Chavez v. City of Albuquerque

F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
PUBLISH
MAR 29 2005
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
PATRICK FISHER
Clerk
TENTH CIRCUIT

NESTOR CHAVEZ,

Plaintiff - Appellant,

v. No. 03-2195

CITY OF ALBUQUERQUE; GERALD
GALVIN, individually and in his official
capacity as Chief of Police of the City of
Albuquerque; ANDREW LEHOCKEY,
individually and in his offical capacity as
Police Officer of the Albuquerque Police
Department,

Defendants - Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of New Mexico
(D.C. No. CIV-00-307 WJ/LAM)

Dennis W. Montoya, Montoya Law, Inc., Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Plaintiff-
Appellant.

Luis E. Robles, Robles, Rael & Anaya, P.C., Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Defendant-
Appellee Andrew Lehockey (Kathryn Levy, Deputy City Attorney, for Defendant-
Appellee City of Albuquerque, with him on the brief).
Before LUCERO and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges, and BLACKBURN, District
Judge.*

BLACKBURN, District Judge.

Plaintiff-Appellant Nestor Chávez contends that the district court erred in

dismissing his jury verdict as a sanction for perjuring himself during discovery. Finding

no error in that decision, or on any other basis urged on appeal, we affirm.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

At 3:40 a.m., on the morning of February 16, 1998, officer Donald Piatt of the

Albuquerque Police Department discovered Chávez parked alone in his car in a lot at

Bullhead Park, which was closed at that hour. Chávez told Piatt he did not have a

driver’s license or other identification, but identified himself as “Jason Garcia” and said

that his birthday was March 27, 1975. Consulting his on-board computer database, Piatt

discovered a violent gang member alert for a “Lewis Garcia” whose date of birth matched

the one Chávez had given. During this time, Piatt observed that Chávez was sweating

heavily, although the night was cold, and appeared extremely nervous. Piatt called for

backup.

When Officer Gary Barboa arrived, he and Piatt approached the car and ordered

*
The Honorable Robert E. Blackburn, United States District Judge for the District
of Colorado, sitting by designation.

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Chávez to step out. Rather than complying, Chávez locked the car door and attempted to

start the car. Piatt broke out the driver’s side window with his flashlight and sprayed

Chávez with mace. Nevertheless, Chávez was able to start the car and drive off. During

the ensuing chase, Chávez flattened three of the car’s tires after unsuccessfully

negotiating a turn, but continued on. While in pursuit, Piatt and Barboa broadcast a

description of Chávez, his vehicle, and the direction he was headed over their police

radio.

Among the officers who heard these dispatches was Defendant-Appellee Andrew

Lehockey. After Chávez crashed his car through a chain-link fence and drove off across

the Puerto Del Sol golf course, Lehockey was among the officers who responded to set up

a perimeter. Chávez’s car was discovered abandoned at a nearby intersection. A box of

ammunition was found in the car. Eight rounds were missing from the box.

Meanwhile, a local resident called 911 to report that a man matching Chávez’s

description had just broken into her apartment near where the car had been abandoned.

Soon thereafter, two officers spotted a man matching Chávez’s description running south

from the location of the break-in through an open field toward Gibson Boulevard. (Id.,

Vo1. 3 at 309 & Vol. 4 at 465-466.)

Hearing this information broadcast over the police radio, Lehockey began driving

down Gibson Boulevard, where he spotted Chávez running in the eastbound lane of

traffic. He stopped, exited his car with his police service dog, Bart, and gave a loud K-9

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warning.1 When Chávez did not stop, Lehockey released Bart, who bit Chávez on the left

ankle. Chávez removed the dog from his leg as Lehockey approached him with his gun

drawn and ordered him to put his hands in the air. Although Chávez complied, Lehockey

directed Bart to bite him a second time. Bart maintained his hold on Chávez until he

complied with directions to lay prone on the ground and was taken into custody.

Chávez subsequently sued Lehockey and the City of Albuquerque under 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983, claiming use of excessive force to effectuate his arrest. Throughout discovery,

Chávez steadfastly maintained that he was not the suspect police had been chasing. Both

in his sworn answers to interrogatories and in his sworn deposition testimony, Chávez

insisted that he had simply been walking to a friend’s house after an evening playing

bingo when he had encountered Lehockey. Nevertheless, when Chávez testified at trial,

he finally admitted on cross-examination that he, in fact, was the suspect police were

seeking that morning.

The district court took Lehockey’s motion for judgment as a matter of law under

advisement and sent the case to the jury, which returned a verdict in favor of Chávez on

his claim of excessive force and awarded him $1.00 in nominal damages. At the district

court’s urging, Lehockey subsequently submitted his Rule 50 motion in writing, arguing

that the case should be dismissed as a sanction for Chávez’s admitted perjury, or

1
Although he initially claimed that Lehockey released the dog without any
warning, Chávez ultimately admitted that he heard words to the effect of “Freeze!” or
“Don’t move!” (Aplt. App., Vol. 4 at 381.)

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alternately, that Lehockey was entitled to qualified immunity. The district court granted

the motion on the first basis. This appeal followed.

II. APPELLATE JURISDICTION

At oral argument, Chávez’s counsel suggested that we may lack jurisdiction over

the district court’s sanctions order. Although we generally do not consider issues raised

for the first time at oral argument, Durham v. Xerox Corp., 18 F.3d 836, 841 n.4 (10th

Cir.), cert. denied, 115 S.Ct. 80 (1994), we have a continuing obligation to assure

ourselves that appellate jurisdiction exists, Qwest Communications International, Inc. v.

F.C.C., 240 F.3d 886, 891 (10th Cir. 2001). Nevertheless, we find that we have

jurisdiction in this case.

In its order granting Lehockey’s Rule 50 motion, the district court stated that

. . . I agree with Defendant that a new trial is not the
appropriate remedy. However, should my Order dismissing
this case be reversed on possible appeal, I find that Defendant
would be entitled to a new trial, thereby allowing Defendant
an opportunity to conduct a prepared cross-examination of
Plaintiff and expert witnesses instead of being sand-bagged
with Plaintiff’s decision to start telling the truth in the middle
of cross-examination.

(Aplt. App., Vol. 2 at 544.) This conditional ruling is fully contemplated by Rule

50(c)(1), which provides, in relevant part:

If the renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law is
granted, the court shall also rule on the motion for a new trial,
if any, by determining whether it should be granted if the
judgment is thereafter vacated or reversed, and shall specify
the grounds for granting or denying the motion for the new

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 trial. If the motion for a new trial is thus conditionally
granted, the order thereon does not affect the finality of the
judgment.

FED.R.CIV.P. 50(c)(1) (emphasis added). Accordingly, we have jurisdiction to consider

this appeal.

III. LEGAL ANALYSIS

On appeal, Chávez maintains that the district court erred in three respects: (1) by

granting Lehockey’s motion to dismiss the case as a sanction for Chávez’s perjurious

testimony during discovery; (2) by excluding testimony of other excessive force claims

against Lehockey; and (3) by granting the City of Albuquerque’s motion for summary

judgment on his municipal liability claims. We will review these arguments seriatim.

A. DISMISSAL AS A SANCTION FOR PERJURY

“It has long been understood that ‘[c]ertain implied powers must necessarily result

to our Courts of justice from the nature of their institution,’ powers ‘which cannot be

dispensed with in a Court, because they are necessary to the exercise of all others.’"

Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 43, 111 S.Ct. 2123, 2132 115 L.Ed.2d 27 (1991)

(quoting United States v. Hudson, 7 Cranch 32, 34, 3 L.Ed. 259 (1812)); see also Smith

v. Northwest Financial Acceptance, Inc., 129 F.3d 1408, 1419 (10th Cir. 1997). Among

the multifarious manifestations of the courts’ inherent powers is the authority to vacate a

judgment when a fraud has been perpetrated on the court, Chambers, 501 U.S. at 44, 111

S.Ct. at 2132, such as when a party has perjured himself during the discovery process,

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Archibeque v. Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Co., 70 F.3d 1172, 1174 (10th

Cir. 1995). We review such a determination for abuse of discretion. Ashby v. McKenna,

331 F.3d 1148, 1149 (10th Cir. 2003).

Although the district court has discretion to dismiss, it must be exercised with

restraint. Because dismissal is such a harsh sanction, it is appropriate only in cases of

“‘willfulness, bad faith, or [some] fault of petitioner.’” Archibeque, 70 F.3d at 1174

(quoting National Hockey League v. Metropolitan Hockey Club, Inc., 427 U.S. 639,

640, 96 S.Ct. 2778, 2779 , 49 L.Ed.2d 747 (1976)). We have articulated a number of

factors that may inform the district court’s discretion in determining whether dismissal is

an appropriate sanction:

(1) the degree of actual prejudice to the defendant; (2) the
amount of interference with the judicial process; (3) the
culpability of the litigant; (4) whether the court warned the
party in advance that dismissal of the action would be a likely
sanction for noncompliance; and (5) the efficacy of lesser
sanctions.

Ehrenhaus v. Reynolds, 965 F.2d 916, 921 (10th Cir. 1992) (internal citations and

quotation marks omitted). This list is not exhaustive, nor are the factors necessarily

equiponderant. See Archibeque, 70 F.3d at 1174; Ehrenhaus, 965 F.2d at 921. The

district court cited and considered each of the Ehrenhaus factors in its Memorandum

Opinion and Order of August 18, 2003.2 We find its analysis persuasive, and Chávez’s

2
Chávez suggests the district court further erred in not holding an evidentiary
hearing prior to dismissing his case. See Ehrenhaus, 965 F.2d at 921 (noting that “[t]he

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arguments on appeal do not convince us otherwise.

First, Chávez argues that Lehockey was not actually prejudiced by his perjury.

Indeed, he posits that his fallacious testimony actually helped Lehockey’s case by

allowing him to impeach Chávez more effectively. Not only is this argument “somewhat

cavalier,” as characterized by the district court (Aplt. App., Vol 2 at 540), it utterly misses

the point of the qualified immunity doctrine. “[T]he ‘entitlement [to qualified immunity]

is an immunity from suit rather than a mere defense to liability; and like an absolute

immunity, it is effectively lost if a case is erroneously permitted to go to trial.’” National

Commodity and Barter Association v. Archer, 31 F.3d 1521, 1532 n.8 (10th Cir. 1994)

(quoting Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2815, 86 L.Ed.2d 411

(1985)) (second alteration in Archer; emphasis in Mitchell). Forcing a defendant entitled

to invoke the defense to proceed to trial on the basis of a lie fundamentally undermines

this important principle.

Chávez argues next that his conduct did not substantially interfere with the judicial

process. In this regard, he points out that he never lied about the facts of the attack itself,

and maintains that his lies regarding the events leading up to that encounter were not

material. The law is to the contrary. Claims of excessive force are governed by a

court should ordinarily evaluate these factors on the record”). We find no error in this
regard. Not only did Chávez not request such a hearing, but moreover, the district court
already was intimately aware of the issues undergirding the motion. Under such
circumstances, an evidentiary hearing was not required.

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standard of objective reasonableness. Graham v. O’Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395, 109

S.Ct. 1865, 1871, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989). Under this standard, the determination

whether excessive force was used turns on the totality of the circumstances of each

particular case, “including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an

immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting

arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Id. 490 U.S. at 396, 109 S.Ct. at 1872.

Thus, the facts that Chávez was thought to be a violent gang member and possibly armed,

that he fled even after being sprayed with mace, that he led police on a protracted chase

through the city streets even after three of his car’s tires were flattened, that he crashed

through a fence, and that he invaded a nearby apartment just prior to his encounter with

Lehockey were all relevant to the determination whether Lehockey’s actions were

objectively reasonable. Not only was Chávez’s lack of candor about these events

material, it was material to the determination of the central issue in the case.

The next factor the district court considered was Chávez’s culpability in the

fabrication. Chávez attempted to explain himself by claiming that

I was in prison at the time that you took this deposition. I was
under guard. I was in – I didn’t really know how to go about
it right, you know? It was my – I have never really been
involved in a lawsuit, and at the time, I was thinking, well, I
didn’t know if it was going to cause me more problems or
what the whole situation – I was – I didn’t answer the way I
should have but I’m stating the truth today.

(Aplt. App., Vol. 4 at 409.) We fail to see how this self-interested justification

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diminishes Chávez’s culpability even slightly.

With respect to the factor of whether a prior warning was necessary before the case

was dismissed, Chávez admits that no such warning was warranted in these

circumstances. Moreover, because the perjurious testimony was given under oath, an

additional warning would have been superfluous at best. “Once a witness swears to give

truthful answers, there is no requirement to warn him not to commit perjury or,

conversely to direct him to tell the truth. It would render the sanctity of the oath quite

meaningless to require admonition to adhere to it.” See Webb v. Texas, 409 U.S. 95, 97

n.*, 93 S.Ct. 351, 353 n.*, 34 L.Ed.2d 330 (1972) (citation and internal quotation marks

omitted).

Finally, Chávez argues that the district court should have imposed lesser sanctions,

again relying on his contentions that his lies were immaterial and did not prejudice the

defense. These arguments fail along with the insupportable assumptions on which they

are based. Chávez further contends that he had been punished already by the jury’s

failure to award him more than nominal damages.3 The district court considered this

argument, but found that “[t]he fact that Plaintiff may have gained nothing as a result of

3
Chávez maintains also that, despite the district court’s determination that his
counsel was not subject to sanctions under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, the dismissal was a de facto
sanction on counsel because it deprived him of the right to recover attorney’s fees.
However, the jury’s verdict for nominal damages would not have supported an award of
attorney’s fees in any event. See Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 103, 114-15, 113 S.Ct. 566,
574-75, 121 L.Ed.2d 494 (1992).

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his perjury does not mean that he should not be sanctioned for his conduct, particularly

where analysis of the other Ehrenhaus factors calls for the imposition of severe

consequences.” (Aplt. App., Vol. 2 at 544-45.) We find no abuse of discretion in this

conclusion, which is fully concordant with the law. See ABF Freight Systems, Inc. v.

National Labor Relations Board, 510 U.S. 317, 329-30, 114 S.Ct. 835, 842, 127 L.Ed.2d

152 (1994) (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment) (“The principle that a perjurer should

not be rewarded with a judgment – even a judgment otherwise deserved – where there is

discretion to deny it, has a long and sensible tradition in the common law.”)

Accordingly, we find that the district court did not abuse its discretion in

exercising its inherent power to dismiss Chávez’s case as a sanction for perjuring himself

during discovery.

B. EXCLUSION OF EVIDENCE OF OTHER INCIDENTS

Prior to the commencement of trial, Lehockey moved in limine to preclude

evidence or testimony regarding other incidents in which arrestees claimed he used

excessive force by deploying Bart. The admissibility of such evidence is governed by

Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which provides that evidence of other

crimes, acts, or wrongs is not admissible to prove character but may be offered to prove

“motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake

or accident.” FED.R.EVID. 404(b). Such evidence is admissible if four factors are

satisfied: (1) the evidence is offered for a proper purpose; (2) the evidence is relevant; (3)

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the probative value of the evidence is not substantially outweighed by its potential for

unfair prejudice; and (4) the district court provides an appropriate limiting instruction

upon request. See United States v. Brooks, 161 F.3d 1240, 1243 (10th Cir. 1998) (citing

Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 681, 691-92, 108 S.Ct. 1496, 1502, 99 L.Ed.2d

771 (1988)).

The evidence Chávez sought to introduce fails on the first of these factors.4

Although Chávez argues that inquiry into these other incidents should have been

permitted to show absence of mistake or accident, or alternatively, that Lehockey’s use of

Bart constituted a “modus operandi,” none of these alternative bases for introducing

404(b)-type evidence was implicated on the facts presented. There was no claim or

defense suggesting that Lehockey accidentally or mistakenly used the police dog. Indeed,

it seems clear that he made a deliberate, conscious decision to do so. Moreover, proof of

a “modus operandi” is only relevant when there is an issue regarding the defendant’s

identity. See United States v. Oberle, 136 F.3d 1414, 1419 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 119

S.Ct. 197 (1998); United States v. Porter, 881 F.2d 878, 885-86 (10th Cir.), cert. denied,

110 S.Ct. 348 (1989). No such issue was raised in this case.

4
The district court found that such evidence was not relevant under the objective
reasonableness standard of Graham v. O’Connor. This conclusion is consistent with the
decisions of several other federal appellate courts which have considered similar requests.
See, e.g., Gates v. Rivera, 993 F.2d 697, 700 (9th Cir. 1993); Robinson v. City of St.
Charles, Missouri, 972 F.2d 974, 976 (8th Cir. 1992); Greenridge v. Ruffin, 927 F.2d
789, 791-92 (4th Cir. 1991).

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 For these reasons, we find that the district court did not abuse its broad discretion

in precluding the introduction of this evidence. See United States v. Wilson, 107 F.3d

774, 782 (10th Cir. 1997).

C. DISMISSAL OF MUNICIPAL LIABILITY CLAIMS

Lastly, Chávez claims the district court erred in dismissing his claims against the

City of Albuquerque because there were genuine issues of material fact regarding (1) the

constitutionality of the City’s written policy allowing an officer to use a police dog to

apprehend a fleeing felon; (2) the constitutionality of the City’s policy categorically

defining use of a police dog as constituting less force than use of a baton; and (3) whether

the City had a custom of ignoring police dogs’ failures to “guard and bark” in

apprehending suspects. Whatever the merits of these arguments, Chávez failed to raise

them below. Absent extraordinary circumstances not present here, see Hicks v. Gates

Rubber Co., 928 F.2d 966, 970 (10th Cir. 1991), we do not address arguments raised for

the first time on appeal, Tele-Communications, Inc. v. Commissioner of Internal

Revenue, 104 F.3d 1229, 1232 (10th Cir. 1997).

AFFIRMED.

Entered for the Court

Robert E. Blackburn
District Judge

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