Opinion ID: 770823
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Policy-making defendants' appeals

Text: 42 In a recent decision, we held that a municipality's appeal in a section 1983 case was inextricably intertwined with a policy-making city attorney's appeal from a denial of summary judgment based on qualified immunity. See Huskey v. City of San Jose, 204 F.3d 893, 906 (9th Cir. 2000). Our Huskey decision relied on the plaintiff's failure to demonstrate that the city attorney's actions deprived him of his constitutional rights. See id. Because the plaintiff's failure to demonstrate actual injury necessarily resolved the city's appeal, we found the two appeals inextricably intertwined  and exercised jurisdiction over the city's appeal. See id. 43 Unlike our Huskey opinion, our decision does not necessarily resolve the City's appeal by determining that plaintiffs did not demonstrate an actual injury. Cf. Marks, 102 F.3d at 1018. Rather, because the question of actual injury involves factual disputes outside of our scope of review, today's decision assumes plaintiffs may be able to convince a jury that they suffered constitutional injuries caused by some combination of police action and city official inaction. See V-1 Oil Co. v. Smith, 114 F.3d 854, 856 (9th Cir. 1997) (holding that court will exercise jurisdiction over an interlocutory appeal that present[s] the question whether, assuming the disputed facts in favor of the nonmoving party, the moving party was entitled to qualified immunity). Thus, we lack jurisdiction to review the City's appeal from the district court's denial of its summary judgment motion because this issue is not inextricably intertwined with any of the issues properly before us on interlocutory appeal.