Opinion ID: 2980235
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 to hear an appeal from a “final decision[]” of the district court. Although the denial of summary judgment is generally considered a nonfinal order and is therefore not appealable to this court, the “denial of a motion for summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity may be deemed a final, appealable order because the qualified immunity doctrine exists partly to protect officials from having to stand trial, and a defendant wrongly forced to go to trial loses the benefit of the immunity even if exonerated after trial.” Bishop v. Hackel, 636 F.3d 757, 764 (6th Cir. 2011). But the “denial of a claim of qualified immunity is immediately appealable only if the appeal is premised not on a factual dispute, but rather on ‘neat abstract issues of law.’” Id. (quoting Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 317 (1995)). Jacob argues that we lack jurisdiction to hear Killian’s interlocutory appeal because Killian is contesting factual rather than legal determinations. This court has held, however, that “where the trial court’s determination that a fact is subject to reasonable dispute is blatantly and demonstrably false, a court of appeals may say so, even on interlocutory review.” Id. at 769 (internal quotation marks omitted) (explaining that in Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372 (2007), the Supreme Court rejected, on interlocutory appeal, “both the plaintiff’s version of the facts and the district court’s determination that a genuine factual dispute existed” concerning the defendant’s claim of qualified immunity). Scott permits interlocutory appeals where the plaintiff’s version of the facts “is ‘so utterly discredited by the record’ as to be rendered a ‘visible fiction.’” Chappell v. City Of Cleveland, 585 F.3d 901, 906 (6th Cir. 2009) (quoting Scott, 550 U.S. at 380-81). This court has characterized Scott’s allowance of interlocutory -7- Jacob v. Killian No. 10-1834 appeals as sanctioning challenges based on the legal issue of “whether the factual disputes (a) are genuine and (b) concern material facts” rather than “mere[] quibbling with the district court’s reading of the factual record.” Id. (emphasis in original) (internal quotation marks omitted); but see Jones v. Yancy, No. 10–6216, 2011 WL 1557384, at  (6th Cir. Apr. 25, 2011) (unpublished opinion) (holding that although “a determination that an issue of fact is ‘genuine’ is unreviewable,” Scott allows “interlocutory appeals from denials of summary judgment in those rare cases where the district court makes a blatant and demonstrable error” (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted)). In any event, where a defendant raises the purely legal question of whether the facts alleged support a claim that clearly established law was violated, we can ignore the defendant’s factual contentions and resolve the legal issue without dismissing the entire appeal for a lack of jurisdiction. Estate of Carter v. City of Detroit, 408 F.3d 305, 310 (6th Cir. 2005). We thus have jurisdiction over Killian’s interlocutory appeal to the extent that he challenges the district court’s legal determinations, id., as well as to decide whether this case is one of those rare situations “where the trial court’s determination that a fact is subject to reasonable dispute is blatantly and demonstrably false,” Bishop, 636 F.3d at 769.