982).

Notwithstanding the jury verdict, the district court proceeded to restrain the federal defendants

... from subjecting United States citizens to the pre-flight inspection practice authorized and established pursuant to 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1182(d)(7) and 8 C.F.R. Sec. 235.5(a) when the passengers are passing through Luis Munoz Marin Airport but not departing Puerto Rico for the continental United States. No United States citizen at the airport, unless departing Puerto Rico for the continental United States, shall be questioned, detained, or otherwise inspected by INS agents unless the agents have an objectively reasonable and articulable suspicion that the person is an illegal alien.

Lopez II, 718 F.Supp. at 1072. ⁴ This appeal ensued.

Analysis

Appellants advance a salmagundi of reasons why the injunction should not have been issued or, at least, should have been more narrowly tailored. We need not reach the majority of these asseverations, however, because this is a case, pure and simple, where the district court acted without authority in granting any injunctive relief.

We start with bedrock. A court can only grant permanent injunctive relief to a plaintiff who has met certain preconditions. The first of these implicates the doctrine of standing; an injunction-seeking plaintiff must establish that he " 'has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury' as the result of the challenged official conduct and the injury or threat of injury must be both 'real and immediate,' not 'conjectural' or 'hypothetical.' " City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 101-02, 103 S.Ct. 1660, 1664-65, 75 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983) (citations omitted). While Lopez, when he filed this suit, alleged a claim for injunctive relief which rose to the level of a case or controversy, a court does not retain authority to grant an injunction, even though the plaintiff originally had standing to ask for one, if during the course of the proceeding the plaintiff loses his toehold on the standing ladder.

Closely related to such case-or-controversy considerations is the requirement that a plaintiff must state a "sound basis for equitable relief." Id. at 103, 103 S.Ct. at 1666 (quoting O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 499, 94 S.Ct. 669, 677, 38 L.Ed.2d 674 (1974)). One component of this requirement is that an injunction-seeker must show either that some past unlawful conduct has continuing impact into the future, see K-Mart Corp. v. Oriental Plaza, Inc., 875 F.2d 907, 915 (1st Cir.1989), or else he must show a likelihood of future unlawful conduct on the defendant's part. See Maine v. United States Dep't of Labor, 770 F.2d 236, 238 (1st Cir.1985); Lovell v. Brennan, 728 F.2d 560, 562 (1st Cir.1984). To gain a permanent injunction in the former case, the plaintiff must actually succeed on the merits of his claim by proving that the past conduct violated his rights. See K-Mart Corp., 875 F.2d at 915; see also Rizzo v. Goode, 423 U.S. 362, 377, 96 S.Ct. 598, 607, 46 L.Ed.2d 561 (1976). Similarly, if plaintiff is seeking permanent injunctive relief based on the likelihood of future unlawful conduct and seeks to establish the likelihood of a future violation solely by pointing to the likely recurrence or continuation of past conduct, then plaintiff must show that this past conduct, if repeated, would in fact be violative of his rights. See CIBA-GEIGY Corp. v. Bolar Pharmaceutical Co., 747 F.2d 844, 850 (3d Cir.1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1137, 105 S.Ct. 2678, 86 L.Ed.2d 696 (1985); Newman v. Alabama, 683 F.2d 1312, 1319 (11th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1083, 103 S.Ct. 1773, 76 L.Ed.2d 346 (1983). And even after he has met one of these two preconditions, the injunction-seeker must show that he is subject to continuing irreparable injury for which there is no adequate remedy at law. See K-Mart Corp., 875 F.2d at 914-15; Newman, 683 F.2d at 1319; see also Beacon Theatres, 359 U.S. at 506-07, 79 S.Ct. at 954-55.

In this case, as a matter of law, these threshold requirements were unfulfilled in the court below. It follows inexorably, then, that the lower court had no authority to grant a permanent injunction in Lopez' favor. We explain briefly.

Plaintiff's prayer for injunctive relief was based on the following syllogism: (1) my constitutional rights were violated when I attempted to fly from San Juan (Isla Verde) to Mayaguez on December 6, 1987; (2) the procedures employed by INS officials on that day were typical of those used by INS officials generally; (3) I will frequently be flying the same route in the future; therefore (4) it is likely that my rights will be violated in the future. This construct, however, while perhaps valid in the pleading stage, was devastated by the jury verdict--a verdict which the trial judge refused to set aside, see Lopez II, 718 F.Supp. at 1067-69, and which Lopez elected not to appeal. The verdict established conclusively, for all purposes germane to this case, that Lopez' constitutional rights were not violated on the sixth of December. This established fact was entitled to collateral estoppel effect when the district court took up the prayer for permanent injunction. Davenport, 844 F.2d at 1313-14. As...