Phillips v. Henderson ( 2024 )

1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 2 DISTRICT OF NEVADA 3 4 T. Matthew Phillips, Case No. 2:24-cv-00859-JAD-BNW 5 Plaintiff v. Order Granting Motion to Dismiss 6 and Closing Case Bill Henderson, 7 [ECF Nos. 7, 14] Defendant 8 9 T. Matthew Phillips claims that his Fourteenth Amendment right to a fair trial was 10 violated because Nevada family-court judge Bill Henderson, who is presiding over his custody 11 dispute, failed to disclose on the record that he had made a donation to the Legal Aid Center of 12 Southern Nevada, which supplied free legal services to Phillips’s ex-wife.1 Judge Henderson 13 moves to dismiss, arguing that judicial immunity shields him from Phillips’s suit and that 14 Phillips’s allegations do not state a claim upon which relief may be granted.2 Because I find that 15 Phillips’s suit is barred by judicial immunity and, regardless, he has failed to state a plausible 16 constitutional claim, I grant the motion to dismiss with prejudice and close this case. 17 Overview 18 Judge Bill Henderson is presiding over a child-custody dispute between Phillips and his 19 ex-wife in the Family Division of the Eighth Judicial District Court, Clark County, Nevada.3 20 Phillips claims that Judge Henderson donated money to Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, 21 22 1 ECF No. 1. 23 2 ECF No. 7. 3 ECF No. 1 at ¶ 4. 1 and because Phillips’s ex-wife and adversary in that custody dispute was getting free legal 2 services from that organization, the judge had a duty to disclose this donation and his obvious 3 bias.4 Phillips claims that Judge Henderson’s failure to do so violated his Fourteenth 4 Amendment right to a fair trial.5 He sues Judge Henderson in his personal capacity under 42 5 U.S.C. § 1983 for damages and injunctive relief.6 6 Phillips’s case theory relies on screenshots of Facebook posts identifying Judge 7 Henderson as “sponsor” at a Legal Aid luncheon.7 He surmises that the judge had to make a 8 donation to secure seating at the luncheon, and that contribution was improper because it caused 9 Legal Aid to “bestow[] upon [Phillips’s] ex-wife never-ending free legal services.”8 He 10 characterizes this purported donation as an “inverse bribe” that created an actual bias in favor of 11 Legal Aid and its clients and against any litigants appearing on the other side of a Legal Aid- 12 funded lawyer.9 According to Phillips, Judge Henderson’s “sponsorship” of Legal Aid created 13 the appearance of impropriety—and actual impropriety—sufficient to undermine judicial 14 independence, integrity, and impartiality under Nevada Code of Judicial Conduct (NCJC) Rule 15 3.1(C) and requiring the judge’s disqualification from matters involving Legal Aid under NCJC 16 17 18 4 Id. at ¶ 5–6. 19 5 Id. at ¶ 8. 20 6 Id. at ¶ 29. 21 7 Id. at ¶ 13. 8 Id. at ¶ 14. Judge Henderson describes Legal Aid’s role in Phillips’s family dispute differently, 22 alleging that Legal Aid merely coordinated with private attorneys who agreed to represent Phillips’s ex-wife in the family dispute. ECF No. 7 at 9. But I consider only the allegations in 23 Phillips’s complaint when evaluating this dismissal motion. 9 ECF No. 1 at ¶ 6. 1 Rule 2.11(A).10 Phillips claims that Judge Henderson’s failure to disqualify himself from his 2 case was motivated by the fact that he “intends to railroad Plaintiff in his family court case.”11 3 Analysis 4 Federal pleading standards require a complaint to include enough factual detail to “state a 5 claim to relief that is plausible on its face.”12 This “demands more than an unadorned, the- 6 defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation”;13 plaintiffs must make direct or inferential factual 7 allegations about “all the material elements necessary to sustain recovery under some viable legal 8 theory.”14 A complaint that fails to meet this standard must be dismissed.15 When, as here, a 9 defendant asserts immunity in a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), dismissal is appropriate 10 if the court can “determine based on the complaint itself” that immunity applies.16 11 12 13 14 15 10 Id. at ¶ 9. 16 11 Id. at ¶ 10. 17 12 Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). 13 Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). 18 14 Twombly, 550 U.S. at 562 (quoting Car Carriers, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 745 F.2d 1101, 1106 19 (7th Cir. 1984)). 15 Id. at 570. Phillips’s status as a California-licensed attorney who is representing himself in 20 this action does not alter this standard. The Ninth Circuit has declined to allow pro se attorneys leniency in assessing compliance with technical requirements under the Federal Rules of Civil 21 Procedure. Huffman v. Lindgren, 81 F.4th 1016, 1021 (9th Cir. 2023). Unlike other pro se litigants, who are “[p]resumably unskilled in the law” and “far more prone to making errors in 22 pleading,” attorneys who represent themselves are entitled to no special consideration. Id. (quoting Lopez v. Smith, 203 F.3d 1122, 1131 (9th Cir. 2000)). 23 16 O’Brien v. Welty, 818 F.3d 920, 936 (9th Cir. 2016) (quoting Groten v. California, 251 F.3d 844, 851 (9th Cir. 2001)). 1 A. Phillips’s suit is barred by the judicial-immunity doctrine. 2 A judge is entitled to absolute immunity from civil suit for acts performed in his official 3 capacity.17 This rule recognizes that the appeals process—not a lawsuit against the judge—is the 4 appropriate vehicle for correcting judicial error.18 It therefore applies to civil actions for 5 damages or equitable relief.19 A judge may lose this immunity if the action in question “is not 6 judicial in nature.”20 To determine if an action is judicial in nature, courts look to whether the 7 act is “a function normally performed by a judge, and to the expectation of the parties, i.e., 8 whether they dealt with the judge in his judicial capacity.”21 “A judge is absolutely immune 9 from liability for his judicial acts even if his exercise of authority is flawed by the commission of 10 grave procedural errors.”22 11 In an effort to get around the roadblock of judicial immunity, Phillips describes Judge 12 Henderson’s challenged conduct as “acts taken ‘off the bench’”23 and tries to narrow the focus to 13 the judge’s alleged donation to Legal Aid, which predated Phillips’s custody case.24 But the true 14 essence of his claim is not that Judge Henderson made a contribution to the legal-aid 15 organization, but that he failed to disclose on the record his support of that organization and 16 disqualify himself based on this perceived conflict of interest. So the due-process violation that 17 17 Ashelman v. Pope, 793 F.2d 1072, 1075 (9th Cir. 1986); Dermoran v. Witt, 781 F.2d 155, 156 18 (9th Cir. 1985). 19 18 In re Castillo, 297 F.3d 940, 947 (9th Cir. 2002). 19 Mullis v. Bankr. Ct. for the Dist. of Nev., 828 F.2d 1385, 1394 (9th Cir. 1987), cert. denied, 20 486 U.S. 1040 (1988). 21 20 Schucker v. Rockwood, 846 F.2d 1202, 1204 (9th Cir. 1988). 21 Ashelman, 793 F.2d at 1075. 22 22 Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 359 (1978). 23 23 ECF No. 1 at ¶ 4. 24 Id. at ¶ 32. 1 Phillips is claiming is that Judge Henderson continues to preside over his case with this alleged 2 bias and though doing so violates judicial ethics: 3 Henderson donates money to [Legal Aid] but fails to disclose the same to the parties; to make matters worse, Henderson stubbornly 4 insists on remaining the judge in Plaintiff’s family law case— despite several canonical violations.25 5 6 That Phillips’s claim attacks a judicial function is made even more clear by the fact that he prays 7 for an order removing Judge Henderson from his custody case: 8 By giving money to [Legal Aid], Henderson violates Plaintiff’s right to a fair trial in his family court case. Plaintiff seeks money 9 damages as well as a court order requiring Henderson to disqualify himself from continuing to sit in Plaintiff’s family court case.26 10 11 Judge Henderson was serving in his judicial role when presiding over Phillips’s child- 12 custody dispute and making these decisions that Phillips claims deprived him of due process. 13 Those acts are quintessentially judicial and absolutely shielded from suit.27 Phillips’s case is 14 thus barred by judicial immunity and must be dismissed. 15 B. Phillips also fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. 16 Even if conduct alleged in Phillips’s complaint falls outside the scope of judicial 17 immunity, this lawsuit must be dismissed nevertheless because Phillips fails to plead a viable 18 19 25 Id. at ¶ 31. 26 Id. at ¶ 28. 20 27 See, e.g., Smith v. Scalia, 44 F. Supp. 3d 28, 42 (D.D.C. 2014), aff’d 2015 WL 13710107 (D.C. Cir. Jan. 14, 2015) (wherein then-district-judge Ketanji Brown Jackson held that a lawsuit 21 against judges complaining about their written opinions and “recusal decisions” was barred by judicial immunity); Bobrowsky v. Yonkers Courthouse, 777 F. Supp. 2d 692, 714 (S.D.N.Y. 22 2011) (holding that judge’s refusal to recuse is covered by judicial immunity, and collecting cases); Sylvester v. Sorrell, 2009 WL 819383, at *3 (D. Vt. Mar. 25, 2009) (concluding, “[w]hile 23 Judge Keller may have presided over a case in which he had a conflict of interest, he is nonetheless protected from suit by the doctrine of judicial immunity”). 1 claim for relief. To state a due-process claim based on judicial misconduct, a plaintiff must show 2 that the judge’s behavior rendered the proceedings so fundamentally unfair that his due-process 3 rights were violated.28 Phillips’s allegations fall short of that mark. He relies on the Nevada 4 Code of Judicial Conduct and contends that the judge’s failure to comply with it violated his due- 5 process rights.29 But, as stated in the Code itself, “[t]he Code is not designed or intended as a 6 basis for civil or criminal liability.”30 So even if Judge Henderson did violate the Code, Phillips 7 has made no showing that a violation of the Code would by itself amount to a constitutional 8 violation. 9 I thus find that Phillips has failed to state a plausible Fourteenth Amendment due-process 10 claim, so his complaint must be dismissed. And because it does not appear on this record that 11 Phillips could state any additional facts sufficient to support such a claim if given the chance to 12 amend, that dismissal is without leave to amend.31 13 Conclusion 14 IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that defendant’s motion to dismiss [ECF No. 7] is 15 GRANTED and this case is dismissed with prejudice. The Clerk of Court is directed to 16 ENTER JUDGMENT accordingly and CLOSE THIS CASE. 17 18 19 28 See Duckett v. Godinez, 67 F.3d 734, 740–41 (9th Cir. 1995) (stating that “to sustain a claim of [judicial misconduct] there must be an ‘extremely high level of interference’ by the trial judge 20 that creates ‘a pervasive climate of partiality and unfairness’” (quoting United States v. DeLuca, 692 F.2d 1277, 1282 (9th Cir. 1982))). 21 29 ECF No. 1 at ¶ 7–27. 22 30 NCJC Part VI. 31 DCD Programs, Ltd. v. Leighton, 833 F.2d 183, 188 (9th Cir. 1987) (explaining that, while a 23 plaintiff should be given the opportunity to test his claim on the merits, futile amendments should not be permitted). ] And because this case is being dismissed and closed, the defendant’s motion to stay 2|| discovery [ECF No. 14] is DENIED as moot. USS. District Judge Jennif (Al Dorsey 4 September 6, 2024 5 6 7 8 9 10 1] 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23