Opinion ID: 202475
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Application of Doctrine to this Case

Text: Having rejected any per se rule that judicial estoppel always applies or never applies to facts admitted during a guilty -25- plea, we turn to the question of application of the doctrine to the particular facts of the case. Our review is for whether the district court abused its discretion in applying estoppel here. Alternative Sys. Concepts, 374 F.3d at 30-31. We note again that Thore has conceded that his current position is directly inconsistent with facts admitted at his plea colloquy. Furthermore, based on the transcript of Thore's plea colloquy, it was reasonable for the district court to conclude that there was sufficient acceptance by the state court of the facts previously admitted to by Thore. Thore nevertheless attempts to fit his case into wellrecognized exceptions to judicial estoppel. The Supreme Court has noted that a later inconsistent assertion of fact will not necessarily give rise to judicial estoppel if a reasonable justification can be offered for a change in positions. See New Hampshire, 532 U.S. at 753, 755 (noting that inadvertence or mistake may make application of judicial estoppel inappropriate, and referencing considerations of equity in deciding that judicial estoppel was appropriate in that case). The classic case of justification is when a party's prior position was based on inadvertence or mistake. Id. at 753 (quoting John S. Clark Co. v. Faggert & Frieden, P.C., 65 F.3d 26, 29 (4th Cir. 1995)) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also 18 Moore's Federal Practice, supra, § 134.33[2], at 134-74 (noting -26- that some courts require bad faith in order for judicial estoppel to apply). For example, in Alternative System Concepts we recognized an exception may be available if . . . the new, inconsistent position is the product of information neither known nor readily available to [a party] at the time the initial position was taken. 374 F.3d at 35; accord Intergen N.V. v. Grina, 344 F.3d 134, 144 (1st Cir. 2003) (rejecting a rule that unduly inhibits a plaintiff from appropriately adjusting its complaint either to correct errors or to accommodate facts learned during pretrial discovery). In a somewhat analogous case, Cleveland v. Policy Management Systems Corp., 526 U.S. 795 (1999), the Supreme Court addressed the question of whether a party's claim that she was totally disabled for SSI purposes judicially estopped her from proving an essential element of her Americans with Disabilities Act claim that she could perform the essential functions of her job (at least with reasonable accommodation). The opinion held that the district court should require sufficient explanation of any apparent inconsistency. Id. at 806-07. While that opinion addressed conflicts as to legal conclusions drawn from facts, and specifically distinguished purely factual contradictions, id. at -27- 807, we think the model of examining the defendant's reasons for justification of the inconsistency is apt.7 Thore argues that his initial agreement to the facts stated at the guilty plea colloquy should not bind him because of his own debilitated condition after the shooting and because he was induced to agree to those facts by fraud8 on the part of the police in their representations to him about what Laro said. Neither argument is enough here to establish any abuse of discretion in the district court's ruling. Thore's argument that he truly does not recall the event because he was shot and so cannot be held to have personally remembered the details he agreed with at the colloquy is disingenuous. No evidence at all supports this theory. Even now he does not argue that at the time of the plea colloquy, almost four months after the shooting, he did not recall the events leading up to the shooting. At most, he has said he did not recall what happened after he was shot and before he awakened in a hospital. There is no evidence he was not competent at the time of 7 Similarly, where a witness gives a clear and unambiguous answer, he may not defeat summary judgment with a contradictory affidavit unless he gives a satisfactory explanation of why the testimony has changed. Colantuoni v. Alfred Calcagni & Sons, Inc., 44 F.3d 1, 4-5 (1st Cir. 1994). 8 See Jaffe v. Accredited Sur. and Cas. Co., Inc., 294 F.3d 584, 595 n.7 (4th Cir. 2002) (holding that judicial estoppel does not apply when a party's assertedly inconsistent positions stem from reliance on statements made to the court by an opponent which later prove to be untrue). -28- the plea. He has offered no justification for his own switch in position between the plea bargain and now on what happened before he was shot. Laro's version of the facts is irrelevant to Thore's own agreement with the recited facts. There is also no explanation for why Thore did not attempt to talk to Laro before Thore pled guilty. That Thore did not think of it at the time is no more a justification than New Hampshire's argument that it should be excused because it did inadequate research into the historical facts during the first proceeding. Whatever Laro had to say, this was information available to Thore at the time of his plea. As for Thore's attempt to assert reliance on the police accounts of Laro's interview, which Thore now says were fraud, a district court could consider both that the reliance was unreasonable and the evidence of fraud very weak. There are many explanations for Laro's reversal other than that the police had engaged in a conspiracy and attributed false statements to Laro in their reports. The contemporaneous statements made to the police were signed by Laro at the time as accurate statements of the events. That he now does not have the same memory does not establish there was fraud or deception worked on Thore or on the state criminal court by the police.9 The 9 Thore also offered a statement from an accident reconstruction witness that concludes that the vehicular evidence now available to us suggests the police were the aggressors in this -29- reports of the police officers, Thore's girlfriend, and the thirdparty witness at the time all support exactly the facts recited to the state court in the plea colloquy.10 Nor was it an abuse of discretion for the district court to conclude that the equities supported application of the doctrine. There is little to support the plaintiff's claim of fraud, and the defendants reasonably thought that the statements made in the plea colloquy -- that Thore's actions had placed the officers in fear of their lives -- protected them from exactly this lawsuit. While undoubtedly cases exist in which criminal defendants should not be held to the statements they made at the time they pled guilty in a subsequent civil rights action, the district court did not abuse its discretion in deciding this was not one of those cases. We affirm the entry of judgment for defendants. Costs are awarded to defendants. case. But that conclusion rests on Laro's testimony that Thore did not hit any police cars. 10 As the defendant state officers point out, there are additional equitable reasons to apply the estoppel doctrine. Although Thore's arguments on estoppel are largely based on the truck driver's deposition, Thore filed the lawsuit a year before the truck driver made any such statements. -30-