Court Opinion

ID: 9400723
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-09 00:00:51.406779+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:15.131082
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-60418         Document: 00516779754             Page: 1      Date Filed: 06/08/2023

              United States Court of Appeals
                   for the Fifth Circuit
                                                                                 United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                          Fifth Circuit

                                      ____________                                      FILED
                                                                                      June 8, 2023
                                       No. 22-60418                                   Lyle W. Cayce
                                      ____________                                         Clerk

   Linda Berkley,

                                                                     Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                             versus

   City of Oxford, Mississippi; Ashley Atkinson, City of
   Oxford, MS, In Her Individual and Official Capacity; Thik and Thin
   Construction, L.L.C.; Lafayette County, Mississippi;
   Sherry Wall,

                                               Defendants—Appellees.
                      ______________________________

                      Appeal from the United States District Court
                        for the Northern District of Mississippi
                                USDC No. 3:19-CV-217
                      ______________________________

   Before Dennis, Engelhardt, and Oldham, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam: *
          This appeal arises out of a tax sale of a certain property. Linda Berkley,
   a part-owner of the property, brought suit against the city and county in
   which the property is located, two government officials, and the purchasers
   of the tax liabilities. She claimed that the government defendants violated her

          _____________________
          *
              This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 22-60418       Document: 00516779754             Page: 2      Date Filed: 06/08/2023

                                        No. 22-60418

   constitutional rights in the process of auctioning the taxes and that the tax
   deed issued to the purchaser ought thus be voided. The district court granted
   summary judgment to the defendants and sanctioned Berkley and her
   husband, who served as her attorney, 1 for their conduct. For the reasons that
   follow, we AFFIRM the grants of summary judgment and sanctions.
                                  I. BACKGROUND
          The property in question is located at 1717 Burney Branch Drive in
   Oxford, Mississippi. For many years, the property belonged to Flora Porter,
   Berkley’s mother. In December of 1999, Flora Porter passed away intestate.
   Her four children therefore inherited equal shares of the property. Berkley
   acquired, by quitclaim deeds, the interests of her two brothers but not that of
   her sister Sandra.
          In early August 2017, Berkley received a notice that unpaid 2016
   property taxes on the Burney Branch house would be subject to an auction in
   late August should they not be paid beforehand. Berkley claims that she had
   received no prior notice of the 2016 property taxes. While the City admits
   that it mistakenly sent its 2016 notice of taxes to “117 West Red Fern”
   instead of Berkley’s actual address, 1117 West Red Fern, the County states
   that it sent the bill to the correct address. In any event, Berkley claims that
   she received no tax bills for 2016. She does admit that she received a tax bill
   for 2017 and that she did not pay that bill.
          In keeping with the auction notice issued to Berkley, Lafayette County
   and the City of Oxford then auctioned off the property for delinquent
   property taxes. Thik and Thin Constructions, LLC (“Thik and Thin”), won
   the auction. Berkley claims that she received no notice of the result of the
           _____________________
          1
             Linda Berkley and her husband/counsel (Drayton Berkley) share a last name. For
   the sake of clarity: any references to “Berkley” standing alone will refer to Linda.

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                                         No. 22-60418

   auction until after the City declared the redemption period expired in August
   of 2019, at which point it granted Thik and Thin a tax deed. The County
   likewise declared the period expired and granted a tax deed in September
   2019, whereafter Berkley claims that she discovered the existence of the
   deeds on September 20, 2019. Four days later, Berkley filed suit in the
   Northern District of Mississippi.
           Berkley’s first cause of action was a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim alleging a
   lack of due process in the deprivation of her property interest. She brought
   this claim against Lafayette County, the City of Oxford, and two individuals
   – Sherry Wall and Ashley Atkinson – who were employed as clerks by the
   County and the City, respectively. She brought a second claim accusing Wall
   and Atkinson of being the final policymakers in their roles and having enacted
   or perpetuated policies of deficient notice to property owners with
   delinquent taxes. Her third cause of action was a request that the tax deed be
   declared void, her fourth a statement that she was entitled to compensatory
   damages, and her fifth (the only one against Thik and Thin directly) a second
   request that the court cancel the tax deeds.
           After more than two years of litigation, the district court granted
   summary judgment to the government defendants. 2 The court found that,
   even in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the record demonstrated no
   actionable federal claims. Having determined that summary judgment was
   appropriate as to the federal claims, the court declined to exercise
   supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claims and dismissed them
   without prejudice.

           _____________________
           2
            That is, the City, the County, and their employees. Thik and Thin filed a motion
   to dismiss for failure to join an indispensable party (namely, Berkley’s sister Sandra) that
   was granted in the same order.

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                                     No. 22-60418

          The district court judge also noted that he found it “very difficult . . .
   to assign any motive other than bad faith to [Berkley’s] actions,” given her
   “blatantly deficient arguments regarding the key factual issue in this case, on
   top of her repeated discovery violations.” Given this, the district court
   adopted a magistrate judge’s report and recommendation that discovery
   sanctions be levied in the form of an award of attorney’s fees to the
   government defendants as well as Thik and Thin. Berkley filed a timely
   notice of appeal as to the grants of summary judgment and sanctions.
                          II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
          “We review a grant of summary judgment de novo, viewing all the
   evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and drawing all
   reasonable inferences in that party’s favor.” Parm v. Shumate, 513 F.3d 135,
   142 (5th Cir. 2007) (citing Crawford v. Formosa Plastics Corp., 234 F.3d 899,
   902 (5th Cir. 2000)). “The court shall grant summary judgment if the
   movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the
   movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).
          “A district court’s imposition of sanctions pursuant to Rule 37(b) is
   reviewed for an abuse of discretion. ‘The district court’s underlying findings
   of fact are reviewed for clear error and its underlying conclusions of law
   reviewed de novo.’” Smith & Fuller, P.A. v. Cooper Tire & Rubber Co., 685
   F.3d 486, 488 (5th Cir. 2012) (internal citation omitted) (quoting Am.
   Airlines, Inc. v. Allied Pilots Ass’n, 228 F.3d 574, 578 (5th Cir. 2000)).
                                  III. ANALYSIS
   A. Federal Claims
          Berkley’s federal claims fail for lack of a valid constitutional claim. As
   the district court noted, there is no evidence in the record that would support
   an inference that the defendants acted in any way other than negligently.

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   Supreme Court precedent is clear that “the Due Process Clause of the
   Fourteenth Amendment is not implicated by the lack of due care of an official
   causing unintended injury to life, liberty or property. In other words, where
   a government official is merely negligent in causing the injury, no procedure
   for compensation is constitutionally required.” Davidson v. Cannon, 474 U.S.
   344, 347 (1986). The district court concluded that Berkley “clearly failed to
   create fact issues regarding any misconduct by defendants in this case which
   consists of more than simple negligence.” This court agrees. Berkley claims
   that the government officials’ general awareness that failure to provide notice
   could harm property owners suffices to demonstrate recklessness or
   deliberate indifference in this case. As the district court noted, no evidence
   supports the leap from the former to the latter.
          Berkley states that the notice given to her was constitutionally
   inadequate under Mennonite Board of Missions v. Adams, 462 U.S. 791 (1983).
   In support of this argument, Berkley cites a Fifth Circuit case, In re Paxton,
   to show that “notice to [one joint owner of a property] simply does not satisfy
   the Mennonite requirement of notice reasonably calculated to apprise a party
   . . . of a proceeding which adversely affected that party’s property interest.”
   440 F.3d 233, 236 (5th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). At
   issue in this appeal, however, is not whether notice was adequate (an issue
   which is open to any state court which receives this case, should Berkley file
   there) but whether any government official violated Berkley’s constitutional
   rights. See Davidson, 474 U.S. at 347. As Berkley has made no such showing,
   her claims fail.

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   B. Declination of Supplemental Jurisdiction
           Berkley’s brief makes no challenge to the district court’s decision to
   decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over her state law claims. 3 For
   this reason, any challenge she might have made to the district court’s
   declination is forfeited. See Guillot on behalf of T.A.G. v. Russell, 59 F.4th 743,
   751 (5th Cir. 2023) (“Parties forfeit contentions by inadequately briefing
   them on appeal.”). This includes all claims against Thik and Thin
   Construction.
   C. Sanctions
           The magistrate judge noted serious and repeated misconduct
   perpetrated by both Linda and Drayton Berkley. It is worth quoting the
   magistrate judge’s introduction to her findings at length:
           Plaintiff’s conduct and that of her counsel (who is also her
           husband), from all appearances, has been in flagrant disregard
           of the truth and their discovery obligations. This conduct
           includes the following: provision of demonstrably false sworn
           interrogatory answers; numerous false answers under oath by
           Plaintiff at her deposition; improper refusal to answer
           questions at her deposition, including at the improper
           instruction of her counsel; failure to disclose documents
           and/or spoliation of same and an alarming willingness by
           Plaintiff and her counsel to double down on improper conduct
           to evade responsibility for it, such as misrepresenting legal

           _____________________
           3
            Berkley does challenge the district court’s determination that Sandra Porter was
   an indispensable party to this action. That determination, however, was only “note[d]
   parenthetically” by the district court as an alternative holding given the court’s decision to
   “decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction.” Berkley makes no challenge to the district
   court’s primary holding: that it was exercising its discretion to decline to retain the state
   law claims. As this court need not reach it, we make no comment regarding the
   indispensable party argument.

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          authorities to the court, the making of specious legal
          arguments, and the misuse of errata sheets.
   Berkley also misrepresented her past litigation history in two different ways,
   claimed to have documents that she had previously denied having, and later
   claimed that she could not find those documents despite her representations
   that she had them “at her fingertips.” In sum, there is plentiful evidence of
   misconduct.
          In her briefing before this court, Berkley claims that the evidence
   requested in the deposition was irrelevant and that her errata sheets (in which
   she made numerous, substantive corrections to her deposition testimony and
   which were submitted in response to the motion for sanctions) were
   improperly discounted in the magistrate’s recommendations. Regarding the
   latter, Berkley cites Gonzalez v. Fresenius Medical Care North America for the
   proposition that she was permitted to make substantive changes to her
   testimony using errata sheets. 689 F.3d 470 (5th Cir. 2012). What she fails to
   note, though, is that the Gonzalez court upheld the imposition of sanctions:
   “Counsel argues on appeal that Relator was entitled to submit an errata sheet
   and make substantive changes to her deposition . . . . We do not necessarily
   disagree, but the only question for our purposes is whether the district court
   abused its discretion . . . . We find no abuse of discretion.” Id. at 480. More
   generally, the court is convinced that the information requested and not
   provided was, in fact, relevant to the lawsuit. Information about Berkley’s
   past lawsuits (especially those involving emotional distress), her purchases
   of her brothers’ interests in the property, and her records of her
   communications with the City and County were all squarely at issue in both
   proof and damages. The district court made no error in assessing sanctions.
          Lastly, Berkley claims that the district court erred in its assignment of
   certain billing rates to the defendants’ attorneys because “Fifth Circuit
   precedent require[es] proof of the customary billing rate to calculate a

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                                     No. 22-60418

   reasonable hourly rate for fee applicants.” Not so. The case cited for this
   proposition imposes no such requirement: instead, it notes that both regular
   rates and prevailing market rates may be considered and that our overarching
   concern is that the rates be “reasonable.” La. Power & Light Co. v. Kellstrom,
   50 F.3d 319, 328 (5th Cir. 1995) (per curiam); see also McClain v. Lufkin Indus.,
   Inc., 649 F.3d 374, 381 (5th Cir. 2011) (quoting Blum v. Stenson, 465 U.S. 886,
   895, (1984)) (“‘[R]easonable’ hourly rates ‘are to be calculated according to
   the prevailing market rates in the relevant community.’”). Berkley has
   shown no abuse of discretion.
                                IV. CONCLUSION
          As the district court noted, “state court was, in fact, the proper forum
   for [Berkley] to file her claims.” Her federal claims were, from the outset,
   weak at best. Her conduct, and that of her counsel, only weakened her suit.
   The district court correctly granted summary judgment and did not abuse its
   discretion in imposing sanctions. Therefore, we AFFIRM.

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