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

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14‐364

Taylor v. Rogich, et al.

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

__________________

August Term, 2014

(Submitted: January 5, 2015           Decided: March 30, 2015)

Docket No. 14‐364

__________________

ANTOINE TAYLOR,

Plaintiff‐Appellee,

—v.—

KEITH ROGICH, Police Officer, JOHN DOE, Police Officer, NASSAU COUNTY, NASSAU

COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT, LAWRENCE MULVEY, Nassau County Police

Commissioner, ROBERT MCGUIGAN, First Deputy Commissioner, WILLIAM

FLANAGAN, Second Deputy Commissioner, DAVID MACK, Assistant

Commissioner, ROBERT CODIGNOTTO, Assistant Commissioner, STEVEN

SKRYNECKI, Chief of the Department, JOHN HUNTER, Chief of Patrol, JOHN DOES,

Commissioners and Supervisors,

Defendants‐Appellants.  

Before:

LYNCH and CHIN, Circuit Judges, and KORMAN, Senior District Judge.

*

* The Hon. Edward R. Korman, Senior United States District Court Judge for the

Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation.

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Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern

District of New York (Brown, M.J.), which denied defendant’s motion forjudgment

as a matter of law after the first phase of a bifurcated trial in which the jury found

in favor of the plaintiff on the issue of liability.  The plaintiff had alleged that the

defendant, a Nassau County Police Officer, used excessive force when he shot

plaintiff during the course of apprehending him.    The appeal challenges the

sufficiency of the evidence underlying the jury’s rejection of the defendant’s claim

of qualified immunity.  We dismiss the appeal forlack of subject matterjurisdiction.

DISMISSED.

                                   

Brian J. Isaac and Michael H. Zhu, Pollack, Pollack, Isaac

& De Cicco, LLP, New York, NY, Bader, Yakaitis &

Nonnenmacher, LLP, New York, NY, for Plaintiff‐

Appellee.

Robert F. Van der Waag, Appeals Bureau Chief, for

Carnell T. Foskey, County Attorney of Nassau

County, Mineola, NY, for Defendants‐Appellants.

                                   

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EDWARD R. KORMAN, Senior District Judge:

On February 25, 2011, Antoine Taylor filed suit against Nassau County, the

Nassau County Police Department, and various Nassau County police officers and

supervisors, alleging, inter alia, that police officer Keith Rogich used excessive force

when he shot Taylor during the course of apprehending him.  Afterthe dismissal of

some defendants by stipulation and another defendant pursuant to a motion for

summary judgment, the only defendant left in the case was Police Officer Rogich.

The district judge (Feuerstein, J.) to whom the case was then assigned, held Rogich

was not entitled to summary judgment.  Taylor v. Nassau County, et al., No. 11‐CV‐

0934 (SJF)(GRB), 2012 WL 5472554 (E.D.N.Y. Nov. 5, 2012). More specifically, she

held that his claim of qualified immunity, on which his motion for summary

judgment was based, depended on the resolution of disputed issues of fact and the

jury’s assessment of the credibility of witnesses.

The case was subsequently referred to a United States magistrate judge

(Brown, M.J.) who presided overthe first phase of a bifurcated trial to determine the

issue of liability.  At the close of that five‐day phase of the trial, the jury found that

Rogich used excessive force that caused Taylor injury.    Following the verdict,

Rogich moved for judgment as a matter of law pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 50,

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arguing again that he was entitled to qualified immunity.  Specifically, he argued

that the plaintiff had

provided no coherent version of events which a jury could

have credited one way or the other.  The jury must have

found that Officer Rogich’s version of events was to be

believed and still found a verdict of excessive force.

Because Officer Rogich is entitled to, at the very least,

qualified immunity when his version of events is credited,

the Court must enter judgment as a matter of law in favor

of the Defendant, Keith Rogich.

App’x at 1340 (emphasis added)

Rogich’s motion was denied “because [his] assertion [of qualified immunity]

depend[ed] on a view of the facts that was explicitly rejected by the jury.”  Taylor v.

Rogich, No. 11‐CV‐0934, 2014 WL 4686645, at *1 (E.D.N.Y. 2014).  Rogich then filed

this interlocutory appeal.1

  The trial on the determination of damages was stayed by

1 Subsequently, Nassau County and “all defendants” filed an amended notice of appeal indicating

their intent to join Rogich’s appeal of the January 2, 2014 memorandum and order.   Police Officer

Kenneth Rogich, however, was the only defendant left in the case by the time of trial and this

appeal only addresses his claims.  Indeed, the brief filed by the Nassau County Attorney, who is

representing Rogich, acknowledges that afterthe entry of stipulation dismissing some defendants

and the motion for summary judgment dismissing Nassau County, “the case moved forward

against the individual police officer.” We therefore construe this appeal as an appeal by Rogich

only.

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order of the magistrate judge pending the determination of this appeal.  We dismiss

the appeal on the ground that we lack jurisdiction to hear it.2

DISCUSSION

This appeal comes to us in an unusual posture.  The district court did not

certify this appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b).  Rather, Rogich asserts that we

have jurisdiction to hear this appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, which permits appeals

from “final decisions” of the district courts.   As we have had occasion to observe,

“[t]ypically, an interlocutory appeal from a district court’s denial of a claim of

qualifiedimmunity is brought afterthedistrict courtdenies the claim atthepleading

stage or upon denial of the defendant’s motion for summary judgment based on the

plaintiff’s, or an agreed upon, version of the facts.”  Britt v. Garcia, 457 F.3d 264, 271

(2d Cir. 2006) (internal citations omitted).  The present appeal comes to us after a

trial on the issue of liability and before a determination of the issue of damages.

Moreover, it challenges the denial of a motion pursuant to Rule 50 on the ground

that the defendant was entitled to judgment as a matter of law in his favor because

2 Neither party raised the issue of jurisdiction.  Nevertheless, we are obligated to raise the issue sua

sponte when jurisdiction is questionable.  See, e.g., United States v. Frias, 521 F.3d 229, 231 (2d Cir.

2008); Henrietta D. v. Giuliani, 246 F.3d 176, 179 (2d Cir. 2001).

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the jury was obligated to credit his version of the events, which, he argues compels

the conclusion that he was entitled to qualified immunity.

In Britt v. Garcia, 457 F.3d at 268, we addressed the appealability of an

interlocutory orderin a somewhat similar circumstance.  There, after a trial in which

the jury found in favor of the plaintiff on both the issue of liability and damages, the

trial judge ordered a new trial on the issue of punitive damages after the plaintiff

declined to agree to remit a portion of the punitive damages award.  On appeal, the

defendants argued that the jury’s answers to certain interrogatories entitled them

to judgment as a matter of law.    We held that an interlocutory appeal was

appropriate andthat we hadappellate jurisdictionbecause the appealraised“a legal

issue that[could] bedecided with reference only toundisputed facts and in isolation

from the remaining issues of the case, and [did] not raise the sufficiency question

over which [the Supreme Court] ruled we have no interlocutory jurisdiction.”  Id.

at 271‐72 (internal quotations and citations omitted).  In so doing, we observed that

“one of the principal reasons for permitting an interlocutory appeal of a denial of

qualified immunity in the summary judgment setting is to vindicate the defendant’s

right, if he or she is entitled to such immunity, not to be subjected to a trial.”  Id. at

272.  This policy consideration justified the exercise of appellate jurisdiction because

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“although it [was] too late to protect the appellants from standing trial, it [was] not

too late to vindicate their right, if they [were] entitled to immunity, not to undergo

a second one on the issue of damages.”  Id.

The present case differs from Britt because the defendant’s appeal challenges

the sufficiency of the evidence relied on by the jury.  Indeed, the order from which

he appeals, as wepreviously observed, specifically rejectedhis argumentthat “when

his version of events is credited, the Court must enter judgment as a matter of law

in favor of the Defendant, Keith Rogich.” That is simply another way of arguing

that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the jury’s verdict.  The Supreme Court

has made it clearthat we lack appellate jurisdictiontodecide an interlocutory appeal

from a district court’s denial of a claim of qualified immunity to the extent that the

denial involves only a question of evidence sufficiency.    Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S.

304, 313 (1995).  Although the issue normally arises, as in Johnson, on interlocutory

appeals from summary judgment motions, we see no reason why the rule should

differ in cases where the appeal is from a decision denying a Rule 50 motion for

judgment as a matter of law, rendered following the liability phase of a bifurcated

trial.  Indeed,the burden facing a defendant at that stage, who faces only a shorttrial

on the issue of damages in which his conduct is not directly at issue, is considerably

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less than that on a defendant who claims entitlement to summary judgment, which

would prevent an entire trial.

We note thatthe Seventh Circuit has held that, in some circumstances, denials

of Rule 50 motions may not be appealable even when they raise solely issues of law.

In Mercado v. Dart, 604 F.3d 360, 363 (7th Cir. 2010) (Easterbrook, J.), after the jury

returned a verdict on the issue of liability but before the presentation of evidence

about damages, the defendantfiled a notice of appealforthe purpose of challenging

the jury’s rejection of his claim of immunity.  Id. at 362.  In the course of resolving

the appeal, Judge Easterbrook wrote that, even if it involved solely an issue of law,

different considerations of policy were present in such a mid‐trial appeal than were

present in a post‐trial appeal after a jury was discharged.   After reviewing the

Supreme Court’s qualified immunity holdings, he observed:

It is hard to imagine that the Justices have authorized

public officials to bring trials to a halt and disband the jury

while a pre‐verdict appeal proceeds. As a practical matter

that would give every public official a right to a mistrial in

every § 1983 suit that seemed to be going the plaintiff’s

way, because once a trial stops jurors are likely to forget

the evidence, to come across information they are not

supposed to read, to discuss the trial with friends and

relatives, or all three. Appellate delay would compel the

trial to start over with a new jury.

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Mercado, 604 F.3d at 363.  

Whatever force this argument would carry in a case in which the

circumstances Judge Easterbrook envisioned were present, those circumstances are

not present here.  The trial in this case was neverintended to be a unitary trial which

was disrupted by a mid‐trial appeal on the issue of qualified immunity.  The trial on

liability ended on June 4, 2013.    The presiding judge then invited written

elaborations of the parties’ positions on qualified immunity.  The briefing extended

through the summer and fall of 2013, and the judge decided the motion, in an

extensive written opinion, on January 2, 2014.  Thus, unlike the situation addressed

by Judge Easterbrook, there was no oral ruling on a mid‐trial motion, intended as

a mere step along the way to a verdict.  Any disruption of the possibility of a smooth

progression to the damages phase of the trial had already occurred, quite

independent of the appealability of the judge’s eventual decision on the qualified

immunity motion.  Similarly, there was no mid‐trial disruption in Britt.  There, the

case was tried to verdict on both the issue of liability and damages.  Britt, 457 F.3d

at 268.   The order granting a new trial, from which the appeal was taken, was

entered after the jury had been discharged.  See id.

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In sum, while we have had occasion to distinguish this case from other cases

that would pose a problem of a mid‐trial disruption occasioned by a mid‐trial

appeal, we leave open the question of whether an interlocutory appeal in such a case

would lie even if it were based purely on an issue of law.  Because the appeal in this

case is based on the sufficiency of the evidence, we hold only that such an appeal on

qualified immunity grounds must be dismissed.  See Johnson, 515 U.S. at 313.

Accordingly, for the reasons stated above, the appeal is DISMISSED for lack

of appellate jurisdiction.

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