Court Opinion

ID: 9956576
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-02 16:00:44.406161+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:17:37.965185
License: Public Domain

United States Court of Appeals
                             For the Eighth Circuit
                         ___________________________

                                  No. 22-2773
                         ___________________________

                                Derrick Jerome Bates

                                       Plaintiff - Appellant

                                          v.

             Tyler Richardson, in his individual and official capacities

                                       Defendant - Appellee

             Heidi Northland, in her individual and official capacities

                                               Defendant

   Wayne Jerman, in his individual and official capacities; City of Cedar Rapids

                                      Defendants - Appellees

 Jane Does, 1-3, in their individual and official capacities; John Does, 1-3, in their
          individual and official capacities; Jared Jupin; Michael Kern

                                          Defendants
                                   ____________

                      Appeal from United States District Court
                  for the Northern District of Iowa - Cedar Rapids
                                  ____________

                            Submitted: October 26, 2023
                               Filed: April 2, 2024
                                 ____________

Before LOKEN, MELLOY, and KELLY, Circuit Judges.
                           ____________
KELLY, Circuit Judge.

       In Irvin v. Richardson, 20 F.4th 1199 (8th Cir. 2021), we decided a
consolidated appeal of separate cases brought by Derrick Jerome Bates and
Larenzo Irvin under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Cedar Rapids, Iowa Police
Department (CRPD) officers conducted an unlawful investigative stop of Bates and
Irvin, and that officers falsely arrested Bates for interference with official acts. We
affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Defendants as
to Bates and Irvin’s claims regarding the investigative stop, see id. at 1206, but
remanded Bates’s false-arrest claims to the district court for trial, see id. at 1208.
On remand, the district court granted the Defendants’ second motion for summary
judgment on Bates’s remaining claims. Bates appeals. Having jurisdiction under 28
U.S.C. § 1291, we reverse and remand.

                                          I.

       The facts of this case are detailed in our prior opinion in Irvin, 20 F.4th
1202–03, but we provide a brief summary here. CRPD Officers Tyler Richardson
and Jared Jupin were responding to a 911 call involving “a disturbance with a
weapon” when they stopped Bates and Irvin. Id. As relevant to this appeal,
Richardson yelled at Bates and Irvin to stop walking, drew his gun, and ordered
them to the ground, where they were handcuffed. Id. at 1203. After a witness told
the officers that neither Bates nor Irvin was involved in the disturbance that had
triggered the 911 call, both were uncuffed and told they were free to go. Id.
Richardson arrested Bates fifteen minutes later for interference with official acts, in
violation of Iowa Code § 719.1(1). Id.

      Bates1 filed suit against Defendants Richardson, CRPD Chief Wayne Jerman
and the City of Cedar Rapids, alleging Richardson unlawfully stopped him without
      1
      Because Irvin’s case has been resolved, we address only Bates’s claims in the
remainder of our opinion.

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reasonable suspicion and subsequently arrested him without probable cause.
Defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that Richardson had, at
minimum, arguable reasonable suspicion to conduct the initial investigative stop,
and that there was probable cause to arrest Bates for continuing to take steps after
Richardson commanded him to stop walking. Defendants argued they had qualified
immunity from suit, and that the City and Chief Jerman could not be held liable
under Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978). The district court
granted Defendants’ first motion for summary judgment and dismissed all claims.

       On appeal, we affirmed in part, but reversed the grant of summary judgment
dismissing Bates’s federal and state false-arrest claims. Irvin, 20 F.4th at 1202. As
a result of the partial reversal, the district court’s rationale for dismissing Bates’s
claim under Monell no longer applied, and we “decline[d] to resolve the[] Monell
issues as a matter of law on this summary judgment record.” Id. at 1209. We left
open the issue of state statutory immunity for the district court to take up on
remand, “[i]f properly preserved.” Id. at 1208.

       Shortly after remand, Defendants were granted leave to file a second motion
for summary judgment. In their motion, Defendants claimed they had state
statutory immunity and federal qualified immunity and argued that a recently
decided case—State v. Wilson, 968 N.W.2d 903 (Iowa 2022)—clarified what
constitutes probable cause for interference with official acts under Iowa law. In
Defendants’ view, Wilson “provides guidance which was not [previously]
available to either this District Court . . . or the Eighth Circuit,” such that
Richardson had probable cause, or at minimum arguable probable cause, to arrest
Bates. They expressly stated, however, that the facts in the record had not changed,
and that Wilson did not “change the law as it stood when Bates was arrested.”

      The district court granted the motion. It agreed with Defendants that
“Wilson allows for a clearer assessment of Iowa Code Section 719.1 than was
available to either this Court or the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in their

                                         -3-
respective prior opinions;” determined that Richardson had probable cause to arrest
Bates; and dismissed the federal and state law claims that had survived the first
appeal. It also dismissed the Monell claim. On appeal, Bates argues that the district
court erred when it granted Defendants’ second motion for summary judgment.2

                                         II.

        “We review the ‘grant of summary judgment de novo, viewing the facts in
the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and making every reasonable
inference in [their] favor.’” Bradford v. Palmer, 855 F.3d 890, 892 (8th Cir. 2017)
(citation omitted). However, because this appeal “follows a previous decision of
another panel concerning whether [the defendants were] entitled to summary
judgment,” as a threshold issue, we must first decide whether the law-of-the-case
doctrine applies. See Maxfield v. Cintas Corp., No. 2, 487 F.3d 1132, 1134–35 (8th
Cir. 2007). Under that doctrine, “when a court decides upon a rule of law, that
decision should continue to govern the same issues in subsequent stages of the
same case.’” Id. (quoting Little Earth of United Tribes, Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of Hous.
& Urb. Dev., 807 F.2d 1433, 1440–41 (8th Cir. 1986)).

       In Irvin, we held that the material facts were too genuinely disputed to
conclude as a matter of law that Richardson had probable cause, or arguable
probable cause, to arrest Bates for knowingly resisting or obstructing Richardson
in the performance of his official duties. 20 F.4th at 1208 (describing the facts as
“too uncertain and contested,” and “too confused” to grant summary judgment). As
a result, summary judgment was precluded on Bates’s federal and state law false-
arrest claims. See id. On remand, the parties agreed the record remained the same.

      2
      Bates also argues that the district court abused its discretion in granting
Defendants leave to file a successive dispositive motion on remand after the
scheduling order deadline. Because we decide this appeal on other grounds, we
assume without deciding that the court properly exercised its discretion when it
determined that Defendants had “good cause” under Rule 16(b) to file a second
summary judgment motion.

                                         -4-
       Defendants also concede that Wilson did not change Iowa law on
interference with official acts. Instead, they disagree with how we applied state and
federal law in Irvin. But a party cannot “simply repackage[] [arguments] that were
presented unsuccessfully . . . during the first appeal.” Maxfield, 487 F.3d at 1137.
In this second appeal, Defendants simply add Wilson to the same arguments they
made in Irvin. That is not enough “to justify permitting [them] to relitigate issues
previously decided against [them].” Id.

       The law-of-the-case doctrine controls here because Defendants’ “second
motion for summary judgment presented the same legal issue that we resolved in
our first decision on an evidentiary record that is not . . . different from the record
that we considered originally.” See Maxfield, 487 F.3d at 1133. The legal issue in
Maxfield dealt with federal law. But the same reasoning applies here, where the
parties agree that the Iowa law we applied in Irvin, on the same record, has not
changed. Defendants disagree with the analysis and outcome in Irvin, but their
disagreement is insufficient grounds for revisiting our prior panel’s decision. See
id. at 1135. And “one panel of this court has no authority to overrule an earlier
decision of another panel.” Id. Our prior decision, therefore, continues to govern
the legal issues presented in this appeal. See id. at 1134–35.

                                         III.

        We reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment and remand for
further proceedings consistent with this opinion. We leave open for consideration
on remand—as we did in Irvin—whether statutory immunity applies to Bates’s
state law claims. See 20 F.4th at 1208.
                        ______________________________

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