Opinion ID: 757583
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: 12 This Court has jurisdiction to hear this interlocutory appeal. Section 1291 of Title 28 of the United Stated Code gives courts of appeals jurisdiction over all final decisions of district courts, except those designated for appeal to the Supreme Court. 28 U.S.C. § 1291. In Cohen v. Beneficial Indust. Loan Corp., the Supreme Court described a small class of district court decisions that, though short of final judgment, are immediately appealable because they finally determine claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action, too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole cause is adjudicated. 337 U.S. 541, 546, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). 13 In a later case, the Supreme Court held that denial of a claim of qualified immunity, to the extent that it turns on an issue of law, falls within the class of cases appealable within the meaning of § 1291 notwithstanding the absence of a final judgment. See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985); see also Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 311-12, 115 S.Ct. 2151, 132 L.Ed.2d 238 (1995). The rationale behind this holding is that this kind of summary judgment order is effectively unreviewable, in a sense, because review after trial would come too late to vindicate one important purpose of qualified immunity, i.e., protecting public officials, not simply from liability, but also from standing trial or facing the other burdens of litigation, which can distract officials from performing governmental duties, inhibit discretionary action, and deter able people from public service. Id. at 312, 115 S.Ct. 2151; Mitchell, 472 U.S. at 525-27, 105 S.Ct. 2806. 14 Recently, in Behrens v. Pelletier, 516 U.S. 299, 116 S.Ct. 834, 133 L.Ed.2d 773 (1996), the Supreme Court settled the issue as far as this case is concerned. In Behrens, the Court explained its prior holding in Johnson: 15 Denial of summary judgment often includes a determination that there are controverted issues of material fact, and Johnson surely does not mean that every such denial of summary judgment is nonappealable. Johnson held, simply, that determinations of evidentiary sufficiency at summary judgment are not immediately appealable merely because they happen to arise in a qualified-immunity case; if what is at issue in the sufficiency determination is nothing more than whether the evidence could support a finding that particular conduct occurred, the question decided is not truly separable from the plaintiff's claim, and hence there is no final decision under Cohen and Mitchell. Johnson reaffirmed that summary-judgment determinations are appealable when they resolve a dispute concerning an abstract issu[e] of law relating to qualified immunity--typically, the issue whether the federal right allegedly infringed was clearly established[.] 16 516 U.S. at 312-313, 116 S.Ct. 834 (citations omitted). The Court added that Johnson permits petitioner to claim on appeal that all of the conduct which the District Court deemed sufficiently supported for purposes of summary judgment met the Harlow standard of 'objective legal reasonableness.'  Id. at 313, 115 S.Ct. 2151. 17 Hayter's appeal falls squarely within the Supreme Court's description of claims that Johnson permits a public official to pursue on interlocutory appeal. The actions and conduct of the parties involved were not the subject of the material issue of genuine fact which the magistrate found precluded summary judgment. Instead, the disputed question was whether or not the defendants' conduct, i.e., their actions based on their belief that the substance they found in Hayter's car was marijuana, was reasonable. As such, the magistrate's ruling is precisely the type that the Supreme Court noted was appealable; therefore, this Court has jurisdiction to hear this appeal. See Jones v. Collins, 132 F.3d 1048, 1051 (5th Cir. 1998) (In this context, an appeal is based on 'issues of law' if the issues it raises 'concern only application of established legal principles, such as whether an official's conduct was objectively reasonable in light of clearly established law, to a given (for purposes of appeal) set of facts.' ).