Opinion ID: 6346763
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The conspiracy claim is sufficiently pled.

Text: “To prove a conspiracy under § 1983, a plaintiff must show ‘at least a combination of two or more persons acting in concert and an allegation of a meeting of the minds, an agreement among the defendants, or a general conspiratorial objective.’” Frasier v. Evans, 992 F.3d 1003, 1024 (10th Cir. 2021) (citation omitted). “[A] plaintiff must allege specific facts showing an agreement and concerted action amongst the defendants. ‘Conclusory allegations of conspiracy are insufficient to state a valid § 1983 claim.’” Id. (citation omitted). As we have explained: A plaintiff seeking redress need not prove that each participant in a conspiracy knew the “exact limits of the illegal plan or the identity of all the participants therein.” An express agreement among all the 16 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 17 conspirators is not a necessary element of a civil conspiracy. The participants in the conspiracy must share the general conspiratorial objective, but they need not know all the details of the plan designed to achieve the objective or possess the same motives for desiring the intended conspiratorial result. To demonstrate the existence of a conspiratorial agreement it simply must be shown that there was “a single plan, the essential nature and general scope of which [was] know[n] to each person who is to be held responsible for its consequences.” Id. at 1024-25 (alterations in original) (citation omitted). The essence of Defendants’ argument is that Mr. Montoya’s complaint “does nothing more than use the catchwords of ‘conspiracy’ and ‘conspire,’” and that all the allegations of conspiracy are conclusory. Aplts. Opening Br. at 38. This, according to Defendants, is insufficient. This district court found otherwise. It recognized that “[w]hile cooperating does not necessarily equate to conspiring, Mr. Montoya alleges Defendant Officers did not just jointly interrogate him, they used improper tactics to coerce him and then falsified an affidavit in support of the warrant for his arrest.” Aplts. App. vol. 5 at 1337. Thus, the district court concluded the “allegations—that Defendant Officers ignored the obvious falsity of his statements and that each advanced the clear common goal—nudge Mr. Montoya’s claim ‘across the line from conceivable to plausible.’” Id. (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). We agree with the district court. Mr. Montoya’s allegations of conspiracy are not impressively detailed, and some of the boilerplate language he uses might not hold up in every case. But under 17 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 18 the circumstances here, and in the context of this complaint viewed as a whole, nothing more is needed to allege conspiracy under § 1983. The factual allegations underlying the Franks violation are clear—Defendants Vigil, Martinez, and Priest elicited a false confession for use in an affidavit prepared by Defendant Schneider in violation of Franks. From this, it is reasonable to infer all four DPD Defendants implicitly agreed to use false information supporting a warrant to arrest Mr. Montoya. Again, this is not a case where a plaintiff indiscriminately alleged “collective allegations against the state.” Brown, 662 F.3d at 1163 (citation omitted). Nor was it a rapidly evolving situation that might make a conspiracy claim implausible. See Shimomura v. Carlson, 811 F.3d 349, 360 (10th Cir. 2015) (“[T]he alleged agreement could not plausibly have preceded [the] arrest. The video reflects the incident, which unfolded only a few seconds before [the arrest].”). Thus, we agree with the district court that Mr. Montoya plausibly alleged a common conspiratorial objective. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570. 2. Defendants’ qualified-immunity argument is waived. Defendants fault the district court for failing to engage in separate qualified immunity analyses for conspiracy and the underlying Franks violation. However, as Mr. Montoya observes, Defendants made no conspiracy-specific qualified immunity arguments in their briefing below—they made only a general assertion that their qualified immunity defense applied to all claims. And on appeal, they fail to explain how the qualified immunity analysis should be any different for conspiracy than it is for the underlying Franks violation. They do not explain how the district court’s 18 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 19 analysis was erroneous. We therefore reject their unsupported assertion. See Burke, 935 F.3d at 1014. II. We decline to exercise pendent jurisdiction over Defendants’ Heck claim. “In Heck, 512 U.S. at 480-87, the Supreme Court held that a plaintiff could not bring a civil-rights claim for damages under § 1983 based on actions whose unlawfulness would render an existing criminal conviction invalid.” Havens v. Johnson, 783 F.3d 776, 782 (10th Cir. 2015). Defendants contend Mr. Montoya’s claims are barred by Heck because his accessory conviction has not been dismissed and his claims are an impermissible collateral attack on that conviction. As threshold matter, Defendants acknowledge the Heck issue is not independently appealable—they ask this Court to exercise pendent jurisdiction. Mr. Montoya asserts that pendent jurisdiction is inappropriate because the Heck issue is not inextricably intertwined with the qualified immunity issues. We agree and decline to exercise pendent jurisdiction. This Court has “discretion to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction ‘where the otherwise nonappealable decision is “inextricably intertwined” with the appealable decision, or where review of the nonappealable decision is “necessary to ensure meaningful review” of the appealable one.’” Estate of Ceballos v. Husk, 919 F.3d 1204, 1220-21 (10th Cir. 2019) (citation omitted). “[A] pendent appellate claim can be regarded as inextricably intertwined with a properly reviewable claim on collateral appeal only if the pendent claim is coterminous with, or subsumed in, the claim before the court on interlocutory appeal—that is, when the appellate resolution of the 19 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 20 collateral appeal necessarily resolves the pendent claim as well.” Id. (alterations in original) (citation omitted). Because “the exercise of pendent appellate jurisdiction is generally disfavored[,] . . . [w]e exercise this discretionary authority sparingly.” Id. (alterations in original) (citation omitted). First, Defendants argue the Heck issue is inextricably intertwined with qualified immunity. If we agreed that Heck barred Mr. Montoya’s claims, Defendants insist, then it would obviate the need to resolve the qualified immunity issues. However, that an alternative ground for dismissal is potentially dispositive does not mean that, for purposes of pendent appellate jurisdiction, it is inextricably intertwined with the appealable decision. The pendent claim is inextricably intertwined when “appellate resolution of the collateral appeal necessarily resolves the pendent claim as well,” id. (citation omitted)—not the other way around. Alternatively, Defendants argue the qualified immunity issue and the Heck issue are coterminous because both require an inquiry into whether there was probable cause. According to Defendants, probable cause is relevant to the constitutional violation prong of qualified immunity, and in the Heck analysis, the alleged lack of probable cause is “evidence that Plaintiff is directly challenging the validity of the conviction.” Aplts. Opening Br. at 42. At most, the common probablecause inquiry just shows there is some potential overlap in the analysis. That is not enough. We have previously recognized the distinctions between qualified immunity and the Heck doctrine: 20 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 21 Qualified immunity and Heck are analytically distinct doctrines: qualified immunity asks whether a defendant violated a constitutional or statutory right that was clearly established; Heck evaluates whether a favorable judgment on a prisoner’s § 1983 claim “would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence.” The Heck analysis does not bear on the qualified immunity inquiry, and because Heck issues are effectively reviewable on appeal while the denial of qualified immunity is not, courts generally decline to exercise jurisdiction over Heck issues raised on interlocutory appeal from the denial of qualified immunity. Sayed v. Virginia, 744 F. App’x 542, 547-49 (10th Cir. 2018) (citation omitted) (quoting Heck, 512 U.S. at 487 (1994)) (citing Cunningham v. Gates, 229 F.3d 1271, 1285 (9th Cir. 2000) (“The Heck issue is not ‘inextricably intertwined’ with the qualified immunity issues properly before us on interlocutory appeal, nor is it necessary to decide the issue to ensure meaningful review of the defendants’ qualified immunity claims.”)). Sayed is not binding precedent, but we find its reasoning persuasive here.7 Defendants have cited no contrary authority where a court found qualified immunity and Heck to be inextricably intertwined. As in Sayed, “we need not consider the Heck issue to determine whether the allegations in the [second] amended complaint state a violation of [the plaintiff’s] clearly established rights.” Id. at 548 (citation omitted). Simply put, “nothing about the Heck inquiry is necessary to resolve qualified immunity.” Id. We decline to exercise pendent jurisdiction over Defendants’ Heck claim. 7 See 10th Cir. R. 32.1 (“Unpublished decisions are not precedential, but may be cited for their persuasive value.”); see also Fed. R. App. P. 32.1. 21 Appellate Case: 21-1107 Document: 010110692520 Date Filed: 06/03/2022 Page: 22