Court Opinion

ID: 9694779
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:54:27.467365+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:09:39.196588
License: Public Domain

RANDALL, Judge
(concurring specially).
As the majority correctly sets out, the district court, although giving appellants the decision on the merits, refused appellants’ *907request to impose substantial attorney fees on respondent, the City of Minneapolis. The district court cited its three reasons: (1) respondent’s conduct had nothing to do with the constitutional infirmities alleged; (2) respondent had not violated appellants’ due process rights; and (3) appellants’ lawsuit only challenged “anticipatory enforcement” of the challenged provisions. The district court got it exactly right.
Appellants’ claim for attorney fees has brought full circle the original intent behind section 1983 and turned it on its head.
Even a cursory examination of relevant cases shows that its intent was to punish people, including governmental entities, who, under a claimed “color of law” wilfully tried to end-run or violate a citizen’s civil rights. It was not meant to financially impair or bankrupt communities and municipalities that are doing nothing other than following mandates of the state legislature.
That from time to time, state and federal courts declare a state or federal law, passed, with the high but rebuttable cloak of constitutionality, unconstitutional, surprises no one. Courts do not kick out legislative actions routinely; but they kick out legislative enactments enough that to declare a law unconstitutional, although not common, is not rare. If every time the courts declared a law unconstitutional, every municipality, every governmental entity in the state with law enforcement powers that had attempted to enforce what they thought to be good law could be sued, the end result is clear. Legislatures would pass no laws;' if they did, municipalities would not enforce them.
The facts in Owen v. City of Independence, Mo., 445 U.S. 622, 100 S.Ct. 1398, 63 L.Ed.2d 673 (1980), are instructive. The city of Independence, through unanimous resolution of its council, released to the public an allegedly false statement impugning the police chiefs honesty and integrity. Owen, 445 U.S. at 627-28, 100 S.Ct. at 1404 The chief was discharged the next day, and the council’s accusations received extensive coverage in the press. Id. The U.S. Supreme Court found that although the extensive and unfavorable press coverage did not technically “cause” the discharge, the defamatory and stigmatizing charges occurred in the course of terminating the chiefs employment. Id. at 633-34 n. 13, 100 S.Ct. at 1406 n. 13. Further, the city twice refused the chiefs request that he be given written specification of the charges against him and an opportunity to clear his name. Id. at 629, 100 S.Ct. at 1404. The United States Supreme Court held that under these circumstances, the city’s actions deprived the chief of liberty without due process of law. Id. at 633-34 n. 13, 100 S.Ct. at 1406 n. 13.
The facts in Garner v. Memphis Police Dep’t, 8 F.3d 358 (6th Cir.1993), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 114 S.Ct. 1219, 127 L.Ed.2d 565 (1994), are instructive:
On the night of October 3,1974, a fifteen year-old, unarmed boy broke a window and entered an unoccupied residence in suburban Memphis to steal money and property. Two police officers, Elton Hymon and Leslie Wright, were called to the scene by a neighbor. The officers intercepted the youth as he ran from the back of the house to a six foot cyclone fence in the back yard. After shining a flashlight on the boy as he crouched by the fence, Officer Hymon identified himself as a policeman and yelled “Halt.” He could see that the fleeing felon was a youth and was apparently unarmed. As the boy jumped to get over the fence, the officer fired at the upper part of the body, as he was trained to do by his superiors at the Memphis Police Department. He shot because he believed the boy would elude capture in the dark once he was over the fence. The youth died of the gunshot wound. Oh his person was . ten dollars worth of money and jewelry he had taken from the house.
Id. at 360. These facts allowed the parents of the deceased to pursue a section 1983 action.
It does not take a detailed analysis of these eases to come to understand why federal courts allowed the suits, including the requests for attorney fees, to move forward. These cases are a far cry from the statute at issue, the Minnesota Cruelty to Animals Act, which was passed in an attempt to protect animals from improper treatment.
*908Here, appellants’ request for attorney fees might be successful if we had something akin to the following facts, which we do not: Acting under color of the Minnesota Cruelty to Animals Act, an animal control officer barges into a house without either a warrant or probable cause, snatches a pet right out of the arms of its owner, berates and verbally assaults the owner on a dubious charge of cruelty to animals and then, without more, stomps out through the door, and brings the animal to a pound.
If those facts could be established, I suspect that the individual law enforcement officer and his employing municipality would not get much sympathy from the courts in an effort to escape the imposition of attorney fees if they tried to hide behind the shield of “we were only operating under color of a good law.” But we have nothing remotely approaching an egregious fact scenario here (a careful examination of the cases appellants cite to support their claim for attorney fees shows only egregious fact situations).
In contrast, appellants simply looked at what it thought was an unconstitutional state law and, properly so, went to court and made a claim that the law should be struck down. That they are allowed to do. But then, under the guise of cases built on egregious fact situations, to come into court and demand an additional $65,000 in attorney fees chargeable to the municipality, that they are not allowed to do.