Carani v. Meisner

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS March 20, 2013
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court
MARCO CARANI; SHELLEY
DEMARIE CARANI,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
v. No. 10-1398
(D.C. No. 1:08-CV-02626-MSK-CBS)
DARREL MEISNER; J.R. BOULTON; (D. Colo.)
SAMUEL STEWART; KIRK
WILSON; JOHN HIER; WANDA
NELSON; ERIN SIMS; WILLIAM
SAPPINGTON; LOU VALLARIO;
SCOTT DAWSON,
Defendants - Appellees.
MARCO CARANI; SHELLEY
DEMARIE CARANI,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
v.
No. 11-1156
(D.C. No. 1:08-CV-02626-MSK-CBS)
DARREL MEISNER; J.R. BOULTON;
(D. Colo.)
SAMUEL STEWART; KIRK
WILSON; JOHN HIER; WANDA
NELSON; ERIN SIMS; WILLIAM
SAPPINGTON; LOU VALLARIO;
SCOTT DAWSON,
Defendants - Appellees.
MARCO CARANI; SHELLEY
DEMARIE CARANI,
Plaintiffs - Appellees,
v.
DARREL MEISNER; J.R. BOULTON; No. 12-1092
SAMUEL STEWART; KIRK (D.C. No. 1:08-CV-02626-MSK-CBS)
WILSON; JOHN HIER; WANDA (D. Colo.)
NELSON; WILLIAM SAPPINGTON,
Defendants - Appellants,
and
LOU VALLARIO; SCOTT DAWSON,
Defendants.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before HARTZ, BALDOCK, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.
Back in 2007, Marco and Shelley Carani’s private marital dispute briefly
spilled out onto the streets of Rifle, Colorado. The events of those few days have
since managed to beget years of federal litigation. Today, we hopefully bring
some measure of closure for all involved.
*
This order and judgment is not binding precedent except under the
doctrines of law of the case, res judicata and collateral estoppel. It may be cited,
however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th
Cir. R. 32.1.
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When Mr. Carani announced he wanted a divorce, he and his wife first
moved into separate rooms. Later, they attempted a reconciliation. The couple’s
private marital issues, however, soon exploded in public when Ms. Carani found a
flirtatious note from Erin Sims in Mr. Carani’s truck. Deducing that her husband
was carrying on an affair with Ms. Sims, Ms. Carani picked up the phone, called
Ms. Sims, and threatened to ruin Ms. Sims, ruin her own marriage, and ruin her
relationships around town. To avoid any conceivable misunderstanding, Ms.
Carani told Ms. Sims to “consider this a threat.”
Ms. Carani then proceeded to make good on that threat. She called Ms.
Sims’s husband, told him of the affair, and asked if she should be tested for
sexually transmitted diseases. She called Ms. Sims’s boss and let him know about
the affair, too. And she told many other friends around town, some of whom
proceeded (with her knowledge and apparent approval) to leave a message with
the word “SLUT” on Ms. Sims’s car when it was parked on the street and shout
“home wrecker” when they saw her in public.
When Ms. Sims complained to police about Ms. Carani’s threats and
expressed her belief that Ms. Carani was responsible for the acts of public
shaming (she didn’t see who did these things), the police became concerned that
events inside the Carani household were rapidly escalating outside it. They asked
Ms. Carani to visit the police station and provide a handwriting sample.
Eventually convinced she was behind the note, the public taunts, and knowing she
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had threatened Ms. Sims and called her husband and boss, the police arrested her
for stalking with a domestic violence sentencing enhancement. Because she was
arrested on a Friday afternoon, Ms. Carani had to wait until Monday morning for
an arraignment. In the meantime, law enforcement sought and received an arrest
warrant signed by a state judge who found probable cause for the arrest and
authorized Ms. Carani’s continued detention. But some time after her
arraignment (when she was released on bond), local authorities thought tempers
had cooled enough and they decided to drop the charges and let the matter rest.
But rest it did not. Ms. Carani responded with a lawsuit charging Ms.
Sims, several police officers, and various other Rifle public employees, including
the mayor and town clerk, with violating her rights under the United States
Constitution and state law. Nor was this all. Now apparently reconciled once
more with his wife, Mr. Carani sued his former mistress alleging that she and the
other defendants should somehow pay for causing him “lost consortium.”
After a great many proceedings and detailed opinions spanning over 50
pages, the district court dismissed the charges against Ms. Sims, granted the rest
of the defendants summary judgment, and awarded attorneys fees to the
defendants. Ms. Carani contests virtually all of these dispositions but in the end
we discern no reversible error.
Ms. Carani begins by arguing that the district court erred in granting
summary judgment to various members of the Rifle police department on her
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constitutionally based false arrest and false imprisonment claims. But she doesn’t
dispute that the officers were entitled to assert qualified immunity with respect to
these claims. And she acknowledges that, to overcome that assertion of
immunity, she bears the burden of showing their conduct was not just illegal but
clearly illegal at the time. All this, of course, is well and long settled: once a
law enforcement agent asserts qualified immunity the plaintiff must come forward
and show “a reasonable law enforcement officer would have known that his or her
challenged conduct was illegal” at the time of the incident. Martinez v. Carr, 479
F.3d 1292, 1294-95 (10th Cir. 2007).
This burden, however, Ms. Carani fails to carry. The officers thought
probable cause existed to support Ms. Carani’s arrest and detention. They later
received the endorsement of a county judge who approved an arrest warrant. Yet
in reply Ms. Carani identifies no clearly established law suggesting probable
cause was lacking.
To be sure, Ms. Carani cites Baptiste v. J.C. Penney Co., Inc., 147 F.3d
1252 (10th Cir. 1998), and claims it wins the case for her. But there we denied
qualified immunity to an officer who arrested the plaintiff for shoplifting after he
viewed a videotape showing she did no such thing. In our case, meanwhile, the
arresting officers did not ignore exculpatory evidence in their possession. Ms.
Carani argues that, had the officers done a little more pre-arrest investigative
work, they would’ve learned her friends, not Ms. Carani herself, wrote the note
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placed on Ms. Sims’s car and did the yelling on the street. But there’s no
indication that the officers knew these facts at the time of the arrest the way the
officer in Baptiste knew the exculpatory facts about the putative shoplifter.
Neither is it clear, for that matter, how exculpatory the facts in this case really
are. After all, Ms. Carani wasn’t wholly uninvolved in her friends’ actions: she
instigated them. In these circumstances, we simply cannot say Baptiste clearly
forewarned the officers in this case that their conduct was unlawful.
Given that Ms. Carani raises no other argument against the application of
qualified immunity, the district court was right to enter judgment for the Rifle
police defendants. Whether other problems might also attend Ms. Carani’s suit
against them (the district court identified many other problems it saw), we have
no need to explore. This problem is problem enough. Likewise, Ms. Carani’s
challenge to the district court’s exclusion of her expert evidence is now beside the
point: with or without that evidence she cannot overcome qualified immunity as a
matter of law. (Though were we to reach the merits of that particular question we
would find no abuse of discretion: some of the expert’s rejected opinions were
facts he lacked personal knowledge of; others amounted to the sort of
impermissible legal opinions barred by Specht v. Jensen, 853 F.2d 805, 810 (10th
Cir. 1988) (en banc)).
That leaves the Caranis with their claims against Ms. Sims. In her
complaint, Ms. Carani alleged that Ms. Sims engaged in the state tort of “wanton
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and willful” conduct. Problem is, the district court held, “wanton and willful”
conduct is not an independent tort under state law: only and instead a necessary
element of proof to overcome immunity granted state employees by the Colorado
Governmental Immunities Act. By failing to contest this holding in her appellate
briefs, Ms. Carani has waived the issue.
Of course, Ms. Carani’s complaint also separately alleged that Ms. Sims
engaged in “extreme and outrageous” conduct and false imprisonment and, as it
turns out, Colorado does recognize “extreme and outrageous” conduct as an
independent tort. But to avoid a motion to dismiss, Colorado requires a plaintiff
pursuing this claim to plead facts suggesting that the defendant’s actions
exceeded “all possible bounds of decency, and [can be] regarded as atrocious, and
utterly intolerable in a civilized community.” Riske v. King Soopers, 366 F.3d
1085, 1089 (10th Cir. 2004) (quotation marks omitted) (interpreting Colorado
law). The district court held that Ms. Carani’s complaint failed to identify facts
suggesting so much, and in this as well it was surely right. The complaint faulted
Ms. Sims for filing a police report blaming Ms. Carani for the note and shouting
when it was Ms. Carani’s friends who were immediately responsible for those
acts. But as we’ve seen, Ms. Carani instigated those actions, at the time of her
complaint to police there’s no suggestion Ms. Sims had reason to suspect anyone
other than Ms. Carani, and Ms. Sims’s inference that Ms. Carani was responsible
was perfectly natural given Ms. Carani’s promise to “ruin” her. Certainly it can’t
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be the case that a member of the public who mistakenly represents a fact to law
enforcement necessarily engages in tortious conduct, even when she acts in good
faith and with some factual foundation for her belief. Like the district court, we
fail to see how Ms. Carani’s allegations suffice to state a claim for either
“extreme and outrageous” conduct or false imprisonment and Ms. Carani cites no
authority suggesting they do.
The final merits question for us to resolve concerns Mr. Carani’s appeal of
the dismissal of his own curious claim against the defendants. Whatever other
difficulties he might face in his effort to win damages from his former mistress
(and others) for “lost consortium” with his wife, his claim surely fails for the
simple reason that it is derivative in nature: without any other remaining viable
claim remaining in the case, under Colorado law it must fall too. See Schwindt v.
Hershey Foods Corp., 81 P.3d 1144, 1148 (Colo. App. 2003).
That brings us to the parties’ extensive collateral fight over attorneys fees.
The district court awarded fees to Ms. Sims and various other defendants like the
mayor and town clerk under Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24-10-110(5)(c); the court also
awarded fees to the Rifle police defendants under that same statute as well as 42
U.S.C. § 1988.
For their part, the Caranis argue that the district court lacked jurisdiction to
decide the fee motions because they filed their appeal before the district court
could get around to deciding the fee issues. Their appeal, they say, rendered the
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district court without authority to proceed. But the Caranis overlook long-settled
law that a district court may retain jurisdiction over collateral fee disputes even
after its merits judgment has departed for the court of appeals. See McKissick v.
Yuen, 618 F.3d 1177, 1196 (10th Cir. 2010); Budinich v. Bection Dickinson &
Co., 486 U.S. 196, 202 (1988).
Alternatively, the Caranis argue that the district court improperly awarded
fees under the state statute because it failed to make a finding that their claims
were frivolous. Such a finding was of course necessary — and was made by the
district court — with respect to the § 1988 award and that finding isn’t challenged
on appeal. Instead, the Caranis complain only about the absence of a parallel
frivolousness finding in connection with the fee award under state law.
This complaint, too, is without foundation. Even assuming the court’s
§ 1988 frivolous finding doesn’t carry over to the state law fee award, one does
not appear necessary to sustain a fee award under the plain terms of Colo. Rev.
Stat § 24-10-110(5)(c), and the Caranis provide no authority for their assertion
otherwise. Neither do they challenge the state law fee award on any other basis.
(One thing the state fee shifting statute does require is proof that the defendant
receiving a fee award serves as a public employee. Apparently Ms. Sims is a
public employee and it is for this reason the district court thought her entitled to
fees. It’s unclear, however, whether she was acting in a public capacity at any
point relevant to this lawsuit and whether the statute affords fees to public
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employees acting in their private capacities. Still, the Caranis haven’t sought to
challenge the fee award on this basis so we have no obligation to address the
question in this case and we believe it prudent and equitable to leave its resolution
for another day.)
Even that, however, isn’t the end of the parties’ fee fight. Various of the
defendants cross-appeal the district court’s denial of their motion to amend the
judgment to assess their fee award against not only the Caranis but the Caranis’
counsel (a motion apparently aimed at making collection easier). The district
court denied the motion because the defendants sought review under Fed. R. Civ.
P. 59(e), yet failed to satisfy any of the three prongs making relief available:
there was no intervening change in the controlling law, no newly-discovered
evidence that just became available, and no need to modify the ruling to correct
clear error or prevent manifest injustice. We see no error in this disposition. Not
to be outdone, the Caranis respond with a motion of their own in this court,
seeking attorneys fees and double costs for themselves under Federal Rule of
Appellate Procedure 38 claiming that the defendants’ Rule 59(e) motion was itself
frivolous. We deny that motion as well.
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The district court gave this long-lived litigation ample process and
thorough consideration. Its judgment is affirmed.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
Neil M. Gorsuch
Circuit Judge
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