Opinion ID: 202475
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the responsible party succeeded

Text: in persuading a court to have accepted its prior position. Id. at 33. This court also rejected as a prerequisite to application of the doctrine that the party asserting the inconsistent position be shown to have benefitted from the court's acceptance of the party's initial position.2 Id. 1 The parties have not briefed the question of whether federal or state law on judicial estoppel should apply when the underlying case as to which estoppel is sought was a state case, plaintiff then pursued his civil rights action in state court, and the action was then removed to federal court. We noted this issue in Alternative System Concepts, 374 F.3d at 32, but did not resolve it as state and federal law were materially the same. The parties have assumed federal law applies, and so shall we. See Patriot Cinemas, 834 F.2d at 215; see also Lowery v. Stovall, 92 F.3d 219, 223 n.3 (4th Cir. 1996) (holding judicial estoppel is matter of federal law). We note that one commentator has questioned why, if state law would not judicially estop a second action in state court (and we do not know here what Massachusetts law requires), a federal court has an interest in applying the doctrine to its own proceedings. See 18B Wright, Miller & Cooper, Federal Practice & Procedure § 4477, at 624 n.122 (2d ed. 2002). 2 Other circuits have articulated other criteria. See, e.g., Carrasca v. Pomeroy, 313 F.3d 828, 835 (3d Cir. 2002) (holding that judicial estoppel can be imposed only if: '(1) the party to be estopped is asserting a position that is irreconcilably inconsistent with one he or she asserted in a prior proceeding; (2) -18- This case involves the particular branch of the doctrine that prohibits a party from asserting historic facts (as opposed to legal theories) that are inconsistent with historic facts the party has agreed to in a prior court proceeding.3 Of particular significance is that the prior proceeding was a criminal proceeding and the facts were not found by a court or jury, but were agreed to as part of a plea bargain. We note that although judicial estoppel does not usually apply to non-judicially approved settlements, cf. In re Bankvest Capital Corp., 375 F.3d 51, 61 (1st Cir. 2004), plea agreements are certainly reviewed by a court. As to our standard of review, the question before us is partially one of law, which we review de novo. See United States v. Leja, 448 F.3d 86, 92 (1st Cir. 2006) (The district court's resolution of legal questions . . . is reviewed de novo.); Montrose Med. Group Participating Sav. Plan v. Bulger, 243 F.3d 773, 780 (3rd Cir. 2001) (de novo review of questions of law about judicial estoppel). The standard of review is also partially one of application of law to facts and exercise of judgment by the the party changed his or her position in bad faith, i.e., in a culpable manner threatening to the court's authority or integrity; and (3) the use of judicial estoppel is tailored to address the affront to the court's authority or integrity' (quoting Montrose Med. Group Participating Sav. Plan v. Bulger, 243 F.3d 773, 777-78 (3d Cir. 2001))). 3 Different and very complicated issues arise when judicial estoppel is purported to apply to pure issues of law. See Note, Judicial Estoppel and Inconsistent Positions of Law Applied to Fact and Pure Law, 89 Cornell L. Rev. 191 (2003). -19- district court, which we review for abuse of discretion. Alternative Sys. Concepts, 374 F.3d at 30-31 (holding that the appropriate standard for reviewing a trial court's application of the doctrine of judicial estoppel is abuse of discretion (emphasis added)).
As for the question of law, the defendants argue for a rule that admissions to facts at an earlier guilty plea colloquy by a criminal defendant should generally bind that person as a plaintiff in subsequent civil rights actions. We reject any such per se rule. There is reason for caution. The seminal case, relied on by defendants for the proposition that judicial estoppel should, as a rule, apply to facts admitted during guilty pleas, is Lowery v. Stovall, 92 F.3d 219 (4th Cir. 1996). See, e.g., Johnson v. Linden City Corp., 405 F.3d 1065, 1069-70 (10th Cir. 2005) (relying on Lowery). In Lowery, a civil plaintiff who had pled guilty to maliciously causing bodily injury to a police officer with intent to kill sued the police for excessive use of force. 92 F.3d at 221. In oftquoted language, the Lowery court said: Particularly galling is the situation where a criminal convicted on his own guilty plea seeks as a plaintiff in a subsequent civil action to claim redress based on a repudiation of the confession. The effrontery or, as some might say it, chutzpah, is too much to take. There certainly should be an estoppel in such a case. -20- 92 F.3d at 225 (quoting Hazard, Revisiting the Second Restatement of Judgments: Issue Preclusion and Related Problems, 66 Cornell L. Rev. 564, 578 (1981)). This language could be taken to mean that any defendant who pleads guilty and in doing so admits to certain facts is thus playing fast and loose if he takes an inconsistent position later, and so he should be judicially estopped. That is not our view. If chutzpah alone justified judicial estoppel, a great many claims would be estopped. Courts, whether on appeal, motion for new trial, or petition for post-conviction or collateral relief, commonly address contentions that a defendant should not be bound by facts stated in a plea agreement. That being so, the mere assertion of inconsistent facts from those admitted in a plea does not strike us as inherently impugning the integrity of the judicial process. Judicial estoppel, for example, is not applicable to bar a criminal defendant from later asserting a claim based on innocence either on direct appeal or on habeas corpus, even when such a claim rests on facts that contradict the criminal defendant's in-court and sworn representations. See Morris v. California, 966 F.2d 448, 453-54 (9th Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 831 (1992). At least two other concerns arise in this setting with respect to whether there is any impugning of judicial integrity. The first is that guilty pleas do not necessarily establish -21- absolute historic facts; what is stated in a plea arrangement is an agreed-upon version of the facts that, while it avoids misrepresentation, is sufficient to support the entry of the plea. It is not uncommon for the statement of those facts to be shaped by bargaining between the parties. For example, in United States v. Yeje-Cabrera, 430 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2005), this court discussed extensively the issue of fact bargaining in guilty pleas; we described fact bargaining as an inevitable consequence of the process of plea bargaining. Id. at 27-28. Plea bargains benefit both the prosecution and the defense: the defendant is motivated to bargain to get lenient treatment, and the prosecution gains from bargains by saving resources and achieving efficient outcomes. Indeed, it may be the later civil rights plaintiff who seeks to apply judicial estoppel against the prosecution for statements agreed to in plea agreements. Cf. United States v. Levasseur, 846 F.2d 786, 790-95 (1st Cir. 1986) (reversing district court's application of judicial estoppel to bar government from alleging certain crimes as RICO violations); cf. also United States v. Christian, 342 F.3d 744, 748 (7th Cir. 2003) (rejecting judicial estoppel of government); Young v. Dept. of Justice, 882 F.2d 633, 639-40 (2d Cir. 1989) (considering whether judicial estoppel should apply against the government, albeit in a non-plea-agreement scenario). -22- Secondly, the question of judicial acceptance of a guilty plea may turn on the particulars of a given case. All facts recited during the plea colloquy are not necessarily accepted by a judge. Mass. R. Crim. P. 12(c)(5)(A), for example, precludes a judge from accepting a plea of guilty unless [he] is satisfied that there is a factual basis for the charge. Significantly, the rule also provides that [t]he failure of the defendant to acknowledge all of the elements of the factual basis shall not preclude a judge from accepting a guilty plea. The federal rule generally is that the facts recited may prove more than what is charged, but not less. Christian, 342 F.3d at 748 (citing United States v. Martin, 287 F.3d 609, 621 (7th Cir. 2002)). Here, for example, Thore argues that the plea colloquy did not need to recite that officer Dibara was in fear for his life when he shot, in order to establish that Thore was guilty of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, by automobile. Indeed, viewing the state crime as a general intent crime, all that was needed was that the officers were touched by his car and the touching was not accidental, not that Thore intended to injure the officers. The Supreme Court has, in New Hampshire, tied the judicial-acceptance factor to the risk of inconsistent decisions from two courts. 532 U.S. at 750-51. In this context -- guilty pleas followed by § 1983 actions -- the Heck doctrine will cause -23- dismissal of any § 1983 case which could undermine the conviction.4 But to say his claim may survive Heck is not to say that judicial estoppel can play no role as to facts admitted at a plea colloquy. Judicial estoppel is, after all, a doctrine of equity. Another rationale -- avoidance of misleading the court -- has been articulated for judicial estoppel. In our view, it is wrong to think that either the defendant or the government has necessarily misled or made an intentional misrepresentation5 to the court that accepted the plea when a party tries to assert a partially inconsistent version of the facts in a later civil rights action.6 And it would be equally wrong to use the judicial estoppel doctrine automatically to foreclose genuine efforts to demonstrate the truth. 4 But see Johnson, 405 F.3d at 1069-70 (analyzing issue of inconsistency between state conviction and federal civil rights case under judicial estoppel, not Heck). 5 Of course, no relief from judicial estoppel usually is available to a party who has undermined the integrity of the judicial system by intentionally misrepresenting historic facts. Thore argues the converse: that the standard should be that he should not be held to his earlier statement until it is shown that he intentionally misled the earlier court, and there is no intentional misrepresentation at issue here. But, under Alternative System Concepts, a party is not automatically excused from judicial estoppel if the earlier statement was made in good faith. 374 F.3d at 35. 6 As to legal theories, the Federal Rules themselves permit pleading of inconsistent theories in a single action. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(e)(2). -24- Circuit courts have been sensitive to this problem. In Carrasca v. Pomeroy, 313 F.3d 828 (3rd Cir. 2002), the plaintiffs, who were of Hispanic descent, brought a racial profiling action against park officials alleging that the officials had applied swimming regulations differentially between Hispanic and nonHispanic visitors. Id. at 830, 832. Plaintiffs had all been arrested for use of the lake and had pled guilty to state charges (though they later contended that at least one of the plaintiffs had not actually broken the regulations). Id. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the park officials, id. at 830, and the court of appeals reversed and remanded for reconsideration of the application of judicial estoppel, id. at 835. In doing so, it relied on statements in Haring v. Prosise, 462 U.S. 306, 318-19 (1983), that there are a number of reasons why a defendant might choose to plead guilty. Carrasca, 313 F.3d at 835; see also Haring, 462 U.S. at 318-19 (noting that a defendant's decision to plead guilty may have any number of other motivations, including shock, avoidance of financial and emotional cost, and hope for a lesser sentence). Accordingly, we reject the notion that judicial estoppel automatically applies to facts admitted during guilty pleas.
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-