Court Opinion

ID: 9896746
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-14 16:00:44.03649+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:41.260606
License: Public Domain

22-3197
    Zografidis v. Richards

                                  UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                      FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

                                              SUMMARY ORDER
RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. CITATION TO A
SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED
BY FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT’S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1.
WHEN CITING A SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY
MUST CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE
NOTATION “SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY CITING TO A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A
COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL.

          At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
    held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the
    City of New York, on the 14th day of November, two thousand twenty-three.

    PRESENT:

                JOHN M. WALKER, JR.,
                REENA RAGGI,
                RICHARD J. SULLIVAN,
                      Circuit Judges.
    ________________________________________

    KONSTANTINOS ZOGRAFIDIS,

                                  Plaintiff-Appellant,

                             v.                                                    No. 22-3197

    VANESSA RICHARDS, Assistant
    United States Attorney,
    WESTPORT POLICE DEPARTMENT,
    STATEWIDE GRIEVANCE COMMITTEE,
    DANBURY GRIEVANCE PANEL,

                                  Defendants-Appellees. ∗
    ________________________________________

    ∗
        The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to amend the official case caption as set forth above.
For Plaintiff-Appellant:                         Konstantinos Zografidis, pro se,
                                                 Norwalk, CT.

For Defendants-Appellees                         Thadius L. Bochain, Assistant
Statewide Grievance Committee                    Attorney General, for William
& Danbury Grievance Panel:                       Tong, Attorney General, Hartford,
                                                 CT.

For Defendant-Appellee                           Ryan P. Driscoll, Berchem Moses
Westport Police Department:                      PC, Milford, CT.

      Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District

of Connecticut (Victor A. Bolden, Judge).

      UPON       DUE      CONSIDERATION,           IT   IS   HEREBY       ORDERED,

ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the December 16, 2022 judgment of the

district court is AFFIRMED.

      Konstantinos Zografidis, proceeding pro se, appeals from the district court’s

judgment dismissing with prejudice his amended complaint, which asserted a

variety of civil-rights claims against dozens of federal, state, and local officials, as

well as several private individuals. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the

facts, procedural history, and issues on appeal, which we refer to only as necessary

to resolve this appeal.

      Virtually all of Zografidis’s claims relate to his prior conviction on federal

narcotics charges, to which he pleaded guilty in 2014 while reserving his right to

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appeal the denial of his motion to suppress evidence gathered pursuant to a court-

authorized wiretap.        On appeal, we determined that Zografidis’s motion to

suppress was properly denied and affirmed his conviction. See United States v.

Papadakos, 729 F. App’x 41 (2d Cir. 2018). Zografidis was released from prison in

2017, at which time he commenced a three-year term of supervised release. He

subsequently filed a motion to vacate his conviction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2255,

which was denied. See Zografidis v. United States, No. 18-cv-1566 (JAM), 2021 WL

2810142 (D. Conn. July 6, 2021), appeal dismissed, No. 21-1681, 2021 WL 7540171 (2d

Cir. Nov. 19, 2021).

       In May 2022, Zografidis commenced the instant case, alleging that forty-two

individuals and entities directly or indirectly connected to his underlying criminal

case acted unlawfully towards him. 1 Because Zografidis’s complaint named both

federal and state defendants, the district court construed the complaint as

asserting claims pursuant to Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau

of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), and 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and dismissed it with leave

1 Notably, only four defendants appeared in the district court, all of whom filed motions to
dismiss. Three of those defendants – the Statewide Grievance Committee, the Danbury
Grievance Panel, and the Westport Police Department – filed appellate briefs in this case. The
federal defendants, including former Assistant United States Attorney Vanessa Richards, notified
the Court that they did not intend to participate in this appeal on the basis that the amended
complaint was dismissed before the federal defendants were properly served or appeared in the
action. See Doc. No. 21.

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to amend. After Zografidis availed himself of the opportunity to amend, the

district court dismissed his amended complaint with prejudice, concluding that

his claims were time-barred, were precluded under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477

(1994), and involved defendants who were immune from suit.

      On appeal, the Statewide Grievance Committee, the Danbury Grievance

Panel, and the Westport Police Department argue that Zografidis has abandoned

any challenge to the district court’s judgment because his appellate brief failed to

raise any arguments concerning the merits of the district court’s dismissal of his

amended complaint. We agree.

      Though we “liberally construe pleadings and briefs submitted by pro se

litigants, reading such submissions to raise the strongest arguments they suggest,”

McLeod v. Jewish Guild for the Blind, 864 F.3d 154, 156 (2d Cir. 2017) (internal

quotation marks omitted), pro se appellants must still comply with Federal Rule of

Appellate Procedure 28(a), which requires appellants “to provide the court with a

clear statement of the issues on appeal,” Moates v. Barkley, 147 F.3d 207, 209 (2d Cir.

1998). Accordingly, a pro se litigant will be deemed to have “abandon[ed] an issue

by failing to address it in the appellate brief.” Green v. Dep’t of Educ. of N.Y., 16

F.4th 1070, 1074 (2d Cir. 2021); see also LoSacco v. City of Middletown, 71 F.3d 88, 93

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(2d Cir. 1995) (“[W]e need not manufacture claims of error for an appellant

proceeding pro se.”); Terry v. Inc. Vill. of Patchogue, 826 F.3d 631, 632–33 (2d Cir.

2016) (“Although we accord filings from pro se litigants a high degree of

solicitude, even a litigant representing himself is obliged to set out identifiable

arguments in his principal brief.” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

       Zografidis’s brief does not even attempt to address the grounds on which

the district court relied in dismissing his complaint. Instead, his submissions

endeavor to collaterally attack his years-old criminal conviction. See Zografidis

Br. at 7–8 (explaining that his argument will “show this Honorable Panel, again,

the same facts and discoveries [he] presented” in his section 2255 petition); see also

id. at 18 (noting that the information presented in his appellate brief “[wa]s all in

[his section 2255] Petition”); id. at 23 (requesting that we reverse the district court’s

decisions in his criminal case, set aside his guilty plea, and remand for trial).

Because Zografidis has offered no explanation for his failure to address the

substance of the district court’s dismissal in his brief on appeal, we conclude that

he has abandoned any challenge to the district court’s judgment. 2 See Green, 16

2 At various points in his briefs, Zografidis insists that his grievances are not subject to statutes
of limitations. See Zografidis Br. at 17 (contending that the limitations period will only begin to
run “once [his] criminal conviction is overturned”); Reply at 4 (claiming that “the statutes of
limitations do not apply to [him] in this case”). Even if we were to consider these conclusory

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F.4th at 1074; LoSacco, 71 F.3d at 92–93.

       Zografidis also moves to supplement the record to include “new found

discovery” – namely, letters that Zografidis sent to the Statewide Grievance

Committee in 2013 and 2014. See Doc. No. 93. A party seeking to supplement

the record with additional evidence must satisfy Federal Rule of Appellate

Procedure 10(e)(2), which requires a party to “provide evidence of an erroneous

or accidental omission of material evidence” from the record. Leibowitz v. Cornell

Univ., 445 F.3d 586, 592 n.4 (2d Cir. 2006). Here, Zografidis does not attempt to

explain how letters from nearly a decade ago constitute “new found” evidence or

how such letters meet the aforementioned Rule 10(e)(2) standard. Accordingly,

his motion to supplement the record is denied.

       Zografidis additionally moves this Court to mandate that all defendants

identified in his amended complaint participate in this appeal by “answer[ing] to

the criminal allegations and constitutional violations that [he has] claimed against

them.” See Doc. No. 44. Because Zografidis’s appellate brief failed to address

assertions sufficient to preserve Zografidis’s challenge to the district court’s dismissal of his
claims as time-barred, we would reject his argument as meritless. See Gonzalez v. Hasty, 802 F.3d
212, 219–20 (2d Cir. 2015) (explaining when a Bivens claim accrues for statute of limitations
purposes); Ormiston v. Nelson, 117 F.3d 69, 71 (2d Cir. 1997) (explaining the same for section 1983
claims).

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the merits of the district court’s dismissal, there is no reason for us to require the

participation of additional parties or the submission of additional briefs.

See United States v. Graham, 51 F.4th 67, 81 (2d Cir. 2022) (explaining that “we may

affirm a judgment even when an appellee submits no brief at all”). This motion

is therefore also denied.

      We have considered Zografidis’s remaining arguments and find them to be

without merit. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court. All

pending motions are DENIED.

                                       FOR THE COURT:
                                       Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk of Court

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