Stepanovich v. City of Naples, 17-12332
| Decision Date | 13 March 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 17-12332,17-12332 |
| Parties | ALEKSANDAR STEPANOVICH, Plaintiff - Counter Defendant - Appellant, MONIKA MOZOLICOVA, IVANA KAVAJA, Plaintiffs - Appellants, MILAN UZUNOVIC, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF NAPLES, KYLE BRADSHAW, Officer, Defendants - Appellees, RYAN HARP, Officer, et al., Defendants, MICHAEL O'REILLY, Defendant - Counter Claimant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
Non-Argument Calendar
D.C. Docket No. 2:14-cv-00270-PAM-MRM Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida
Before MARCUS, JULIE CARNES, and HULL, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiffs-Appellants Aleksandar Stepanovich, Monika Mozolicova, and Ivana Kavaja (collectively, "Plaintiffs") appeal following the district court's denial of their motions for a new trial in an action they filed against Officer Kyle Bradshaw and the City of Naples. The operative complaint brought claims against Bradshaw under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging invasion of privacy, excessive force, false arrest, and malicious prosecution; § 1983 claims against the City, alleging constitutional violations stemming from the police department's reporting and booking practices; and state law claims, including negligence by the City for failing to correct false information in its records about Stepanovich. On appeal, the Plaintiffs challenge the district court's dismissal of several claims, its evidentiary rulings, its denial of a motion for a continuance, its jury instructions, and its denial of motions for a new trial. After careful review, we affirm.
"We review a district judge's order granting a motion under Rule 12(b)(6) de novo." Bhd. of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen Gen. Comm. of Adjustment CSX Transp. N. Lines v. CSX Transp., Inc., 522 F.3d 1190, 1194 (11th Cir. 2008). We review the district court's evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion. United States v. Wilk, 572 F.3d 1229, 1234 (11th Cir. 2009). Similarly, we review the district court's disposition of a motion for new trial for abuse of discretion. Davis v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 967 F.2d 1563, 1566 (11th Cir. 1992). A motion for a continuance is also reviewed for abuse of discretion. Edward Leasing Corp. v. Uhlig & Assocs., Inc., 785 F.2d 877, 879 (11th Cir. 1986). Whether jury instructions misstate the law is reviewed de novo, but otherwise the district court is granted wide discretion in how it instructs the jury. Palmer v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. Sys. of Ga., 208 F.3d 969, 973 (11th Cir. 2000). Further, a district court's refusal to give a requested jury instruction is reviewed for abuse of discretion. United States v. Grigsby, 111 F.3d 806, 814 (11th Cir. 1997).
The relevant background -- taken from the complaint and trial -- is this. In the early morning hours of May 17, 2012, police officers Kyle Bradshaw and Ryan Harp responded to a noise complaint at an apartment in the City of Naples. The apartment was being rented by Stepanovich and his wife Mozolicova. Shortly afterissuing a citation for a noise violation, the officers were called back to the apartment on another noise complaint. On their second visit to the apartment, Bradshaw and Harp were met at the door by AnnaMiria Miric, a friend of Stepanovich and Mozolicova. They told Miric they needed to speak with Mozolicova, but Miric replied that they needed a warrant to enter the apartment.
Plaintiffs presented evidence at trial that at this point the officers pulled Miric out of the apartment and handcuffed her, while Bradshaw testified that she was standing outside the door when they effectuated the arrest. Because Mozolicova was standing behind Miric when she answered the door, the Plaintiffs also argued at trial that Bradshaw reached into the apartment to pull Mozolicova out of it. This account is corroborated by Officer Bradshaw's pretrial deposition and his arrest report. But in a 2012 deposition in a related criminal prosecution of Stepanovich, Bradshaw testified that Mozolicova was outside the apartment when he tried to grab for her, and that she hit him before fleeing back inside. This is also essentially the version of the incident Bradshaw recounted at the trial, where he testified that Mozolicova came out of the apartment to try to pull Miric back into the unit, and that, while she was outside, she hit him when he tried to grab her.
At that point, Bradshaw tried to enter the apartment in pursuit of Mozolicova, and was involved in an altercation with Stepanovich. He then placed Stepanovich in handcuffs and took him outside. Bradshaw reentered the apartmentto search for Mozolicova and found her in the bedroom. The Plaintiffs offered evidence that Officer Bradshaw then slammed Mozolicova's head into a window ledge, causing her to bleed. Bradshaw, however, testified the injury was self-inflicted. According to the Plaintiffs's testimony, the officers also violently beat Stepanovich and tased him without provocation, while the officers testified Stepanovich was tased after he attempted to hit an officer.
Bradshaw transported to jail Stepanovich, Mozolicova, and Ivana Kavaja (Stepanovich's sister who also was involved in the altercation with police at her brother's apartment), and completed a booking sheet about the incident. Because his report acknowledged that he entered the apartment in order to effectuate an arrest, the Plaintiffs' complaint alleged that the booking sheet showed Bradshaw's unlawful conduct on its face. It added that Bradshaw's supervisors did not detect the unlawfulness admitted to in the report because they did not properly review it, and, if they had, they would have taken steps to stop the prosecution of Mozolicova and Kavaja. The complaint blamed this failure to review the report on the cumbersome nature of the City's internal reviewing system, and said the City's Chief of Police knew the flawed system had led to past constitutional deprivations.
Mozolicova and Kavaja were both charged with resisting arrest with violence, a third-degree felony, and misdemeanors of resisting arrest without violence and disorderly conduct. The misdemeanor charges were dismissed andeach woman eventually pled no contest to a disorderly conduct charge, at which point the felony charges were dismissed.
Stepanovich was charged with third-degree felonies of battery, resisting arrest with violence, and aiding escape, and with misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest without violence and disorderly conduct. The trial judge in Stepanovich's criminal case dismissed all the charges based in part on his finding that the officers' entry into Stepanovich's home was unlawful.
In the lead up to the criminal trial, the City of Naples published a press release that claimed that Stepanovich was wanted for a murder in Siberia. According to the complaint, this press release was false and was based on mistaken information that Bradshaw included in his arrest report. As a result of this press release, the Plaintiffs alleged that they lost their jobs and apartment.
Thereafter, Stepanovich, Mozolicova, and Kavaja brought this suit against Bradshaw and the City of Naples. The district court granted the City's motion to dismiss all claims against it, as well as Bradshaw's motion to dismiss the malicious prosecution claim brought against him. Before trial, the district court also rendered a number of evidentiary rulings, including placing limits on how the Plaintiffs could use Bradshaw's deposition testimony at trial and allowing in evidence, over the Plaintiffs' objections, a video taken of some of the events leading up to the incident at Stepanovich's apartment. Five days before trial, the plaintiffs came intopossession of new information relating to the City's use-of-force practices. On the basis of this information, they asked for a continuance of the trial and for the district court to reconsider its dismissal of the claims against the City. The district court denied both motions.
The jury returned a verdict finding in favor of Bradshaw and against the Plaintiffs on all counts. The Plaintiffs then moved for a new trial with the district court, which was denied. This appeal ensued.
For starters, we are unpersuaded by the Plaintiffs' claim that the district court erred in denying their motion for summary judgment on their claims against Bradshaw when it considered supposedly sham evidence in rendering its decision. In particular, the Plaintiffs argue that the district court erred in relying on Bradshaw's 2012 criminal deposition to find a genuine issue of material fact because the deposition contradicted earlier and later statements Bradshaw made about the incident. But this issue is not properly before us. It is well-established that "a party may not appeal an order denying summary judgment after there has been a full trial on the merits." Pensacola Motor Sales Inc. v. E. Shore Toyota, LLC, 684 F.3d 1211, 1219 (11th Cir. 2012). Here, the Plaintiffs did not renew their summary judgment motion on a Rule 50 motion after trial, nor did they seek a certification of appeal of the denial of summary judgment before trial. Theytherefore cannot now appeal the district court's resolution of an issue presented in a pretrial summary judgment motion. Lind v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 254 F.3d 1281, 1285 (11th Cir. 2001).1
We also find no merit to the Plaintiffs' argument that the district court erred in dismissing their Monell claim2 against the City of Naples. In their second amended complaint, the Plaintiffs claimed that the City's internal system by which police supervisors reviewed officers' arrest reports was flawed and cumbersome, thereby paving the way for the supposedly malicious prosecution of the Plaintiffs. The Plaintiffs do not argue that the allegedly flawed booking system is facially invalid as a constitutional matter. As a result, in order to survive a motion to dismiss, their complaint must lay out a plausible claim that the City showeddeliberate indifference to the constitutionally suspect...
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