Rigas v. City of Rogersville
| Decision Date | 17 September 2013 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. CV-12-S-2401-NW |
| Parties | SPIROS PETE RIGAS, Plaintiff, v. THE CITY OF ROGERSVILLE, ALABAMA, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Alabama |
This action is before the court on a motion for summary judgment filed by defendant, Jason Shireman.1 Plaintiff, Spiros Pete Rigas, commenced this action in the Circuit Court of Lauderdale County, Alabama, on June 8, 2012, and named as defendants the Town of Rogersville, Alabama,2 and Rogersville Police Officer Jason Shireman.3 Both defendants timely removed the case to this court on July 6, 2012, based on federal question jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1441, 1446.
The plaintiff's complaint contained four counts: a claim for assault and batteryagainst Officer Shireman; a claim for false imprisonment and/or false arrest against both defendants; a claim for negligence against the Town; and a claim that both defendants violated rights guaranteed to plaintiff by the Fourth Amendment,4 as made applicable to the states by incorporation into the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.5 All claims against the Town were dismissed on January 31, 2013, for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.6 Accordingly, only plaintiff's claims against Officer Shireman remain at issue.
The fourth count of plaintiff's complaint — alleging that Officer Shireman violated plaintiff's Fourth Amendment rights — is asserted through 42 U.S.C. § 1983.7 This court has original jurisdiction of that claim under the federal questionstatute,8 and has supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law tort claims asserted by plaintiff in Counts One and Two.9 Officer Shireman moves for summary judgment on all claims, alleging that: he is subject to "qualified immunity" under 42 U.S.C. § 1983; that he did not violate plaintiff's Fourth Amendment rights; and that he is subject to "State-agent immunity" for all of plaintiff's state-law tort claims.10
Summary judgment should be entered "if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as amatter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). A motion for summary judgment may properly be granted against a nonmoving party who "fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party's case, and on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial." Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322 (1986).
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(c), summary judgment is proper "if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S. Ct. 2548, 91 L. Ed. 2d 265 (1986); Chapman v. AI Transport, 229 F.3d 1012, 1023 (11th Cir. 2000). The party asking for summary judgment always bears the initial responsibility of informing the court of the basis for its motion and identifying those portions of the pleadings or filings which it believes demonstrate the absence of a genuine issue of material fact. See id. at 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548. Once the moving party has met its burden, Rule 56(e) requires the nonmoving party to go beyond the pleadings and by its own affidavits, or by the depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, designate specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial. See id. at 324, 106 S. Ct. 2548.
Zann v. Whidby, 904 F. Supp. 2d 1229, 1234 (N.D. Ala. 2012) (Hancock, J.). Any reasonable dispute or doubt as to any material fact, and all justifiable inferences, are resolved in favor of the non-moving party. See Fitzpatrick v. City of Atlanta, 2 F.3d 1112, 1115 (11th Cir. 1993) (quoting United States v. Four Parcels of Real Property, 941 F.2d 1428, 1437 (11th Cir. 1991)). The materiality of a fact is determined by thesubstantive law at issue. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). A "genuine" dispute is one in which a reasonable jury could find for the non-moving party. Id.
Plaintiff resides in Rogersville, Alabama, and was inside his home on the evening of March 14, 2011.11 Around 9:00 p.m., Rogersville Police Officer Jason Shireman loudly knocked on plaintiff's front door.12 Plaintiff answered the door and asked why defendant was pounding on his door.13 Defendant informed plaintiff that he must stop discharging his firearm within the corporate limits of the Town of Rogersville, because such actions violated a town ordinance.14 Plaintiff admits that he had fired a gun on his property, but contends that the defendant had never observed him holding or discharging the weapon.15 Plaintiff then began to lecture defendant on the scope of Second Amendment rights and the sanctity of his property rights.16 During that discourse, defendant "suspected [that plaintiff] may have beenunder the influence of some intoxicant or else was on some medication."17 Plaintiff later admitted to having taken three legal, prescribed medications prior to the incident.18 In any event, what happened next is a matter of significant dispute.
Defendant and an alleged eyewitness claim that plaintiff physically shoved defendant, then turned to re-enter his home.19 Plaintiff denies that.20
Both parties agree that, at some point, defendant shoved plaintiff, causing his head to strike a brick wall.21 Plaintiff maintains he never touched defendant until after defendant had pushed him and attempted to place him under arrest.22
Defendant attempted to formally arrest plaintiff, but plaintiff refused to be arrested, and scrambled for the door "to escape further harm."23 Defendant leveraged himself inside the door, and began bludgeoning the tempered glass window of the door with a metal baton, in an attempt to break the glass and reach through the opening to "get control" of plaintiff.24 Defendant ultimately succeeded in breaking the door's glass window, and admitted that he repeatedly struck plaintiff's hand andarm with the baton because he believed that plaintiff was attempting to reach his holstered firearm.25
Plaintiff "bull-rushed" defendant out of the doorway and off his porch, locked the door, and called 911 to request deputies from the Lauderdale County Sheriff's Office.26 Plaintiff also called his mother. When plaintiff's mother and the sheriff's deputies arrived, plaintiff walked out of his residence and was arrested.27 An ambulance transported plaintiff to the Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital, where he received treatment for the injuries inflicted during the fracas.28 Defendant claims that he also suffered injuries.29
On March 16, 2011, two days after the altercation, defendant swore out a complaint against plaintiff for assault, escape, and resisting arrest.30 Ultimately, a Lauderdale County grand jury refused to return an indictment.31 Defendant is no longer employed by the Rogersville Police Department.32
The summary judgment requirement to "review all evidence and make all reasonable inferences in favor of the party opposing summary judgment," Chapman v. AI Transport, 229 F.3d 1012, 1023 (11th Cir. 2000), takes on even greater force when, in an action founded upon 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a state governmental official files a Rule 56 motion interposing the affirmative defense of qualified immunity. In such cases, the court must answer the legal question of whether the governmental official is entitled to qualified immunity under the plaintiff's version of the facts. As the Supreme Court observed in Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 (2001), a court that is "required to rule upon the qualified immunity issue must consider . . . this threshold question: Taken in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury, do the facts alleged show the officer's conduct violated a constitutional right?" Id. at 201 (emphasis supplied).
Indeed, we approach the facts from the plaintiff's perspective because "[t]he issues . . . concern 'not which facts the parties might be able to prove, but, rather, whether or not certain given facts showed a violation of clearly established law.'" Sheth [v. Webster], 145 F.3d [1231,] 1236 [(11th Cir. 1998)] (quoting Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 311, 115 S. Ct. 2151, 2155, 132 L. Ed. 2d 238 (1995)). As this Court has repeatedly stressed, the "facts, as accepted at the summary judgment stage of the proceedings, may not be the actual facts of the case." Priester v. City of Riviera Beach, 208 F.3d 919, 925 n.3 (11th Cir. 2000). Nevertheless, for summary judgment purposes, our analysis must begin with a description of the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. See Skrtich v. Thornton, 280 F.3d 1295, 1299 (11th Cir. 2002).
Lee v. Farraro, 284 F.3d 1188, 1190 (11th Cir. 2002) (alterations supplied).
Here, according to the facts pled by defendant, the plaintiff shoved him during the heat of their confrontation, at which point defendant attempted to place plaintiff under arrest.33 Plaintiff denies that allegation, however, charging instead that defendant first pushed him violently into a wall, then attempted to place him under arrest. Plaintiff alleges that he neither touched nor threatened defendant until after defendant attempted to arrest him.34
In response, defendant draws this court's attention to the fact that plaintiff's brief in opposition to defendant's motion for summary judgment failed to comply with the Uniform Initial Order entered in this case; specifically, plaintiff failed to present the disputed facts in clearly numbered paragraphs, failed to present distinct legal arguments, and generally failed to cite to the record or to applicable statutory or case law authorities.35 For those reasons, defendant asks this court to consider plaintiff as having admitted all facts set...
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