Court Opinion

ID: 9775512
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:01:22.133842+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:57:58.914273
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-11952   Document: 30-1    Date Filed: 08/29/2023   Page: 1 of 8

                                                [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                 In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                         ____________________

                              No. 22-11952
                         Non-Argument Calendar
                         ____________________

       STEVEN D. KING,
                                                   Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
       versus
       CITY OF MOBILE, MOBILE POLICE DEPARTMENT, et al.,

                                                          Defendants,

       JENNINGS POWELL,
       JOSEPH GOFF,
       JEFFREY HILLBURN,
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       2                      Opinion of the Court                22-11952

                                                    Defendants-Appellees.

                            ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Southern District of Alabama
                    D.C. Docket No. 1:15-cv-00610-TFM-N
                           ____________________

       Before WILSON, ROSENBAUM, and LUCK, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
               Steven King, pro se, appeals the judgment entered on an ad-
       verse jury verdict in his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action alleging excessive
       force during an arrest in 2015. He argues that the district court
       abused its discretion by denying his motion for continuance of the
       trial, and that appointed counsel performed so inadequately that he
       was deprived of his Fifth Amendment due-process rights. After
       careful review, we affirm.
                                        I.
               King filed a § 1983 civil-rights action stemming from his ar-
       rest in May 2015. In 2018, the district court granted summary judg-
       ment to the defendants on all claims except one: an excessive-force
       claim against several officers of the Mobile Police Department.
       Soon after, the court granted King’s motion to appoint counsel.
       Then, in May 2019, the court granted the parties’ motion to stay
       the case pending the resolution of King’s criminal trial.
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       22-11952                Opinion of the Court                           3

               The district court lifted its stay in 2021, and King’s civil jury
       trial took place in May 2022. At the outset of the trial, King person-
       ally told the court he wanted to fire appointed counsel for ineffec-
       tiveness, explaining that counsel refused to subpoena medical rec-
       ords and witnesses that King believed were vital to his case. The
       court explained that King had the right to represent himself, and
       after questioning King, it agreed to let King do so at trial with ap-
       pointed counsel as standby.
               King then requested a continuance to allow him time to ob-
       tain a new lawyer who could subpoena the medical records and
       witnesses. When asked for their position on a continuance, the de-
       fendants objected, noting that the case had been pending since 2015
       and that the exhibit list contained several hundred pages of medical
       records. In reply, King stated that he had not yet examined the trial
       binder and needed more time to subpoena doctors who could tes-
       tify to the findings in his medical records.
               The district court denied a continuance. The court ex-
       plained that the “case ha[d] been pending for a while” and that the
       trial binder already contained “numerous,” uncontested medical
       records. It also reasoned that the jury would not need expert testi-
       mony to understand the medical records because “the facts of this
       case [we]re fairly simple.”
              After voir dire, the district court excused the jury so the court
       could explain to King that, during the trial, he was prohibited from
       discussing the denial of his motion for a continuance. King argued
       that he was “being forced to represent [him]self” due to the
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                 22-11952

       ineffectiveness of his counsel and the court’s refusal to appoint a
       new attorney. In response, the court explained that it was not re-
       quired to appoint counsel in civil matters, that King was “repre-
       senting [him]self because [he] [chose] to represent [him]self,” and
       that it was his decision whether to use counsel.
              After a recess, but before the jury was seated, the district
       court brought to King’s attention all the work that his former coun-
       sel had done in preparing King’s case for trial. King ultimately
       elected to have counsel try the case for him. Counsel made an
       opening statement, examined King, cross-examined the defend-
       ants’ witnesses, made a closing argument, and proposed jury in-
       structions. At no point during the trial did King object to the rep-
       resentation provided by his counsel.
               The jury returned a verdict in favor of the defendants. The
       district court entered judgment on the verdict, and King appealed.
                                        II.
               King maintains that his due-process rights were violated at
       trial based on the district court’s denial of a continuance and coun-
       sel’s failure to procure King’s witnesses and medical records, which
       forced him to try his case without critical evidence. The funda-
       mental premise of his argument is that he was denied a fair trial, in
       violation of his right to due process, because of the alleged inade-
       quacy of appointed counsel’s representation.
                This premise is misguided. Although due process protects a
       civil litigant’s right to obtain counsel, that right “does not require
       the government to provide lawyers for litigants in civil matters.”
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       22-11952               Opinion of the Court                          5

       Mekdeci v. Merrell Nat’l Labs., 711 F.2d 1510, 1522 n.19 (11th Cir.
       1983). That’s because, in contrast to criminal cases, “there is no
       constitutional or statutory right to effective assistance of counsel
       on a civil case.” Id. at 1522. So “[t]he sixth amendment standards
       for effective counsel in criminal cases do not apply in the civil con-
       text.” Id. at 1523. “For that reason, a party does not have any right
       to a new trial in a civil suit because of inadequate counsel, but has
       as its remedy a suit against the attorney for malpractice.” Id.
       (cleaned up).
              Here, King is not entitled to relief based on any potential in-
       effectiveness by his appointed counsel in failing to obtain witnesses
       and evidence for trial. Regardless of whether counsel was ap-
       pointed, King had no constitutional right to effective assistance of
       counsel for his civil § 1983 case. See id. at 1522–23. According to
       Mekdeci, therefore, no relief from the verdict is available in this ap-
       peal for counsel’s alleged ineffectiveness. See id. at 1523. Rather,
       King “has as [his] remedy a suit against the attorney for malprac-
       tice.” Id.
                                        III.
              King also faults the district court for denying a continuance.
       We review the denial of a continuance for an abuse of discretion.
       Hashwani v. Barbar, 822 F.2d 1038, 1040 (11th Cir. 1987). We will
       not reverse the denial of a continuance unless the court’s ruling
       was “arbitrary, unreasonable, and severely prejudicial.” Sec. &
       Exch. Comm’n v. Levin, 849 F.3d 995, 1005 (11th Cir. 2017).
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       6                      Opinion of the Court                  22-11952

               We have identified five factors to consider in determining
       whether a trial continuance is warranted. Id. Those factors include
       the following: (1) the requesting party’s diligence in trial prepara-
       tion; (2) whether the continuance would meet the movant’s needs;
       (3) whether denial would prejudice the movant; (4) whether the
       continuance would inconvenience the non-movant; and (5)
       whether the trial court had already granted a continuance. Id. at
       1005–06.
               The district court properly denied King’s motion for a con-
       tinuance. That King was unhappy with and wanted to discharge
       appointed counsel does not mean he had “an absolute right to con-
       tinuance.” Mekdeci, 711 F.2d at 1520 n.12 (“In a civil case, a lawyer’s
       withdrawal, much less a mere motion to withdraw, does not afford
       the party an absolute right to a continuance.”). “Rather, the deci-
       sion is still left to the trial court’s discretion.” Id.
               And here, the relevant factors support the district court’s de-
       cision to deny a continuance. For starters, the record does not re-
       flect that King acted with diligence in raising issues related to coun-
       sel’s discovery practices and trial preparation, which King was
       aware of before trial. Plus, pushing back trial again, in a case that
       had been pending since 2015, would have inconvenienced the de-
       fendants and the court, which were ready to go forward with trial
       after years of delay.
             More importantly, the requested continuance was unlikely
       to meet King’s needs for the case. King requested a continuance to
       obtain medical records and witnesses to testify about those
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       22-11952                  Opinion of the Court                              7

       records. 1 But as the district court noted, the joint exhibit list in-
       cluded hundreds of pages of undisputed medical records, of which
       King was seemingly unaware before trial. The court also reasoned
       that expert testimony was not necessary for the jury to understand
       the medical records as they related to the specific excessive-force
       claim at issue. And as the court noted, King was not necessarily
       entitled to substitute counsel or to counsel who would comply
       with his demands related to trial strategy. We see nothing to sug-
       gest that the court misconstrued the record or otherwise made a
       clear error of judgment in concluding that King failed to show that
       a continuance was warranted.
               We reject King’s claim that the district court improperly de-
       ferred to the defendants’ position on continuance. King requested
       a continuance during an ex parte session with the court about his
       appointed counsel. So before ruling on King’s request, which
       would have delayed the trial, the court properly gave the defend-
       ants notice and an opportunity to respond. There is nothing im-
       proper or out of the ordinary about that. The mere fact that the
       court agreed with the defendants does not show that the court
       failed to act as a neutral decisionmaker.
               Finally, we note that the district court, in going forward with
       the trial, attempted to mitigate any prejudice to King by requesting

       1 On appeal, King maintains that appointed counsel failed to call “three wit-

       nesses to his beating by the police,” one of whom was a police officer. He did
       not raise these potential witnesses in seeking a continuance below, though, so
       we do not consider them on appeal.
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       8                       Opinion of the Court                 22-11952

       that appointed counsel remain in the courtroom on standby. And
       counsel ultimately represented King during the trial, generally do-
       ing all the things that trial attorneys ordinarily do. Apart from the
       alleged failure to obtain evidence and witnesses, which do not pro-
       vide a basis for a new trial in a civil case, as we’ve explained above,
       King does not suggest counsel’s performance deprived him of a fair
       trial.
                                        IV.
                For these reasons, we affirm the judgment of the district
       court.
                AFFIRMED.