Violeta Valiente v. Luis Rivera
U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Violeta Valiente v. Luis Rivera
Opinion
USCA1 Opinion
June 5, 1992 ____________________
No. 91-2277
No. 91-2332
IRIS VIOLETA VALIENTE, ET AL.,
Plaintiffs, Appellees,
v.
HON. RAMON LUIS RIVERA, ETC., ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellants.
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APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Carmen Consuelo Cerezo, U.S. District Judge]
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Before
Breyer, Chief Judge,
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Campbell, Senior Circuit Judge,
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and Cyr, Circuit Judge.
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Reina Colon De Rodriguez, Acting Solicitor General, and Carlos
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Lugo-Fiol, Assistant Solicitor General, on brief for appellants.
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Jesus Hernandez Sanchez and Hernandez Sanchez Law Firm, on brief
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for appellees.
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Per Curiam. Claiming qualified immunity, defendant
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moved for summary judgment. Without reaching the merits of
the immunity claim, the district court denied the motion
because it was "filed on the eve of trial" and "comes too
late." Defendant has appealed. For reasons which follow, we
do not agree that the motion was filed too late.
I
Eight plaintiffs, employees of the municipality of
Bayaman, filed a complaint in October 1986 against the
municipality and its mayor. The lead plaintiff, Mrs. Violeta
Valiente, stated that she was a member of the same political
party as the mayor, but, because she had refused to
discriminate on the basis of political affiliation, the mayor
had classified her and her associates (the other plaintiffs)
as dissenters and had discriminated against them. According
to the complaint, Mrs. Violeta Valiente had been demoted in
1985, moved to a small room next to the toilet, given no
work, and harassed. Other plaintiffs had been denied raises
granted to employees with less experience and fewer
credentials, had been transferred to work places more distant
from their homes, had suffered a cut in hours, and had been
harassed and persecuted.
After initial settlement negotiations failed, trial
was originally scheduled for March 13, 1990, but was
postponed to July 31, 1990. On July 26, 1990, defendants
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filed their request for jury instruction, which included
instruction on qualified immunity. The July 31, 1990 trial
date was vacated when the parties informed the court that
promising settlement negotiations were underway. When, by
mid-September, no settlement had materialized, trial was
rescheduled for May 7, 1991. On May 2, 1991, several days
before trial, defendants sought a three-month continuance
because of the mayor's health problems. The motion was
granted the next day, but no new trial date was immediately
set.
On May 10, 1991, defendant mayor filed the motion
which is the subject of this appeal. He requested permission
to file a motion for summary judgment based on qualified
immunity. Accompanying the motion was a lengthy memorandum
arguing that in 1985 and 1986 when the acts in question had
taken place, the law was not clearly established that
politically motivated personnel actions short of discharge
were constitutionally proscribed. The motion was not
immediately acted upon. On May 28, trial was rescheduled to
December 2, 1991. On November 4, 1991, the court denied the
May 10, 1991 request to file a motion for summary judgment.
The court stated as follows:
Denied. Although a pre-trial motion for
summary judgment is the best instrument
for disposing of a qualified immunity
defense, this motion, filed on the eve of
trial, comes too late in this 1986
litigation. Given the Court's congested
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trial calendar, to allow this filing will
inevitably lead to a continuance of the
trial.
Defendant mayor has appealed from that order.
II
We reject plaintiffs' contention that the order
refusing permission to file a motion for summary judgment is
not appealable. Orders denying pre-trial claims of qualified
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immunity are immediately appealable as collateral orders in
accordance with Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511 (1985). To
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be sure, the district court here did not deny defendant's
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claim to qualified immunity on the merits, but rather refused
to address the merits of the motion at all. Nevertheless, as
an asserted right not to stand trial is lost no less by a
court's refusal to entertain a pre-trial immunity claim as by
an erroneous denial of it on the merits, we see no basis --
at least not in the circumstances of the present case -- for
distinguishing between the two for appellate jurisdictional
purposes. See Zayas-Green v. Casaine, 906 F.2d 18, 23 (1st
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Cir. 1990) ("Without question, defendants had . . . a right
to appeal from the district court's announced refusal to
entertain any further pre-trial motions raising the qualified
immunity defense."). We have jurisdiction to hear this
appeal.
III
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Contrary to the court's ruling, the motion
requesting permission to file a motion for summary judgment
was not filed on the eve of trial. Rather, when the motion
was filed, the court had already vacated the May trial date
and granted defendants' request for a substantial
continuance. As the new trial date was not until December,
the motion ended up having been filed almost seven months in
advance of trial. Seven months in advance is not the eve of
trial. There was sufficient time for the court to rule on
the summary judgment request.1
Moreover, it is clear that to the extent
defendant's motion asserted qualified immunity from damages
liability for politically motivated personnel actions short
of dismissal, the motion should have been granted.
Government officials are not liable for monetary damages in
1983 suits unless their actions violate "clearly established
statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable
person would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S.
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1. One reason why the court may have mistakenly
characterized the summary judgment motion as having been
filed on the eve of trial is that defendant's summary
judgment motion, ostensibly drafted before the motion for
continuance had been granted, itself stated it was being
filed on the eve of trial. Defendant sought to excuse the
late filing by pointing to a two and a half month old First
Circuit opinion and arguing that only recently had the
applicable law crystallized. We would be faced with a far
different case had the district court not granted the
continuance. Once the continuance was granted, however, the
summary judgment request was no longer last minute and must
be viewed in the context of the new trial schedule.
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800, 818 (1982); Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639
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(1987). As we have explained in other cases similar to the
present involving actions short of discharge, not until Rutan
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v. Republican Party of Illinois, 110 S.Ct. 2729 (1990), was
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decided did it become clearly established that the Elrod-
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Branti constitutional prohibition against politically
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motivated firings applied to other personnel actions, such as
promotions, transfers, and hirings. See Castro-Aponte v.
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Ligia-Rubero, 953 F.2d 1429 (1st Cir. 1992) (qualified
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immunity for 1986 transfer decision); Roque-Rodriguez v. Lema
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Moya, 926 F.2d 103, 106-07 (1st Cir. 1991) (plaintiff denied
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promotion from 1985 to 1989; qualified immunity); Nunez-Soto
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v. Alvarado, 918 F.2d 1029, 1030 (1st Cir. 1990) (demotion).
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In the present case, plaintiffs complained of demotion,
changes in duties, transfers, reduced hours, and raise
denials predating their 1986 complaint. As it was not
clearly established at that time that such personnel actions,
even if politically motivated, violated the constitution,
defendant mayor is entitled to qualified immunity from
damages liabilitywith respectto these FirstAmendment claims.2
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2. In their appellate brief, various plaintiffs assert other
possible claims: 1) denial of procedural due process in that
no hearing preceded the demotion or other adverse personnel
actions, 2) constructive discharge in violation of First
Amendment rights, and 3) violation of First Amendment rights
in that plaintiffs were harassed because of their speech
concerning unhealthy conditions. We do not now decide
whether all these claims were raised below or whether summary
judgment with respect to any of them is proper, but rather
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Pursuant to First Circuit Rule 27.1, the November
4, 1991 order is vacated to the extent it denied defendant
mayor's motion requesting permission to file a motion for
summary judgment, and the case is remanded with directions to
grant summary judgment to defendant mayor on the issue of
qualified immunity from damages liability with respect to
plaintiffs' claims that defendant violated plaintiffs' First
Amendment rights by subjecting them to adverse working
conditions short of discharge (actual or constructive)
because of their political affiliation.
Vacated and remanded.
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leave these matters to be addressed in the first instance by
the district court.
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Reference
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