Opinion ID: 178947
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Qualified Immunity—Filarsky

Text: [7] We next take up the issue of whether Filarsky, too, is entitled to qualified immunity. Unlike the other individual defendants in this case, Filarsky is not an employee of the City. Instead, he is a private attorney, who was retained by the City to participate in internal affairs investigations. Delia contends that Filarsky, as a private attorney, is not entitled to qualified immunity. Filarsky, on the other hand, argues that this is a distinction without a difference. He urges this court to follow the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’s decision in Cullinan v. Abramson, 128 F.3d 301, 310 (6th Cir. 1997), and hold that he is entitled to qualified immunity. In Cullinan, the Sixth Circuit held that a law firm that had been hired by the City of Louisville to serve as outside counsel was entitled to qualified immunity against plaintiffs’ § 1983 claims. Id. The court succinctly concluded: “We see no good reason to hold DELIA v. CITY OF RIALTO 18363 the city’s in-house counsel eligible for qualified immunity and not the city’s outside counsel.” Id. In arriving at this conclusion, the court of appeals relied exclusively on dictum in Richardson v. McKnight, 521 U.S. 399, 407 (1997), that “the common law ‘did provide a kind of immunity for certain private defendants, such as doctors or lawyers who performed services at the behest of the sovereign.’ ” Cullinan, 128 F.3d at 310. [8] The hitch in Delia’s argument is that we are not free to follow the Cullinan decision. We are “bound by prior panel opinions ‘unless an en banc decision, Supreme Court decision or subsequent legislation undermines those decisions.’ ” In re Findley, 593 F.3d 1048, 1050 (9th Cir. 2010) (quoting Nghiem v. NEC Elec., Inc., 25 F.3d 1437, 1441 (9th Cir. 1994); Robbins v. Carey, 481 F.3d 1143, 1149 n.3 (9th Cir. 2007) (“Ordinarily, panels cannot overrule a circuit precedent; that power is reserved to the circuit court sitting en banc.”). In Gonzalez v. Spencer, 336 F.3d 832 (9th Cir. 2003), another panel of this court held that a private attorney representing a county was not entitled to qualified immunity. Id. at 834-35. In Gonzalez, the defendant, a private attorney, was retained to defend Los Angeles County in an underlying civil rights suit brought by the plaintiff. Id. at 834. The attorney accessed the plaintiff’s juvenile court file without notifying him and without obtaining authorization from the juvenile court. Id. The attorney employed information from the file in deposing the plaintiff. Id. The plaintiff brought suit against the attorney, her law firm, and the county “for accessing and using his juvenile court file without authorization.” Id. The plaintiff alleged that this conduct constituted a violation of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Id. In rejecting the attorney’s claim of qualified immunity, this court reasoned, “[the attorney] is not entitled to qualified immunity. She is a private party, not a government employee, and she has pointed to ‘no special reasons significantly favoring an extension of governmental immunity’ to private parties in her position.” Id. at 835 (quoting Richardson, 521 U.S. at 412); see Wyatt v. Cole, 504 U.S. 18364 DELIA v. CITY OF RIALTO 158, 168-69 (1992) (holding that private defendants in § 1983 suit for “invoking a state replevin, garnishment, or attachment statute” later declared unconstitutional were not entitled to qualified immunity from suit); cf. Pollard v. The GEO Group, Inc., 607 F.3d 583, 602 (9th Cir. 2010) (observing that “[u]nlike officers employed by public prisons,” employees of a private corporation operating a federal prison would not be entitled to qualified immunity in Bivens cause of action); Kimes v. Stone, 84 F.3d 1121, 1128 (9th Cir. 1996) (holding that “the common law did not provide immunity to private attorneys conspiring with a judge to deprive someone of their constitutional rights”). Filarsky does not allege any intervening en banc decision, Supreme Court decision, or intervening legislation which would permit us to overrule the holding in Gonzalez. Therefore, we are bound by the Gonzalez decision. Accordingly, Filarsky is not entitled to qualified immunity as a private attorney and we reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment in his favor and remand for trial, or further proceedings as determined by the district court.6