Skousen v. Brighton High School

• Decision Date: 26 September 2002
• Docket Number: No. 00-2170.,00-2170.
• Citation: 305 F.3d 520
• Parties: Deborah Audra SKOUSEN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. BRIGHTON HIGH SCHOOL, et al., Defendants, Paul Rambo, a Michigan State Trooper, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

305 F.3d 520

Deborah Audra SKOUSEN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. BRIGHTON HIGH SCHOOL, et al., Defendants Paul Rambo, a Michigan State Trooper, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 00-2170.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued March 18, 2002.

Decided and Filed September 26, 2002.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Lawrence Nathaniel Radden (argued and briefed), Radden & Associates, Detroit, MI, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

William R. Schulz, Foster, Swift, Collins & Smith, Lansing, MI, for Defendant.

Mark S. Meadows (argued and briefed), James T. Farrell, Office of the Attorney General, Tort Defense Division, Lansing, MI, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before: BATCHELDER and CLAY, Circuit Judges; CARR, District Judge.^*

OPINION

BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge.

Paul Rambo, the only remaining defendant in this action, appeals the district court's denial of his motion for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds on the plaintiff's claims of illegal search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment and malicious prosecution brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court denied the motion solely because discovery was not yet complete. We now conclude that the district court erred in denying the motion, both because the defense of qualified immunity is a threshold question, which, if properly raised prior to discovery, the district court has a duty to address prior to discovery, and because on the undisputed facts of this case defendant Rambo is clearly entitled to qualified immunity. We therefore reverse the judgment of the district court and remand this matter with instructions to enter judgment for Rambo on the § 1983 claims.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On December 7, 1999, the plaintiff, Deborah Audra Skousen, filed this action against Michigan State Trooper Paul Rambo and Brighton High School student counselor Kenneth J. Jaukkuri, as well as Brighton High School, the Brighton Area School System and Board of Education, and the Brighton Area Schools Superintendent. Jaukkuri was sued in both his official and individual capacities; Rambo was sued only in his individual capacity. Skousen's complaint alleged that the defendants had falsely and maliciously caused her to be arrested, without probable cause, for the assault of her eighteen-year-old daughter, and by their actions had violated her Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to substantive due process and equal protection. Material to this appeal are Skousen's claims in Counts 2 and 3 of the Complaint (reading the Complaint generously, we point out) that Trooper Rambo was responsible for obtaining the warrant for Skousen's arrest on charges that she had assaulted her daughter; that without any evidence that such an assault had occurred, Rambo provided false statements and omitted material facts is his report of investigation of the alleged assault; that Rambo deliberately lied and misrepresented the medical report of the physician who examined Skousen's daughter; and that Rambo knowingly caused Skousen to be arrested and prosecuted without probable cause; and that Skousen was tried before and acquitted by a jury on the assault charges.

On February 22, 2000, Rambo moved for summary judgment on Counts 2 and 3, claiming qualified immunity. In support of his motion, Rambo provided the district court with his own affidavit, the police report that he had filed detailing his investigation of the alleged assault, the misdemeanor complaint issued by the prosecutor's office; and the medical report of Dr. Irene Kimovec (who had examined Skousen's daughter after the alleged assault). The court ordered the plaintiff to respond to the summary judgment motion by March 17, 2000, and set the matter for hearing on June 7, 2000. The hearing was rescheduled for June 14. Skousen's response to the motion for summary judgment — which was not filed until June 14, the new hearing date — included copies of the same documents provided by Rambo as well as the testimony given by Dr. Kimovec and Trooper Rambo during Skousen's trial. The district court — apparently sua sponte—struck Skousen's response because it was untimely, but did not rule on the motion for summary judgment. Rather, although the plaintiff had filed no affidavit — and indeed has to this day never filed an affidavit — under Rule 56(f) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure explaining her inability to present the facts necessary to oppose Rambo's summary judgment motion, the district court characterized the motion as "premature" because discovery was not complete; ordered the motion held in abeyance until the conclusion of discovery on August 28, 2000; further ordered that Rambo would be permitted to supplement or amend his motion by September 1, 2000; and required Skousen to respond to the motion by September 21, 2000.

On August 25, 2000, after Rambo had been deposed by Skousen and had filed answers to plaintiff's interrogatories and requests for admission, the parties stipulated to an extension of the discovery deadline until November 3, 2000. The stipulation did not purport to affect the September deadlines set by the court for Rambo's amendment or supplementation of the motion for summary judgment or Skousen's response to the motion. On August 31, the district court issued an order setting November 3, 2000, as the new discovery cutoff, and denying without prejudice Rambo's motion for summary judgment,¹ specifically ordering that Rambo would be permitted to refile the motion after the conclusion of discovery. This timely appeal followed.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

These facts are unrefuted in the record. On Monday morning, April 28, 1997, Brighton High School senior Rebecca Skousen, confided to defendant Kenneth Jaukkuri, a guidance counselor at Brighton High School, that the previous evening, her mother, plaintiff Deborah Skousen, had struck Rebecca twice in the face with an open hand, causing her to have pain on the left side of her jaw and difficulty opening her mouth. Jaukkuri reported the incident to the Michigan State Police at 8:00 a.m. Later in the day, he took Rebecca to an urgent care center where she was examined by Dr. Kimovec, whose handwritten report of the examination stated that Rebecca had a "tender preauricular area [located in front of the ear] and just above the angle of the jaw" on the left side. Immediately following this notation in the report, there appears a small handwritten circle, not quite closed at the top, inside of which is a slightly curved horizontal line (appearing to the layman's eye to resemble nothing so much as a "smiley face"); this symbol is immediately followed by the word "bruise." The report also contains a section captioned "Impression" which says — as best we can decipher it — "contusion jaw"; finally, the report instructs Rebecca to see her own doctor if she is "no better in 3-4 days," and to use ice and Motrin.

Defendant Rambo of the Michigan State Police undertook to investigate, following which he filed a police report detailing the investigation. The report indicates that Jaukkuri advised the police at 8:00 a.m. on Monday, April 28, 1997, that he had a student in his office who had been assaulted by her mother and that the assault went beyond parental discipline. Rambo interviewed Rebecca, Rebecca's father, guidance counselor Jaukkuri, and Rebecca's older sister (who no longer lived in the parents' home). Rebecca told Rambo that she had argued with her mother, Deborah Skousen; that her mother slapped her in the face, knocking her backwards; that her mother threw a clock radio onto the floor, breaking it; that Rebecca's father attempted to intervene in the altercation but was hit by Deborah and fell to the floor; that Rebecca took her ten-year-old sister upstairs into Rebecca's room and barricaded the door, and then called the police; that the police refused to send an officer to the home because they would not interfere with "parental discipline"; and that Rebecca told her father that she intended to talk with her school guidance counselor about the incident.

The police report indicates that Jaukkuri told Rambo that he had had dealings with Deborah Skousen in the past in which she had become angry and irrational, which caused him to be very concerned about Rebecca's circumstances. Jaukkuri said that he intended to get medical treatment for Rebecca's swollen jaw. The report further indicates that at 3:03 p.m. on Monday, April 28, 1997, Rebecca was treated by Dr. Irene Kimovec for a bruised jaw.

When Rambo telephoned the Skousen residence, Deborah Skousen advised him to come to the home if he wanted to talk with her, and not to speak with her husband because he was the cause of the problem. But when Rambo arrived at the home, Deborah Skousen had left and gone to the high school. Deborah's husband — Rebecca's father — was home, however, and he told Rambo that Rebecca and Deborah had engaged in an argument the night before during which Deborah had struck Rebecca three times with an open hand, and when he had attempted to intervene, Deborah had struck him as well. Mr. Skousen explained to Rambo that the family needed counseling, but that Deborah refused to seek it. Mr. Skousen expressed his hope that his wife would not find out that he had talked with Rambo.

When Rambo again spoke with Deborah over the phone, she advised him that the entire matter was a plot by her husband and that there was nothing to investigate. Rambo explained that he needed to talk with her in person and would come directly to the home; when he arrived, Deborah had again departed. Later that day, Deborah sent a letter to the police department opining that Rambo could not be objective in investigating the matter because he had a son who had dated Skousen's older daughter; the letter included short notes from her husband and son stating that there was nothing wrong with Skousen's mental health. According to the report, Mr. Skousen later told Rambo that he had been forced by his wife to write that part...