Court Opinion

ID: 9472536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:03:21.949583+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:59.882584
License: Public Domain

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER ON MOTION FOR REHEARING

Per Curiam

Other than to repeat previous arguments plaintiff’s motion for rehearing urges that we over-emphasized his statement that Pool was “disbarred ... on the basis of the conduct about which plaintiff complains in Count 28 ...” and that this disbarment made no reference to stealing his client’s money. Plaintiff asserts that the theft was simply not included. Even were we to assume the thrust of this assertion, it would not help plaintiff.
Plaintiff does not deny that he authorized Pool to go to the box, or boxes, for money, but he would have it that Brown, as a co-conspirator with respect to evidence in the boxes, must know of, or be vicariously liable for, Pool’s alleged subsequent misappropriation of funds.
In our earlier opinion we noted that plaintiff had not seen fit to respond to Brown’s affidavit of ignorance (plaintiff’s pleading, of course, not constituting such for summary judgment purposes) but felt that Brown had a burden of showing good faith, possibly unmet. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982), has changed all that, and has placed a heavy burden on a plaintiff suing a government official to show an objective case in the first instance. By that test, to show that Brown knew Pool was not telling plaintiff what information he had had to disclose in order to obtain access to the money would be insufficient to make out a case he knew Pool was — if he was — planning partially to disobey plaintiff’s instructions as to what to do with it.
The petition for rehearing is denied.