Paz v. Hayden

Case: 24-20226 Document: 53-1 Page: 1 Date Filed: 04/01/2025

United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ____________ United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit

No. 24-20226 FILED April 1, 2025 ____________ Lyle W. Cayce Richard Allen Paz, Clerk Plaintiff—Appellant, versus Constable Precinct 4 Kenneth Hayden; Constable Precinct 4, Name Unknown; Constable Precinct 4, Name Unknown; Constable Precinct 4, Name Unknown; Constable Precinct 4, Name Unknown; Deputy Rickey Ford; Deputy Ronald Hamlet; Deputy Christopher Taylor, Defendants—Appellees. ______________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas USDC No. 4:22-CV-1898 ______________________________ Before Haynes, Duncan, and Wilson, Circuit Judges.

Per Curiam: * Richard Paz sued several police officers following an allegedly illegal search. The officers asserted qualified immunity in their motion for Case: 24-20226 Document: 53-1 Page: 2 Date Filed: 04/01/2025

No. 24-20226 summary judgment. By failing to respond, Paz did not carry his burden of negating qualified immunity. We thus AFFIRM the district court, although we modify the dismissal of the requested injunction to reflect that it is without prejudice.

I. Background Because this case comes to us on the officers’ motion for summary judgment, we recite the facts in the light most favorable to Paz. See Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 378 (2007).

After receiving a tip regarding the purported location of a felon named Callie, police officers decided to pay Callie a visit. The tipster told officers that Callie was in a house where Paz rented a room. Armed with an arrest warrant, the officers arrived at the house and took position around the property. Paz and his housemate heard a noise outside, so they opened the side door and saw officers prying wooden slats off the fence surrounding the backyard. Paz asserts that the officers lied about seeing a shotgun in the house to justify the entry into the backyard. 1 With guns drawn, the officers ordered Paz out of the house and asked where Callie was. Paz denied knowing a Callie. The officers then asked Paz if the cameras on the property worked; Paz said yes, and then the officers took down the cameras pursuant to a search warrant. After running Paz’s fingerprints, the officers learned that Paz had outstanding arrest warrants, so the officers arrested him.

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Paz sued the officers for the allegedly illegal search, seeking compensatory, punitive, and nominal damages, as well as injunctive relief.

The officers filed a motion for summary judgment, asserting qualified immunity. Paz did not respond to the motion. The district court granted summary judgment, concluding that “[w]hile fact questions exist as to whether the search was valid, the defendants are entitled to summary judgment on [the illegal search] claim because Paz has not show[n] that he suffered a cognizable injury as a result of the search.” 2 Paz appeals.

II. Standard of Review We review summary judgments de novo. Louisiana ex rel. La. Dep’t of Wildlife & Fisheries v. Nat’l Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin., 70 F.4th 872, 878 (5th Cir. 2023).

III. Standing The extent to which the district court’s dismissal rested on standing instead of the merits is debatable; 3 regardless, we must independently assure ourselves of our jurisdiction. See Ford v. NYLCare Health Plans of Gulf Coast, Inc., 301 F.3d 329, 331–32 (5th Cir. 2002). A plaintiff must demonstrate three Case: 24-20226 Document: 53-1 Page: 4 Date Filed: 04/01/2025

No. 24-20226 elements to establish standing: injury in fact, traceability, and redressability.

Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560–61 (1992).

A plaintiff has standing if he alleges a violation of a constitutional right that, if proved, would entitle him to at least nominal damages. Green v. McKaskle, 788 F.2d 1116, 1124 (5th Cir. 1986); see also Lewis v. Woods, 848 F.2d 649, 651 (5th Cir. 1988) (“[A] party who proves a violation of his constitutional rights is entitled to nominal damages even when there is no actual injury.”). Intangible harms, like illegal searches, can be concrete injuries sufficient to confer standing. TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413, 425 (2021) (“Various intangible harms can also be concrete. Chief among them are injuries with a close relationship to harms traditionally recognized as providing a basis for lawsuits in American courts. . . . And those traditional harms may also include harms specified by the Constitution itself.”). Illegal searches have long been recognized as a legal harm sufficiently concrete under Article III. See id. See generally United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 405 (2012) (“[O]ur Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was tied to common-law trespass, at least until the latter half of the 20th century.”). 4 We thus conclude that Paz has standing to pursue his claim of an illegal search.

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IV. Qualified Immunity Summary judgment is appropriate if there is “no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). We view the facts in the light most favorable to Paz and draw all reasonable inferences in his favor. Scott, 550 U.S. at 378.

The district court did not consider qualified immunity, but we may affirm on any basis supported by the record. See Smith v. Reg’l Transit Auth., 827 F.3d 412, 417 (5th Cir. 2016). “Qualified immunity protects officers from suit unless their conduct violates a clearly established constitutional right.” Mace v. City of Palestine, 333 F.3d 621, 623 (5th Cir. 2003). Once a defendant asserts qualified immunity, “[t]he plaintiff bears the burden of negating qualified immunity.” Brown v. Callahan, 623 F.3d 249, 253 (5th Cir. 2010). Paz must meet two requirements: First, he must show that, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to him, the officers violated a federal right. See Tolan v. Cotton, 572 U.S. 650, 655–56 (2014) (per curiam). Second, he must show that the right “was clearly established at the time of the violation.” Id. at 656 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

By failing to brief the matter before the district court and not having any evidence of clearly established law at the time of violation, Paz did not meet his burden to defeat qualified immunity. See Cunningham v. Castloo, Case: 24-20226 Document: 53-1 Page: 6 Date Filed: 04/01/2025

No. 24-20226

983 F.3d 185, 194 (5th Cir. 2020) (“All told, [plaintiff] has failed to cite adequate authority at a sufficiently high level of specificity to put [the defendant] on notice that his conduct [was] definitively unlawful. [Plaintiff] therefore failed to satisfy her burden of defeating [the defendant’s] claim of qualified immunity.” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)); see also Cass v. City of Abilene, 814 F.3d 721, 733 (5th Cir. 2016) (per curiam) (explaining that plaintiffs failed to argue that the constitutional right was clearly established and thus failed to overcome qualified immunity).

Accordingly, the officers are entitled to qualified immunity.

Paz asserts that summary judgment cannot be granted for failure to respond. See Hibernia Nat’l Bank v. Administracion Cent. Sociedad Anonima, 776 F.2d 1277, 1279 (5th Cir. 1985) (“A motion for summary judgment cannot be granted simply because there is no opposition . . . .”). However, we are not granting it solely for the failure to respond. Instead, the officers raised and briefed qualified immunity below, which put the burden on Paz to defeat the defense. See, e.g., McClendon v. City of Columbia, 305 F.3d 314, 323 (5th Cir. 2002) (en banc) (per curiam). Paz did not meet his burden, so we AFFIRM.

V. Conclusion For the reasons above, we modify dismissal of the requested injunctive relief to reflect that it is without prejudice, but we otherwise AFFIRM the district court.