Opinion ID: 756655
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Consideration Affecting Appellate Jurisdiction.

Text: 27 Were we reviewing a district court's grant of summary judgment based on qualified immunity, our course would be clear: we would determine de novo whether the affected defendant was entitled to a favorable judgment as a matter of law. Here, however, the summary judgment motions were denied, not granted, and this fact complicates our analysis. In the qualified immunity realm, the dividing line between appealable and non-appealable denials of summary judgment is blurred. 28 Cases are clear enough at the extremes. We know, for instance, that when a motion for summary judgment that asserts qualified immunity is rejected, the denial cannot ground an interlocutory appeal if the operative question is whether or not the pretrial record sets forth a genuine issue of fact for trial. Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 320, 115 S.Ct. 2151, 132 L.Ed.2d 238 (1995). Similarly, we know that the denial of such a motion is immediately appealable if the operative question is purely legal in nature. See id. at 319, 115 S.Ct. 2151. In fine, a summary judgment order which determines that the pretrial record sets forth a genuine issue of fact, as distinguished from an order that determines whether certain given facts demonstrate, under clearly established law, a violation of some federally protected right, is not reviewable on demand. Stella v. Kelley, 63 F.3d 71, 74 (1st Cir.1995); accord Behrens v. Pelletier, 516 U.S. 299, 306, 116 S.Ct. 834, 133 L.Ed.2d 773 (1996). 29 Determining the existence vel non of appellate jurisdiction in cases closer to the equator is more difficult. Some examples may be useful. In Diaz, we determined that we lacked jurisdiction to entertain an interlocutory appeal from a pretrial decision denying qualified immunity because the decision turned on the existence of a factual conflict or on what the lower court perceived to be a factual conflict. 112 F.3d at 4-5. This contrasts with situations in which the district court assumes a set of facts and decides, as a matter of law, that those facts will not support a qualified immunity defense--in which event jurisdiction exists to entertain an immediate appeal. See Behrens, 516 U.S. at 313, 116 S.Ct. 834. 30 If this were not complex enough, the district judge is not legally obliged to explain the basis on which a denial of summary judgment rests. See Johnson, 515 U.S. at 319, 115 S.Ct. 2151 (acknowledging that [d]istrict judges may simply deny summary judgment motions without indicating their reasons for doing so); Domegan v. Fair, 859 F.2d 1059, 1065-66 (1st Cir.1988) (similar). When the district court's order is unilluminating, the appellate court must fend for itself. Anticipating the dilemma that such an inscrutable order may pose in the qualified immunity context, the Court prophesied that a court of appeals may have to undertake a cumbersome review of the record to determine what facts the district court, in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, likely assumed. Johnson, 515 U.S. at 319, 115 S.Ct. 2151. Hence, we must perform the equivalent of an archeological dig and endeavor to reconstruct the probable basis for the district court's decision. 5 31 Here, the district court denied the appellants' motions for summary judgment before the plaintiff filed oppositions to several of those motions. As a result of this hastiness, the data before the court were limited--and limited further by the appellants' apparent intransigence in furnishing discovery. 6 Withal, the district court had before it a great deal of information from sources such as the psychiatrists' summary judgment papers, the plaintiff's opposition to the psychiatrists' motion, and evidentiary materials submitted by a former codefendant in connection with an earlier summary judgment motion. The court also had before it all the appellants' moving papers (which contain more than a smidgen of intramural fingerpointing). The court was at liberty to consult all these sources, and we, too, can consult them in endeavoring to determine whether the court below based its decision on contested facts as opposed to a quintessentially legal judgment. 7 32