Donald Hollabaugh v. Leroy Cartledge

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 16-6797
DONALD L. HOLLABAUGH,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
LEROY CARTLEDGE, Warden, McCormick Correctional Institution;
SCOTT LEWIS, Associate Warden of Operations, McCormick
Correctional Institution,
Defendants - Appellants,
and
WILLIAM BYERS, Agency Director, South Carolina Department of
Corrections; ROBERT E. WARD, Deputy Director of Operations,
South Carolina Department of Corrections; LIEUTENANT AIKEN,
McCormick Correctional Institution; OFFICER HARRIS,
McCormick Correctional Institution; OFFICERS JANE DOE,
McCormick Correctional Institution, in their individual and
official capacities; OFFICERS JOHN DOE, McCormick
Correctional Institution, in their individual and official
capacities,
Defendants.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
South Carolina, at Beaufort. Bruce H. Hendricks, District
Judge. (9:14-cv-01324-BHH)
Submitted: February 28, 2017 Decided: March 21, 2017
Before NIEMEYER and MOTZ, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior
Circuit Judge.
Dismissed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Steven Michael Pruitt, MCDONALD, PATRICK, POSTON, HEMPHILL &
ROPER, LLC, Greenwood, South Carolina, for Appellants. Cameron
Marshall, CAMERON L. MARSHALL, LLC, Charleston, South Carolina;
V. Brian Bevon, BEVON LAW FIRM LLC, Charleston, South Carolina,
for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
In July 2012, Donald L. Hollabaugh, a South Carolina
inmate, was assaulted by two other inmates. Hollabaugh filed
the underlying 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2012) action alleging that
prison officials displayed deliberate indifference by failing to
protect him and violated his right to substantive due process
under the Fourteenth Amendment. Both parties moved for summary
judgment; Defendants Cartledge and Lewis specifically invoked
the defense of qualified immunity. The district court,
accepting the recommendation of the magistrate judge, denied
both parties’ motions for summary judgment on the deliberate
indifference claim and denied Defendants’ motion for summary
judgment based on qualified immunity. Defendants appeal,
arguing that the district court erred in denying summary
judgment on their qualified immunity defense.
This court may exercise jurisdiction only over final
decisions, 28 U.S.C. § 1291 (2012), and certain interlocutory
and collateral orders. 28 U.S.C. § 1292 (2012); Fed. R. Civ. P.
54(b); Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541
(1949). A final decision is one that “ends the litigation on
the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute
the judgment.” Catlin v. United States, 324 U.S. 229, 233
(1945). Although interlocutory orders generally are not
appealable, an order denying a defendant’s claim of qualified
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immunity is immediately appealable under the collateral order
doctrine “to the extent that it turns on an issue of law.”
Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985); Iko v. Shreve,
535 F.3d 225, 234 (4th Cir. 2008). However, a district court’s
determination that a genuine issue of material fact exists that
precludes summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds is not
immediately appealable. Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 313-20
(1995); Culosi v. Bullock, 596 F.3d 195, 201 (4th Cir. 2010).
Thus, this court has “no jurisdiction over a claim that a
plaintiff has not presented enough evidence to prove that the
plaintiff’s version of the events actually occurred, but [the
court has] jurisdiction over a claim that there was no violation
of clearly established law accepting the facts as the district
court viewed them.” Winfield v. Bass, 106 F.3d 525, 530 (4th
Cir. 1997) (en banc).
In this case, the district court denied qualified immunity
to Defendants at the summary judgment stage finding that there
was a genuine issue of fact as to whether they had direct
knowledge, or created a policy or practice exercised by their
subordinates sufficient to create an inference, that a
substantial risk of harm existed and that they were deliberately
indifferent to that substantial risk of serious harm. Because
the qualified immunity determination in this matter ultimately
turns on presently unresolved questions of fact rather than on
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an evaluation of the legal significance of undisputed facts, we
do not possess jurisdiction over this appeal. Therefore, we
dismiss the appeal. We dispense with oral argument because the
facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the
materials before this court and argument would not aid the
decisional process.
DISMISSED
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