Dupree v. Younger

PRELIMINARY PRINT
Volume 598 U. S. Part 2
Pages 729–738
OFFICIAL REPORTS
OF
THE SUPREME COURT
May 25, 2023
Page Proof Pending Publication
REBECCA A. WOMELDORF
reporter of decisions
NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before
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OCTOBER TERM, 2022 729
Syllabus
DUPREE v. YOUNGER
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the fourth circuit
No. 22–210. Argued April 24, 2023—Decided May 25, 2023
Respondent Kevin Younger claims that during his pretrial detention in a
Maryland state prison, petitioner Neil Dupree, then a correctional off-
cer lieutenant, ordered three prison guards to attack him. Younger
sued Dupree for damages under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, alleging excessive
use of force. Prior to trial, Dupree moved for summary judgment
under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(a), arguing that Younger had
failed to exhaust administrative remedies as required by law. Rule 56
requires a district court to enter judgment on a claim or defense if there
is “no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled
to judgment as a matter of law.” The District Court denied the motion,
fnding no dispute that the Maryland prison system had internally inves-
tigated Younger's assault, and concluding that this inquiry satisfed
Younger's exhaustion obligation. At trial, Dupree did not present evi-
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dence relating to his exhaustion defense. The jury found Dupree and
four codefendants liable and awarded Younger $700,000 in damages.
Dupree did not fle a post-trial motion under Rule 50(b), which allows a
disappointed party to fle a renewed motion for judgment as a matter
of law. He appealed a single issue to the Fourth Circuit: the District
Court's rejection of his exhaustion defense. The Fourth Circuit—
bound by its precedent which holds that any claim or defense rejected
at summary judgment is not preserved for appellate review unless it
was renewed in a post-trial motion—dismissed the appeal.
Held: A post-trial motion under Rule 50 is not required to preserve for
appellate review a purely legal issue resolved at summary judgment.
In Ortiz v. Jordan, the Court held that an order denying summary judg-
ment on suffciency-of-the-evidence grounds is not appealable after trial.
562 U. S. 180, 184. Because the factual record developed at trial “super-
sedes the record existing at the time of the summary-judgment motion,”
ibid., it follows that a party must raise a suffciency claim in a post-trial
motion in order to preserve it for appeal, id., at 191–192. That motion
allows the district court to take frst crack at the question that the
appellate court will ultimately face: Was there suffcient evidence in the
trial record to support the jury's verdict?
The same is not true for pure questions of law resolved in an order
denying summary judgment. These conclusions are not “supersede[d]”
730 DUPREE v. YOUNGER
Syllabus
by later developments in the litigation, id., at 184, and so such rulings
merge into the fnal judgment, at which point they are reviewable on
appeal, Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., 517 U. S. 706, 712. The re-
viewing court does not beneft from having a district court reexamine a
purely legal pretrial ruling after trial, because nothing at trial will have
given the district court any reason to question its prior analysis.
Younger's counterarguments are unpersuasive. Ortiz does not hold,
as Younger contends, that any order denying summary judgment—
whether decided on legal or factual grounds—is unreviewable under 28
U. S. C. § 1291. While an interlocutory order denying summary judg-
ment is typically not immediately appealable, § 1291 does not insulate
interlocutory orders from appellate scrutiny, but rather delays their re-
view until fnal judgment. And while Younger insists there should be
no two-track system of summary judgment, in which factual and legal
claims follow different routes, nothing in Rule 56 supports his argument
for uniformity. On the contrary, ftting the preservation rule to the
rationale (factual or legal) underlying the summary-judgment order is
consistent with the text of Rule 56. It also makes sense: Factual devel-
opment at trial will not change the district court's pretrial answer to a
purely legal question, so a post-trial motion requirement would amount
to an empty exercise. Finally, while Younger predicts that a separate
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preservation rule for legal issues will prove unworkable because the
line between factual and legal questions can be “vexing” for courts and
litigants, Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U. S. 273, 288, experience
demonstrates that Younger overstates the need for a bright-line rule.
“Courts of appeals have long found it possible to separate factual from
legal matters.” Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 574
U. S. 318, 328. Here, the Court does not decide whether the issue
Dupree raised on appeal is purely legal, and remands for the Fourth
Circuit to evaluate that question in the frst instance. Pp. 733–738.
Vacated and remanded.
Barrett, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
Andrew T. Tutt argued the cause for petitioner. With him
on the briefs were R. Stanton Jones, Sean A. Mirski, Dana
Or, and Aaron Bowling.
Amy Mason Saharia argued the cause for respondent.
With her on the brief were Lisa S. Blatt, A. Joshua Podoll,
and Allen E. Honick.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the DRI Center
for Law and Public Policy by Matthew T. Nelson and Charles R. Quigg;
and for Law Professors by Steffen N. Johnson and Conor Tucker.
Cite as: 598 U. S. 729 (2023) 731
Opinion of the Court
Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court.
In Ortiz v. Jordan, we held that an order denying sum-
mary judgment on suffciency-of-the-evidence grounds is not
reviewable on appeal after a trial. 562 U. S. 180 (2011).
Thus, a party who wants to preserve a suffciency challenge
for review on appeal must raise it anew in a post-trial mo-
tion. The question presented in this case is whether this
preservation requirement extends to a purely legal issue re-
solved at summary judgment. The answer is no.
I
A
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure empower district
courts to direct the entry of judgment before, during, or
after trial. Before trial, the defendant can fle a motion to
dismiss the complaint based on certain defenses, such as lack
of jurisdiction or failure to state a claim upon which relief
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can be granted. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b). If the district
court denies that motion (or any other Rule 12 motion), the
case advances to discovery for the parties to marshal evi-
dence supporting their claims and defenses. During or after
that process, either party can move for summary judgment
under Rule 56, which requires a district court to enter judg-
ment on a claim or defense if there is “no genuine dispute as
to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment
as a matter of law.” Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 56(a).
If the plaintiff's claims survive summary judgment, the
case proceeds to trial. After the presentation of evidence,
but before the case is submitted to the jury, Rule 50(a)
authorizes either party to move for judgment as a matter
of law.1 This standard largely “mirrors” the summary-
judgment standard, the difference being that district courts
evaluate Rule 50(a) motions in light of the trial record rather
1
If the parties waive their rights to a jury or seek relief that does not
entitle them to a jury, the district court will hold a bench trial, which is
governed by Rule 52.
732 DUPREE v. YOUNGER
Opinion of the Court
than the discovery record. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc.,
477 U. S. 242, 250–251 (1986).
If the district court does not grant the motion, then the
jury will render a verdict. After the verdict, Rule 50(b)
permits a disappointed party to fle a renewed motion for
judgment as a matter of law (which may also include a re-
quest for a new trial under Rule 59). The next step for a
party who fails to obtain post-trial relief is an appeal.
B
While Kevin Younger was being held as a pretrial detainee
in a Maryland state prison, three corrections offcers as-
saulted him. Younger believed that Neil Dupree, a former
lieutenant in the prison, had ordered the attack. He sued
Dupree and other prison offcials for damages under 42
U. S. C. § 1983, alleging that they had used excessive force in
violation of his Fourteenth Amendment due process rights.
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Dupree moved for summary judg ment, arguing that
Younger had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies
as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 42 U. S. C.
§ 1997e(a). The District Court denied the motion. It noted
factual disagreements between the parties about whether
Younger had adhered to Maryland's Administrative Remedy
Procedure but concluded that it “need not resolve [those] dis-
putes.” Younger v. Green, Civ. No. 16–3269 (D Md., Dec. 19,
2019), App. to Pet. for Cert. 42a. Instead, the court ob-
served that there was “no dispute” that the Maryland prison
system had internally investigated Younger's assault. Ibid.
And it held that this inquiry satisfed Younger's exhaustion
obligation.
The case then proceeded to a jury trial. Dupree did not
present any evidence relating to his exhaustion defense, nor
did he invoke exhaustion in his Rule 50(a) motion, which the
District Court denied. The jury found Dupree and four of
his codefendants liable and awarded Younger $700,000 in dam-
ages. Dupree did not fle a post-trial motion under Rule 50(b).
Cite as: 598 U. S. 729 (2023) 733
Opinion of the Court
Dupree appealed to the Fourth Circuit. He sought review
of a single issue: the District Court's rejection of his exhaus-
tion defense at summary judgment. Unfortunately for
Dupree, the appeal was over before it began. Fourth Cir-
cuit precedent maintains that a claim or defense rejected at
summary judgment is not preserved for appellate review un-
less it was renewed in a post-trial motion—even when the
issue is a purely legal one. Varghese v. Honeywell Int'l,
Inc., 424 F. 3d 411, 422–423 (2005). Bound by this prece-
dent, the panel dismissed the appeal.
The Fourth Circuit's decision further cemented a confict
among the Courts of Appeals over whether a purely legal
challenge resolved at summary judgment must be renewed
in a post-trial motion in order to preserve that challenge
for appellate review. We granted certiorari to resolve the
disagreement.2 598 U. S. ––– (2023).
II
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The jurisdiction of the Courts of Appeals under 28 U. S. C.
§ 1291 is limited to “appeals from . . . fnal decisions of the
2
Compare Rothstein v. Carriere, 373 F. 3d 275, 284 (CA2 2004) (post-
trial motion not required to preserve claims of purely legal error); Frank
C. Pollara Group, LLC v. Ocean View Inv. Holding, LLC, 784 F. 3d 177,
187 (CA3 2015) (same); In re AmTrust Financial Corp., 694 F. 3d 741,
750–751 (CA6 2012) (same); Chemetall GMBH v. ZR Energy, Inc., 320
F. 3d 714, 719–720 (CA7 2003) (same); Banuelos v. Construction Laborers'
Trust Funds for Southern Cal., 382 F. 3d 897, 902–903 (CA9 2004) (same);
Wolfgang v. Mid-America Motorsports, Inc., 111 F. 3d 1515, 1521 (CA10
1997) (same); Feld v. Feld, 688 F. 3d 779, 783 (CADC 2012) (same), with Ji
v. Bose Corp., 626 F. 3d 116, 127–128 (CA1 2010) (post-trial motion required
to preserve claims of pure legal error); Varghese v. Honeywell Int'l, Inc.,
424 F. 3d 411, 422–423 (CA4 2005) (same); Feld Motor Sports, Inc. v. Trax-
xas, L. P., 861 F. 3d 591, 596 (CA5 2017) (same); American Builders Ins.
Co. v. Southern-Owners Ins. Co., 56 F. 4th 938, 950 (CA11 2023) (same);
see also New York Marine & Gen. Ins. Co. v. Continental Cement Co., 761
F. 3d 830, 838–839 (CA8 2014) (post-trial motion not required to preserve
“preliminary” legal issues).
734 DUPREE v. YOUNGER
Opinion of the Court
district courts.” Interlocutory orders—those that do not
dispose of the whole case, like denials of summary judg-
ment—are typically not immediately appealable under
§ 1291.3 Instead, the “general rule is that ``a party is entitled
to a single appeal, to be deferred until fnal judgment has
been entered, in which claims of district court error at any
stage of the litigation may be ventilated.' ” Quackenbush v.
Allstate Ins. Co., 517 U. S. 706, 712 (1996); see also 15A
C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Pro-
cedure § 3905.1 (3d ed. 2022) (generally, “an appeal from fnal
judgment opens the record and permits review of all rulings
that led up to the judgment”).
Some interlocutory district-court rulings, however, are un-
reviewable after fnal judgment because they are overcome
by later developments in the litigation. As Ortiz explains,
one such ruling is the denial of summary judgment on
suffciency-of-the-evidence grounds. 562 U. S., at 184. Fac-
tual challenges depend on, well, the facts, which the parties
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develop and clarify as the case progresses from summary
judgment to a jury verdict. Thus, “[o]nce the case proceeds
to trial, the full record developed in court supersedes the
record existing at the time of the summary-judgment mo-
tion.” Ibid. So after trial, a district court's assessment of
the facts based on the summary-judgment record becomes
“ancient history and [is] not subject to appeal.” Empress
Casino Joliet Corp. v. Balmoral Racing Club, Inc., 831 F. 3d
815, 823–824 (CA7 2016). Fact-dependent rulings must be
appraised in light of the complete trial record.
It follows, Ortiz holds, that a party must raise a
suffciency-of-the-evidence claim in a post-trial motion to
preserve it for review on appeal. 562 U. S., at 191–192.
Appellate review, by its nature, requires a lower court deci-
sion to review. Freytag v. Commissioner, 501 U. S. 868, 895
3
The collateral-order doctrine recognizes exceptions to this rule. For
instance, an interlocutory order denying qualifed immunity is sometimes
immediately appealable. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511, 530 (1985).
Cite as: 598 U. S. 729 (2023) 735
Opinion of the Court
(1991) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judg-
ment) (the “very word ``review' presupposes that a litigant's
arguments have been raised and considered in the tribunal
of frst instance”). This is especially important for factual
challenges based on the trial record, which “cal[l] for the
judgment in the frst instance of the judge who saw and
heard the witnesses and has the feel of the case which no
appellate printed transcript can impart.” Cone v. West Vir-
ginia Pulp & Paper Co., 330 U. S. 212, 216 (1947). The fling
of a post-trial motion under Rule 50 allows the district court
to take frst crack at the question that the appellate court
will ultimately face: Was there suffcient evidence in the trial
record to support the jury's verdict? Absent such a motion,
“an appellate court is ``powerless' to review the suffciency of
the evidence after trial.” Ortiz, 562 U. S., at 189 (quoting
Unitherm Food Systems, Inc. v. Swift-Eckrich, Inc., 546
U. S. 394, 405 (2006)).
B
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Younger urges us to extend Ortiz's holding to cover pure
questions of law resolved in an order denying summary judg-
ment. We decline the invitation.
While factual issues addressed in summary-judgment de-
nials are unreviewable on appeal, the same is not true of
purely legal issues—that is, issues that can be resolved with-
out reference to any disputed facts. Trials wholly supplant
pretrial factual rulings, but they leave pretrial legal rulings
undisturbed. The point of a trial, after all, is not to hash
out the law. Because a district court's purely legal conclu-
sions at summary judgment are not “supersede[d]” by later
developments in the litigation, Ortiz, 562 U. S., at 184, these
rulings follow the “general rule” and merge into the fnal
judgment, at which point they are reviewable on appeal,
Quackenbush, 517 U. S., at 712.
That difference explains why a summary-judgment motion
is suffcient to preserve legal but not factual claims. As
Ortiz explains, an appellate court's review of factual chal-
736 DUPREE v. YOUNGER
Opinion of the Court
lenges after a trial is rooted in the complete trial record,
which means that a district court's factual rulings based on
the obsolete summary-judgment record are useless. A dis-
trict court's resolution of a pure question of law, by contrast,
is unaffected by future developments in the case. From the
reviewing court's perspective, there is no beneft to having a
district court reexamine a purely legal issue after trial, be-
cause nothing at trial will have given the district court any
reason to question its prior analysis. We therefore hold that
a post-trial motion under Rule 50 is not required to preserve
for appellate review a purely legal issue resolved at sum-
mary judgment.
C
Younger's counterarguments do not persuade us other-
wise. First, he argues that under Ortiz, an order denying
summary judgment is not a “fnal decision” under § 1291 and
cannot be appealed, regardless of whether the motion was
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decided on legal or factual grounds. We agree that a denial
of summary judgment is “simply a step along the route to
fnal judgment,” and so is typically not immediately review-
able on appeal. Ortiz, 562 U. S., at 184. But § 1291 does
not insulate interlocutory orders from appellate scrutiny; it
simply delays review until fnal judgment. Richardson-
Merrell Inc. v. Koller, 472 U. S. 424, 430 (1985) (noting that
some errors in interlocutory orders “go uncorrected until the
appeal of a fnal judgment”). Indeed, the Ortiz Court ex-
pressly declined to address whether summary-judgment de-
nials on purely legal issues are reviewable. 562 U. S., at 190.
That caveat would have made little sense had the Court au-
thoritatively decided that all summary-judgment denials are
meaningless passthroughs that appellate courts should
ignore.
Next, Younger complains that Dupree's rule creates a two-
track system of summary judgment, in which factual and
legal claims follow different routes. Summary judgment is
summary judgment, Younger insists, so the claims should all
Cite as: 598 U. S. 729 (2023) 737
Opinion of the Court
travel the same line. But nothing in Rule 56 demands such
uniformity. On the contrary, the Rule provides that sum-
mary judgment is appropriate when “the movant shows that
there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the
movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed.
Rule Civ. Proc. 56(a) (emphasis added). Rule 56 thus con-
templates that the court will sometimes deny the motion be-
cause the facts are genuinely in dispute and other times
because the law does not support the movant's position.
Fitting the preservation rule to the court's rationale (factual
or legal) is therefore consistent with the text.
It also makes sense. Because a purely legal question is,
by defnition, one whose answer is independent of disputed
facts, factual development at trial will not change the district
court's answer. (Granted, the district court might back-
track, but if the question is purely legal, that is because of
law books, not trial exhibits.) So what would a repeat-
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motion requirement for legal questions typically amount to?
For litigants, a copy and paste of summary-judgment mo-
tions into post-trial format. For district courts, the tedium
of saying no twice. There is no reason to force litigants and
district courts to undertake that empty exercise.
Rule 56 aside, Younger insists that Rule 50 supports him.
Under this Rule, a district court can grant judgment as a
matter of law if it fnds that “a reasonable jury would not
have a legally suffcient evidentiary basis to fnd for the
party on that issue.” Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 50(a), (b) (em-
phasis added). Therefore, Younger says, a Rule 50 motion
is an appropriate vehicle for raising purely legal issues once
a case proceeds to trial. Maybe so, but this argument is
beside the point: Even if a party can raise legal issues in a
Rule 50 motion, nothing in the Rule requires her to do so.
Finally, Younger predicts that a separate preservation
rule for legal issues will prove unworkable because the line
between factual and legal questions can be “vexing” for
courts and litigants. Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U. S.
738 DUPREE v. YOUNGER
Opinion of the Court
273, 288 (1982). That's a fair concern, and it would not be
surprising if “prudent counsel . . . make sure to renew their
arguments in a Rule 50 motion” out of an abundance of cau-
tion. Feld v. Feld, 688 F. 3d 779, 783 (CADC 2012). But
Younger overstates the need for a bright-line rule in this
area. “Courts of appeals have long found it possible to sepa-
rate factual from legal matters.” Teva Pharmaceuticals
USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 574 U. S. 318, 328 (2015). Though
there will be edge cases, the experience of the majority of
circuits demonstrates that the Courts of Appeals are up to
the task. See n. 2, supra. And for all the virtues of bright-
line rules, Younger's would come at a steep cost: the loss of
appellate review for unwary litigants who think it futile to
relitigate an already-rejected legal argument.
III
The Fourth Circuit was wrong to hold that purely legal
issues resolved at summary judgment must be renewed in
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a post-trial motion. We need not decide whether the issue
Dupree raised on appeal is purely legal—the Court of Ap-
peals may evaluate that and any other properly preserved
arguments in the frst instance. We therefore vacate the
judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for
further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Reporter’s Note
The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of
the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and
who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was
argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may
include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant
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punctuation. The following additional edits were made:
p. 731, line 3, “appealable” is changed to “reviewable on appeal”
p. 731, line 4, “review on” is inserted after “for”
p. 733, line 1, the frst sentence of the paragraph is deleted and replaced
with: “Dupree appealed to the Fourth Circuit. He sought review of a
single issue: the District Court's rejection of his exhaustion defense at
summary judgment.”
p. 734, in the last sentence of the full paragraph, “appeals” is changed
to “rulings”
p. 734, line 31, “review on” is inserted before “appeal.”
p. 736, lines 19–20, “appealable” is changed to “reviewable on appeal”