JOHN DANIEL BLUE v. MARIA DEGUADALUPE LOPEZ, a DFACS caseworker, in her individual capacity
No. 17-11742
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
August 28, 2018
[PUBLISH]
ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge
D.C. Docket No. 1:15-cv-01834-RWS
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia
(August 28, 2018)
Before ROSENBAUM and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges, and BARTLE,* District Judge.
We can‘t tell what time it is by measuring yards. We can‘t know how much something weighs by measuring lightyears. We can‘t see how long a field is by measuring degrees of heat. And we can‘t quantify rainfall by measuring it on the Richter magnitude scale. That‘s because in all of these cases, the measuring device simply is not designed to gauge the thing we are trying to measure.
Here, we must decide whether a legal measuring device—the standard for denying a motion for directed verdict in a Georgia criminal trial—can accurately gauge whether another legal standard—the propriety of granting summary judgment to a defendant in a
For the reasons we explain below, we conclude that was error. The denial of a directed verdict in a criminal trial doеs not measure what matters in evaluating on summary judgment in the
I.
A.
This case arises from an incident involving Blue and Lopez. At the time of the incident, Blue lived with his girlfriend Zstanya Patrick and their two sons, who were 14 аnd 10 years old.
DFACS received a complaint alleging domestic violence at the Patrick residence. So on the morning of June 12, 2014, Lopez went to Patrick‘s apartment to investigate. When Lopez arrived, she was driving a car that DFACS had provided for use in her job. Because of a medical condition, Lopez was using an intravenous (“IV“) catheter, which was located on her arm.
After Lopez parked, she went to the front door, and Patrick answered. Lopez asked her to step outside to speak with her. Patrick complied.
During their conversation, Patrick admitted that domestic violence had occurred in the home. Patrick said that she and Blue did not get along, and she described a recent incident where Blue had hit one of the children, causing the child to complain of ringing in his ear. When Lopez asked Patrick what she intended to do about the situation, Patrick explained that she was going to separate from Blue and move with her sons to Ohio. But Patrick had not made any specific plans about a timeframe for moving.
While the two women spoke, Blue arrived at the apartment. As Blue approached, Patrick asked Lopez to change the subject.
Blue did not address the two women when he entered the home. According to Blue, he did not know of Lopez‘s official capacity when he saw Patrick and Lopez speaking together. Instead, Blue stated that he believed that Lopеz, whom he later described as appearing disheveled, was a
Once Blue entered the apartment, he found his sons and told them to get dressed while he went out. Blue then left the apartment.
In the meantime, Lopez became concerned about Patrick‘s lack of a specific plan to remove the two children from the alleged domestic violence occurring in the home. So she returned to her car to call her supervisor and discuss the problem. Lopez‘s supervisor instructed Lopez to contact the Juvenile Court so she could take further action.
Lopez did just that. Once she reached the Juvenile Court by phone, a judge there granted Authorizations for Protective Custody (“Authorizations“) for the children. The Juvenile Court then emailed Lopez the Authorizаtions, which permitted her, on behalf of DFACS, to take Blue‘s sons into custody.
At about this time, Blue, who had left the apartment a few minutes earlier, returned for his children. According to Blue, when he arrived at the apartment, he did not see Lopez because, he later reasoned, she was in her car speaking with her supervisor and the Juvenile Court. Blue went into the apartment, waited for the children to get dressed, and then left the apartment with the children.
As Lopez continued to sit in her car, Blue emerged from the apartment with his sons. The three entered Blue‘s van, which was parked head-in in the parking space directly across from and in front of Lopez‘s car, which was backed in and therefore facing the back of Blue‘s van. An eight-to-ten-foot-wide lane of travel separated the two vehicles.
Blue and his children entered the van and prepared to back out of the parking space. Lopez did not want the children to leave because DFACS had custody of them under the Authorizations issued by the Juvenile Court.
In Blue‘s version of the facts, as he prepared to back out of his parking spot, Lopez approached the van, beat on the driver‘s side window and told him he could not leave with the children. Blue simply said, “No,” and began backing out of the parking space.
What happened next is hotly disputed by the parties. According to Blue, as he was backing out, Lopez ran to her car and deliberately drove it into the back of Blue‘s van. But Lopez claimed that it was Blue who struck her vehicle: Lopez asserted that she pulled her car up behind the van to prevent Blue from leaving with the children, but she did not strike his van. Rather, after she got close and had already stopped moving, Blue then backed into her.
Blue claimed that after the two cars collided, Blue got out of his van and asked Lopez to move her vehicle, but she did not respond. At the time, Blue said, he thought Lopеz looked “high” and “crazy as heck,” and his only interest was getting his children away from Lopez.
So when Lopez refused to move her car, Blue returned to his van and began driving it backward and forward multiple times until he was able to leave the parking space. Blue later claimed that he succeeded in leaving without hitting Lopez‘s car, though even later, he conceded that he used his van to “push” off Lopez‘s car.
Lopez later went to the Duluth Police Department to give a statement to police. In her statement, Lopez reported that Blue rammed her car as he was leaving the parking lot. As Lopez described the incident, Blue “continued backing into her vehicle until he had created a space where he could flee with his vehicle and both juveniles.”
An officer then asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to issue a statewide alert for the children. And the officers who spoke to Lopez asked if she wanted to press charges against Blue. Lopez called her supervisor at DFACS, who told Lopez to press charges.
At some point, Blue saw the police alert on television and, after asking his parents to pick up the children, turned himself in. Once at the Duluth Police Department, Blue spoke with the lead investigator. Blue told the investigator that, after he and the children entered the van and as he was backing up, Lopez drove her car into the back of his van. Following the initial impact, Blue said he hit the gas, pushed her car off, and left. He told the deteсtive that if he hit Lopez‘s car with his van, it was because he was trying to get out of the parking space.
The police ultimately arrested Blue, and an indictment was returned against him on a single charge of aggravated assault in violation of
B.
Following his acquittal, Blue filed a lawsuit against Lopez asserting, among other things, a Fourth Amendment malicious-prosecution claim under
In the course of the proceedings, Lopez moved for summary judgment on the malicious-prosecution claim. In her motion, Lopez argued that Blue could not establish the necessary elements of his claim because he could not show that the prosecution was carried on “maliciously and without probable cause.” Lopez offered two independent reasons for why this was so. First, she contended that probable cause for the prosecution was “conclusively established” when the state trial court judge denied Blue‘s motion for directed verdict in the criminal trial. Lopez relied on a Georgia Supreme Court case in support of her argument—Monroe v. Sigler, 353 S.E.2d 23 (Ga. 1987). Second, Lopez asserted that Blue‘s own statements established probable cause tо prosecute him for aggravated assault, or closely related charges. Lopez further contended she was entitled to qualified immunity since she was a government defendant, and her conduct did not violate Blue‘s clearly established rights.
The district court ultimately granted summary judgment in favor of Lopez on the malicious-prosecution claim. But in doing so, it relied solely on Monroe, without considering whether Blue‘s own statements
Blue now appeals.
II.
We review de novo a district court‘s grant of a summary-judgment motion. Strickland v. Norfolk S. Ry. Co., 692 F.3d 1151, 1154 (11th Cir. 2012). Summary judgment is appropriate where “there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”
III.
We have identified malicious prosecution as a violation of the Fourth Amendment and as a viable constitutional tort under
In Wood, we noted as to the “constituent elements of the common law tort of malicious prosecution, this Court has looked to both federal and state law and determined how those elements have historically developed.” Id. (citations omitted). To prove a
Here, the district court found, based on the Georgia criminal court‘s denial of the
In Monroe, the Georgia Supreme Court considered whether a trial court‘s denial of a motion for directed verdict in an earlier criminal case served as a binding determination of the existence of probable cause in a later civil action for malicious prosecution. Monroe, 353 S.E.2d at 25. The court concluded it did. Id.
It gave two reasons why. First, the court reasoned that if a judge in the criminal case determined that sufficient evidence existed for a jury to find guilt of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, then probable cause—a far lower standard than beyond a reasonable doubt—for the crime must have been established, if no “fraud or corruption” occurred. Id. And second, the court determined that policy justified such a rule. In this respect, the court explained, “It is ‘the policy of the [Georgia] courts that malicious prosecution suits are not favored. It is public policy to encourage citizens to bring to justice those who are apparently guilty.‘” Id. (alteration omitted) (quoting Day Realty Assocs. v. McMillan, 277 S.E.2d 663, 664 (Ga. 1981)).
Blue argues that the district court erred in applying the Monroe Rule to grant summary judgment for Lopez. We agree.
Federal law, not state law, governs the resolution of
As we have previously noted, “a Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claim under
If the rule were otherwise, the same malicious-prosecution claim brought as a federal constitutional tort would result in different outcomes depending on the state in which it was prosecuted. But a
Here, however, the district court relied on state law instead of federal law to resolve Blue‘s malicious-prosecution claim. And in this case, the state law the district court reliеd upon—the Monroe Rule—yields a resolution that federal law does not allow. This is so for four reasons.
Nor does Monroe‘s fraud-and-corruption exception account for this problem. The Monroe Rule does not apply in the case of fraud or corruption. Under Georgia law, the fraud-and-corruption exception pertains to the “perpetration of a fraud upon the court” or the “intentional corruption of the criminal trial,” meaning, for example, that someone involved in the prosecution bribed the judge to deny the motion for directed verdict of acquittal. Akins v. Warren, 375 S.E.2d 605, 606 (Ga. 1989). But a jury evaluating a
So the fraud-and-corruption exception to the Monroe Rule cannot render the Rule a viable stand-in for a factual determination of whether probable cause actually existed at the time of the prosecution.
Second, a criminal court deciding a motion for directed verdict assesses the evidence supporting conviction as it exists at a different point in time than the point in time at which evidence supporting probable cause in a malicious-prosecution claim is assessed. On a motion for directed verdict, the criminal court must evaluate all of the evidence entered during the trial to determine whether a reasonable jury could find the defendant guilty of the crime charged. But in a malicious-prosecution case, the civil court measures whether the defendant had probable cause to believe a crime occurred as of the beginning of the criminal proceeding. See Kingsland, 382 F.3d at 1235. Whether we mark the beginning of the сriminal proceeding as of the time of arraignment, see id., or at the start of the trial, the evidence existing at that time often differs in at least some respects from the evidence adduced during trial. So if we allowed the denial of a motion for directed verdict in the criminal trial to determine in the civil case whether probable cause existed, we would be relying on a ruling that depended on different evidence than that relevant to the inquiry in the civil case.
Third, the functions of
And fourth, allowing application of the Monroe Rule to negate federal claims where a defendant exercised his right to move for a directed verdict in a criminal proceeding would lead to perverse results. A criminal defendant aware of this rule might forego his right to move for a directed verdict in favor of preserving a later Fourth Amendment claim for malicious prosecution. Indeed, had Blue not moved for a directed verdict in his criminal case, the district court could not have granted Lopez‘s motion for summary judgment on the grounds it did.
For all of these reasons, a district court evaluating a motion for summary judgment must apply only the federal summary-judgment standard in determining whether summary judgment should be granted.4 A court may grant summary judgment only when, after viewing all evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party—in a
IV.
We conclude that the district court erred in granting summary judgment for Lopez based solely on the Monroe Rule. We therefore remand the case for further proceedings, so the district court can address Lopez‘s alternаtive arguments that she established probable cause from the facts of the case and that she was entitled to qualified immunity. We do not opine on the viability of Lopez‘s arguments but merely conclude that the denial of Blue‘s motion for directed verdict in the criminal case does not conclusively establish probable cause in this civil case.
VACATED AND REMANDED.