Opinion ID: 2994706
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Woods’ discovery request

Text: Woods also argues that the district court applied an erroneous legal standard in refusing to permit him to depose Flores and the arresting officers before ruling on the defendants’ summary judgment motion. Citing Illinois State Employees Union v. Lewis, 473 F.2d 561 (7th Cir. 1973), Woods maintains that summary judgment should not be entered until the party opposing the motion has had a fair opportunity to conduct such discovery as may be necessary to meet the factual basis for the motion. See Celotex, 477 U.S. at 326 (1986). Woods contends that the district court erroneously denied him this opportunity, and that its sua sponte decision to enter summary judgment was unfair and premature. Woods’ argument is unconvincing. A district court’s decision to consider a defendant’s motion for summary judgment before allowing the plaintiff to depose certain witness is a discovery matter which we review for abuse of discretion. Doty v. Illinois Central R.R. Co., 162 F.3d 460, 461 (7th Cir. 1998). Rule 56(f) authorizes a district court to refuse to grant a motion for summary judgment or to continue its ruling on such a motion pending further discovery if the nonmovant submits an affidavit demonstrating why it cannot yet present facts sufficient to justify its opposition to the motion. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(f). While Woods did ask the district court to postpone its ruling until he could depose Flores and the officers, he did not file an affidavit outlining his reasons for needing further discovery as contemplated by Rule 56(f). This alone justifies affirmance of the district court’s decision. See Wallace v. Tilley, 41 F.3d 296, 302-03 (7th Cir. 1994) (holding that the court was precluded from considering whether the district court had abused its discretion in ruling on defendant’s summary judgment motion before allowing plaintiff to conduct requested discovery where the plaintiff had not filed an affidavit pursuant to rule 56(f), and stating that ’when a party does not avail himself of relief under Rule 56(f), it is generally not an abuse of discretion for the district court to rule on the motion for summary judgment’ (citation omitted)); see also Jones v. Merchants Nat’l Bank & Trust Company of Indianapolis, 42 F.3d 1054, 1060 (7th Cir. 1994); Kinney v. Indiana Youth Ctr., 950 F.2d 462, 466 (7th Cir. 1991); Boling v. Romer, 101 F.3d 1336, 1339 n.3 (10th Cir. 1996); Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp. v. Esprit de Corp., 769 F.2d 919, 926 (2d Cir. 1985) (collecting cases); see also Committee for the First Amendment v. Campbell, 962 F.2d 1517, 1522 (10th Cir. 1992) (ruling that unverified statements in an attorney’s memoranda of law alleging a need for a continuance on a motion for summary judgment pending further discovery were insufficient as grounds for a continuance under Rule 56(f), and stating that [a]dvocacy by counsel does not suffice for evidence or fact in the Rule 56(f) context.) (citation omitted). Further, even if we were to waive Rule 56(f)’s affidavit requirement in this case, we would still find that the district court did not abuse its discretion in ruling on the motion before granting Woods leave to depose Flores and the arresting officers. Woods offered virtually nothing to demonstrate why the depositions that he sought were likely to generate any genuine issue of material fact. Woods never denied that Flores complained to the Chicago police that Woods had approached him with a lead pipe while threatening to kill him (indeed, his submission of and reliance upon the case report precluded him from denying this)./2 This admission alone would be enough to establish that the arresting officers had probable cause to arrest Woods (thereby entitling the officers to summary judgment on Woods’ sec. 1983 claims), absent some evidence showing that it should have been apparent to the officers that Flores was incredible as a matter of law and that the officers acted unreasonably in relying on his complaint. Woods never put forward any such evidence, nor did he explain why discovery was likely to unearth it. Instead, Woods merely pointed to a sentence in the case report which indicated that Flores told the police that he had left the scene of the altercation with Woods thinking that Woods was overreacting, suggesting that this establishes that the officers should not have relied on Flores’ account of the incident when arresting Woods./3 However, Flores’ comment that he thought that Woods was overreacting is completely irrelevant to the material facts that Woods needed to contest to defeat summary judgment; it tends to show neither that Flores did not report Woods’ assault to the police, nor that Flores’ account of the assault was in any way incredible. At best it shows merely that Flores thought that Woods was overreacting when he assaulted Flores, not that Flores was overreacting by reporting a crime to the police. Thus, based upon the facts that Woods presented to the district court, any claim that Flores was incredible as a matter of law and that the officers should not have relied upon his complaint would have been pure speculation. This is far too slender a reed upon which to hang a discovery request. See generally United States v. All Assets and Equip. of West Side Bldg. Corp., 58 F.3d 1181, 1190 (7th Cir. 1995). Indeed, under the circumstances of this case, we would most likely affirm even if the district court had converted the defendants’ motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment and granted the motion without giving Woods any notice of the conversion or any opportunity to respond to the summary judgment motion. While the conversion of a 12(b)(6) motion into a summary judgment motion should be accompanied by prior notice and ’a reasonable opportunity to establish the existence of material controverted facts,’ the failure to afford such procedure will not necessarily mandate reversal unless the record discloses the existence of unresolved material fact issues, or the parties represent that they would have submitted specific controverted material factual issues to the trial court if they had been given the opportunity. Milwaukee Typographical Union No. 23 v. Newspapers, Inc., 639 F.2d 386, 391 (7th Cir. 1981) (citation omitted). As has been noted, Woods did not present anything that would create a genuine issue of material fact, nor did he point to any specific controverted factual issue that he would be able to present after conducting depositions. Thus, the court could have granted the converted motion against Woods without notice. The fact that the court gave Woods notice and ample opportunity to respond and Woods still failed to raise any genuine issue of material fact only strengthens our conclusion that the district court did not abuse its discretion when it granted the motion without allowing Woods to depose Flores or the officers.