Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-94-02268/USCOURTS-ca10-94-02268-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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PUBLISH FILED 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

United States Court or A;:pc:~ 

Teuth Circuit 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

19 SOLID WASTE DEPARTMENT MECHANICS, 

SAM AGUILAR, RUDY ARCHULETA, JR., 

EDWARD BACA, PAUL BARBOA, 

M. E. BARRERAS I GARY L. CHAVEZ I 

JOHNNY CHAVEZ, ANTHONY DEMELLO, 

MICHAEL GUTIERREZ, JIMMY HERRERA, 

BILL LIPITZ, JOHN LUJAN, 

FRANK ORTEGA, AARON ROMERO, 

DONALD SCOTT, FRANK SERNA, 

ARTURO TORRES, JR., JAMES VIGIL, and 

RORY WESSEL, 

Plaintiffs-Appellees, 

v. 

ALBUQUERQUE, CITY OF; LOUIS E. 

SAAVEDRA, Mayor, ARTHUR BLUMENFELD, 

Chief Administrative Officer; LAWRENCE 

RAEL, Assistant Chief Administrative 

Officer, and DAVID CAMPBELL, 

City Attorney and Chairman of the 

Substance Abuse Task Force, 

individually and in their official 

capacities, 

Defendants-Appellants. 

FEB 2 11996 

PATRICK FISHER 

CJerlt 

No. 94-2268 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of New Mexico 

(D.C. No. CIV-93-1385-JP) 

Victor s. Lopez, Assistant City Attorney, Albuquerque, New Mexico 

(Robert M. White, City Attorney, and Charles W. Kolberg, Assistant 

City Attorney, with him on the brief), for Defendants-Appellants. 

Paul Livingston, Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Plaintiffs-Appellees. 

Appellate Case: 94-2268 Document: 01019277334 Date Filed: 02/21/1996 Page: 1 
Before SEYMOUR, COFFIN, 1 and McKAY. 

COFFIN, Senior Circuit Judge. This case involves a challenge 

by 19 mechanics to the City of Albuquerque's drug testing policy. 

The district court ruled that the policy violated both the Fourth 

Amendment and the New Mexico Open Meetings Act, and the City 

appealed. Since the time of oral argument, however, the parties 

properly have agreed that, because the district court has not yet 

addressed the issue of damages, an appeal of the Fourth Amendment 

ruling is premature. ~ Liberty Mutual Ins. Co. v. Wetzel, 424 

U.S. 737, 744 (1976); H.Qm v. Transcon Lines. Inc., 898 F.2d 589, 

594 (7th Cir. 1990) . 2 

It also was revealed at oral argument that the City had 

withdrawn the disputed policy. This information prompted our 

inquiry into whether the controversy remained alive, and 

1The Honorable Frank M. Coffin, United States Senior Circuit 

Judge for the First Circuit, sitting by designation. 

2 The City also claims that the Open Meetings Act issue should 

be dismissed as premature because the district court did not state 

the effect of its holding that the policy was invalid. The court's 

ruling "declaring" the drug testing policy to be invalid provided 

all the relief requested under the Open Meetings Act claim, 

however, and the judgment on that claim therefore was properly 

certified under Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b). 

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Appellate Case: 94-2268 Document: 01019277334 Date Filed: 02/21/1996 Page: 2 
subsequently led to a motion from the City for a declaration of 

mootness on the Open Meetings Act issue and a request for vacatur 

of the district court's decision on that claim. Plaintiffs filed 

an opposition, arguing, inter glia, that the motion was untimely, 

that it was filed simply as a bad-faith maneuver to evade the 

district court • s judgment, and that various exceptions to the 

mootness doctrine are applicable. Plaintiffs urged that, if the 

case were deemed moot, the district court's judgment be allowed to 

stand. 

Having considered the record before us in light of the 

relevant precedent, we conclude that the proper course is to 

dismiss the Open Meetings Act issue as moot. The parties agree 

that the policy ruled unconstitutional by the district court has 

been replaced. The record contains only passing references to the 

new policy, and no specific information is provided about its 

creation. The City baldly asserts in its motion that the policy 

11 conformed procedurally with the requirements set by Judge Parker, 11 

while the plaintiffs assert that 11 the process by which the City 

created its 'new• policy was no more open or public tha[n] the 

process used for the old policy II We cannot possibly 

determine on the record before us whether the present policy was 

drafted in accordance with the Act, and we can see no benefit to be 

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Appellate Case: 94-2268 Document: 01019277334 Date Filed: 02/21/1996 Page: 3 
gained from reviewing the district court's judgment on the 

withdrawn policy. 

We deny, however, the City's motion to vacate the district 

court's judgment. The Supreme Court has observed that, in 

determining how to dispose of moot cases, "[t]he principal 

condition to which we have looked is whether the party seeking 

relief from the judgment below caused the mootness by voluntary 

action," U.S. Banco:r:p Mortg. Co. v. Bonner Mall Partnership, 115 S. 

Ct. 386, 391 (1994). The determination on vacatur is an equitable 

one, ~ at 393, but the presumption is in favor of retaining the 

judgment, which "'should stand unless a court concludes that the 

public interest would be served by a vacatur, ' " id.... at 3 92 

(citation omitted) . The Supreme Court explained the basis for the 

presumption in U.S. Bancorp: 

Congress has prescribed a primary route, by appeal as of 

right and certiorari, through which parties may seek 

relief from the legal consequences of judicial judgments. 

To allow a party who steps off the statutory path to 

employ the secondary remedy of vacatur as a refined form 

of collateral attack on the judgment would -- quite apart 

from any considerations of fairness to the parties --

disturb the orderly operation of the federal judicial 

system. 

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Appellate Case: 94-2268 Document: 01019277334 Date Filed: 02/21/1996 Page: 4 
115 S. Ct. at 392. 3 The Court went on to reject the notion that 

motions at the court of appeals level for vacatur of district court 

judgments should be granted more freely than motions to vacate 

rulings of the courts of appeal because district court judgments 

are subject to review as of right. ~at 393. The Court noted 

that that difference does not affect its primary rationale, that "a 

litigant who has voluntarily abandoned review" lacks equitable 

justification for vacatur. ~ 

In this case, the City unquestionably caused the mootness by 

withdrawing the policy the district court had found invalid. It 

nonetheless contends that vacatur is appropriate, and includes 

among its reasons the fact that it believes the district court's 

decision is wrong. This rationale obviously collides head on with 

the Supreme Court's admonition that a party should not be allowed 

to use vacatur "as a refined form of collateral attack on the 

judgment," U.S. Bancorp, 115 S. Ct. at 392. 

3 The specific question in U.S. Banco:r:p was whether "appellate 

courts in the federal system should vacate civil judgments of 

subordinate courts in cases that are settled after appeal is filed 

or certiorari sought." 115 S. Ct. at 388-89. The Court ruled that 

mootness by reason of settlement does not justify vacatur, although 

it noted that exceptional circumstances might warrant it in a 

particular case. ~at 393. 

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Appellate Case: 94-2268 Document: 01019277334 Date Filed: 02/21/1996 Page: 5 
The City also contends, however, that it had no reasonable 

course of action ·to follow other than to replace the policy 

invalidated by the district court. It could not continue to test 

under the policy, and halting all drug testing until after the 

appeal was decided would extend indefinitely the risk of harm to 

city employees and others that the policy was designed to prevent. 

The City thus contends that its decision to adopt a new policy was 

appropriate, and argues that the resulting mootness should not be 

held against it. Because it claims that other employees 

disciplined under the invalidated policy might be able to use the 

district court's judgment against the City, the City contends that 

vacatur is in the public interest. 

For various reasons, we are unpersuaded. First, the City 

overstates the need to replace the invalidated policy with a new 

one during the pendency of the appeal. The City previously 

conducted reasonable suspicion testing under the authority of its 

personnel rules, and certain municipal departments also had 

independent substance abuse policies. While not as comprehensive 

as the invalidated program, reasonable suspicion testing arguably 

protected against the most serious risk of harm from employee 

substance abuse. 

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Appellate Case: 94-2268 Document: 01019277334 Date Filed: 02/21/1996 Page: 6 
Second, the assertion that some unquantified number of other 

employees disciplined under the withdrawn policy may use the 

district court judgment offensively against the City is far too 

speculative to support a departure from the normal practice of 

letting a judgment lie against the party that has caused mootness. 

Indeed, the claim that the district court's judgment, undisturbed, 

will have unfair precedential consequences for the City strikes us 

as simply an argument against mootness. This factor should have 

been considered by the City in deciding whether to advocate 

dismissal of the claim. 

Finally, our task broadly defined is to dispose of a moot case 

"in the manner 'most consonant to justice' in view of the 

nature and character of the conditions which have caused the case 

to become moot," U.S. Bancorp, 115 S. Ct. at 391 (citations 

omitted) . The City both caused mootness and sought dismissal on 

the basis of mootness, and now requests a ~ facto reversal on the 

claim that it has abandoned. This one-sided use of the mootness 

doctrine does not appear to serve any interest other than the 

City's own. Indeed, to grant its requested disposition would be 

to encourage litigants who are dissatisfied with the 

decision of the trial court "to have them wiped from the 

books" by merely filing an appeal, then complying with 

the order or judgment below and petitioning for a vacatur 

of the adverse trial court decision. 

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Appellate Case: 94-2268 Document: 01019277334 Date Filed: 02/21/1996 Page: 7 
Uriited States v. Garde, 848 F.2d 1307, 1311 (D.C. Cir. 1988). We 

consequently conclude that the City has failed to demonstrate 

"equitable entitlement to the extraordinary remedy of vacatur," 

u.s. BancohP, 115 S. Ct. at 392. ~Jones v. Temmer, 57 F.3d 921, 

923 (lOth Cir. 1995). 

The appeal of the Fourth Amendment claim is dismissed as 

premature. and the case is remanded to the district court for 

further proceedings on that issue. The Open Meetings Act claim is 

dismissed as moot. and the City's motion to vacate the district 

court's judgment on that claim is denied. 

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Appellate Case: 94-2268 Document: 01019277334 Date Filed: 02/21/1996 Page: 8