Matos Ex Rel. Matos v. Clinton School District

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit

No. 03-1332
03-2142

ALMA MATOS, BY AND THROUGH HER FATHER, JUAN MATOS,
Plaintiff, Appellant,

v.

CLINTON SCHOOL DISTRICT ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.

APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. Nathaniel M. Gorton, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Selya and Howard, Circuit Judges,

and Singal,* District Judge.

David E. Ashworth and Beverly B. Chorbajian for appellant.
Nancy F. Pelletier, with whom Dorothy Varon and Robinson
Donovan, P.C. were on brief, for appellees.

May 11, 2004

*
Of The District of Maine, sitting by designation.
 SELYA, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff-appellant Alma Matos

appeals from the district court's denial of preliminary injunctive

relief. She has filed two appeals, the second of which is wholly

derivative of the first.1 We treat the matter, as have the

parties, as a single appeal, exercising appellate jurisdiction

under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1). After careful perscrutation of the

record, we find that the appeal is largely moot. What remains

justiciable does not warrant disturbing the district court's order.

Because this appeal turns principally on its procedural

posture, we offer only a decurtate account of the facts.

The plaintiff matriculated at Clinton High School. By

the fall of 2002, she had reached her senior year. She ranked near

the top of her class and was a member of the National Honor Society

(NHS). On December 18, 2002, the plaintiff's academic career took

a turn for the bizarre. We paraphrase her account of the relevant

events.

During a journalism class, the plaintiff began using a

school computer to complete an assignment. She claims to have

lapsed into some private thoughts (which, as matters turned out,

involved an alleged sexual dalliance between her teacher and the

principal of the high school). She typed those thoughts into the

1
After the district court denied the plaintiff's motion for a
preliminary injunction, she appealed. She then moved for a stay
and filed a second notice of appeal upon the denial of that motion.

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computer, printed out her handiwork, returned to her seat, and

placed what she had written among her personal papers.

The teacher became suspicious and demanded to see the

document. When the plaintiff refused, the teacher resorted to

self-help. Before she could read the paper, however, the plaintiff

snatched it from her hand. Finding this behavior intolerable, the

teacher escorted the plaintiff to the principal's office. The

principal read the document, deemed it offensive, and summoned the

plaintiff's mother to the school for a discussion. Presumably

because he himself was implicated, the principal advised the

plaintiff's mother that he would refer the matter to the vice-

principal. By letter dated December 30, 2002, the vice-principal

suspended the plaintiff from school for ten days. The suspension

letter, addressed to the plaintiff's parents, attributed her

suspension to "[p]rofanity, inappropriate use of a computer and

defamation of character."

Hot on the heels of this suspension, the plaintiff sued

the Clinton School District and a gallimaufry of individual

defendants (including the principal, the vice-principal, and the

teacher). Her complaint invoked 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and asserted,

inter alia, claims that the defendants had (i) deprived her of

procedural due process incident to the suspension, (ii) abridged

her right of free expression, (iii) invaded her right of privacy,

and (iv) conducted an unlawful search and seizure. The complaint

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prayed for an amalgam of relief, including a temporary restraining

order (TRO) and a preliminary injunction.

The district court granted a TRO ex parte. A few weeks

later, the court heard the matter on the plaintiff's motion for a

preliminary injunction. That motion requested five strains of

preliminary injunctive relief: (i) an order allowing the plaintiff

to return to school immediately; (ii) a mandatory injunction

requiring the defendants to expunge any reference to the incident

from the plaintiff's high-school records "until Defendants have

complied with the due process requirements of state law and the

Clinton High School Student Handbook regarding student

suspensions"; (iii) an order enjoining the defendants from

notifying colleges about the suspension; (iv) an order prohibiting

the defendants from altering the contents of the computer on which

the plaintiff had been working at the time of the incident; and (v)

an order barring the defendants from taking any adverse action with

respect to the plaintiff's status as an NHS member.

On February 11, 2003, the district court filed a

thoughtful rescript dissolving the TRO and denying the motion for

preliminary injunction in its entirety. Matos v. Clinton Sch.

Dist., Civ. No. 03-40010, slip op. (D. Mass. Feb. 11, 2003)

(unpublished). This proceeding ensued.

We need not tarry. It is apodictic that a federal

appellate court may only exercise jurisdiction over actual cases or

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controversies. U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 1. The case-or-

controversy requirement applies independently to the underlying

action and to any appeal arising therefrom. See, e.g., Roe v.

Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 125 (1973) (explaining that "an actual

controversy must exist at stages of appellate . . . review, and not

simply at the date the action is initiated"); Thomas R.W. v. Mass.

Dep't of Educ., 130 F.3d 477, 479 (1st Cir. 1997) (same). As to

the latter, a cognizable case or controversy must exist not merely

at the time an appeal is taken, but at all subsequent stages of

appellate review. See County Motors, Inc. v. Gen. Motors Corp.,

278 F.3d 40, 43 (1st Cir. 2002); Oakville Dev. Corp. v. FDIC, 986

F.2d 611, 613 (1st Cir. 1993). If events occur following the

institution of an appeal that make it impossible for the appellate

court to provide effective relief, the case or controversy is no

longer justiciable. See Newspaper Guild of Salem v. Ottaway

Newspapers, Inc., 79 F.3d 1273, 1277 (1st Cir. 1996); CMM Cable

Rep., Inc. v. Ocean Coast Props., Inc., 48 F.3d 618, 621 (1st Cir.

1995).

This is an interlocutory appeal. It is brought for the

sole purpose of testing whether the district court abused its

discretion or otherwise erred in denying certain preliminary

injunctive relief. The aim of a preliminary injunction "is to

preserve the status quo, freezing an existing situation so as to

permit the trial court, upon full adjudication of the case's

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merits, more effectively to remedy discerned wrongs." CMM Cable

Rep., 48 F.3d at 620. Allowing an immediate appeal of an order

granting or denying a preliminary injunction is an exception to the

final judgment rule. The exception arises out of a desire to

prevent irreparable harm to parties "who, otherwise, might triumph

at trial but be left holding an empty bag." Id. When this harm-

preventing function cannot be served by the successful prosecution

of an interlocutory appeal from the grant or denial of preliminary

injunctive relief, then the justiciability of the appeal itself is,

to that extent, called into question. Id. at 621.

It is against this backdrop that we turn to the five

strains of interim injunctive relief originally requested by the

plaintiff. The posture of the case has changed in significant ways

since the plaintiff initially made her motion for a preliminary

injunction: to name two, she has served her ten-day suspension and

has graduated from Clinton High School. Thus, her first prayer —

that a preliminary injunction issue to compel the defendants to

forgo the suspension and reinstate her immediately — no longer

presents a live controversy. This court lacks the power to turn

back the clock and, accordingly, this aspect of the appeal is moot.

Similarly, the plaintiff's third prayer — that the

defendants be enjoined pendente lite from notifying colleges about

her suspension — is by the boards. The plaintiff has completed the

college application process and now attends a college of her

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choice. Thus, this aspect of the appeal also has been rendered

moot by the passage of time.

So too the plaintiff's fifth prayer for preliminary

injunctive relief. The NHS is a high-school honor society, and the

plaintiff had sought to have the defendants preliminarily enjoined

from taking any steps that might adversely affect her status as a

member of that organization. However, the NHS has held a hearing

and determined not to revoke the plaintiff's membership. The

plaintiff is no longer a high-school student and, therefore, her

NHS membership is in no further jeopardy. Under the circumstances,

the fifth prayer for preliminary injunctive relief has become moot.

The plaintiff suggests that her other prayers for relief

suffice to keep her appeal buoyant. These prayers collectively

encompass her requests for expungement of her high-school record

and for preservation of the computer. As now framed,2 neither

matter is moot in the technical sense. See, e.g., Coady Corp. v.

Toyota Motor Distribs., Inc., 361 F.3d 50, 61-62 (1st Cir. 2004).

The plaintiff retains a continuing interest both in the contents of

her high-school record (which may again become relevant as she

2
The plaintiff's second prayer asked only that the defendants
be ordered to purge the records "until Defendants have complied
with the due process requirements of state law and the Clinton High
School Student Handbook regarding student suspensions." Because
the suspension has been served and the plaintiff has graduated,
that prayer, strictly speaking, also is moot. The plaintiff,
however, now argues that she really wanted a broader form of
expungement pendente lite. Rather than quibble over doctrines such
as waiver and forfeiture, we meet this argument head-on.

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looks ahead to graduate school or real-world employment) and in

ensuring that the computer is not corrupted. But even though

intervening events have not destroyed our ability to grant the

requested relief on an interim basis, these surviving prayers are

too asthenic to support a preliminary injunction. We explain

briefly.

The preliminary injunction standard is familiar. Under

it, a district court typically must consider four elements: the

probability of the movant's success on the merits, the prospect of

irreparable harm absent the injunction, the balance of the relevant

equities (focusing upon the hardship to the movant if an injunction

does not issue as contrasted with the hardship to the nonmovant if

it does), and the effect of the court's action on the public

interest. Ross-Simons of Warwick, Inc. v. Baccarat, Inc., 102 F.3d

12, 15 (1st Cir. 1996); Narragansett Indian Tribe v. Guilbert, 934

F.2d 4, 5 (1st Cir. 1991). We need not discuss three of these

elements. In most cases — and this case is no exception —

irreparable harm is a necessary threshold showing for awarding

preliminary injunctive relief. See, e.g., Phillips v. Marsh, 687

F.2d 620, 622 (2d Cir. 1982). Inasmuch as the plaintiff has failed

to demonstrate a realistic prospect of irreparable harm, she has

not crossed that threshold.

To the extent that the plaintiff focuses on her fourth

prayer for preliminary injunctive relief, she simply cannot show

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any real danger of harm. She claims that she remains fearful that

the defendants, if not enjoined, may "tamper[] with the hard drive

of the computer." Appellant's Reply Br. at 3. This fear is

objectively unreasonable. The defendants have had possession of

the computer since the incident occurred. For most of that time —

well over fourteen months, as of this writing — they have not been

under any court order to preserve its hard drive. If the

defendants have not tampered with the computer during the lengthy

interval that elapsed after the lifting of the TRO, there is no

plausible basis for speculating that such tampering will occur

before the case is tried.

A preliminary injunction should not issue except to

prevent a real threat of harm. Ross-Simons, 102 F.3d at 19; 11A

Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller, & Mary Kay Kane, Federal

Practice & Procedure § 2948.1, at 153-54 (2d ed. 1995). A threat

that is either unlikely to materialize or purely theoretical will

not do. Ross-Simons, 102 F.3d at 19; Pub. Serv. Co. v. Town of W.

Newbury, 835 F.2d 380, 382 (1st Cir. 1987). An imminent threat

that evidence will be lost is one thing — but a claimed threat,

unaccompanied by any showing of reasonable grounds for believing

that the evidence in question is imperilled, is insufficient to

warrant the entry of a prophylactic injunction. Humble Oil & Ref.

Co. v. Harang, 262 F. Supp. 39, 42-43 (E.D. La. 1966). Preliminary

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injunctions are strong medicine, and they should not issue merely

to calm the imaginings of the movant.3

The plaintiff's reliance on her second prayer for

preliminary injunctive relief is no more rewarding. That prayer

entails her demand that her high-school records be purged

temporarily of any reference to the incident and/or the suspension.

She asserts that this information, if allowed to stand in the

institution's records, could harm her in the future should she

apply to graduate schools or require any kind of security

clearance.

We agree that this issue, overall, remains a matter of

concern: the plaintiff's high-school records are something in

which she has a continuing interest. Nevertheless, that is not

tantamount to saying that she is entitled to protect that interest

by means of a preliminary injunction. The claim for expungement

lacks immediacy; the record reflects no reason why that relief, if

due, cannot await a full-dress trial. If a case can be adjudicated

on the merits before the harm complained of will occur, there is no

sufficient justification for preliminary injunctive relief.

3
If more were needed — and we doubt that it is — tampering
with the computer would leave the defendants open to a charge of
spoliation of evidence. See, e.g., Blinzler v. Marriot Int'l,
Inc., 81 F.3d 1148, 1158 (1st Cir. 1996); Nation-Wide Check Corp.
v. Forest Hills Distribs., Inc., 692 F.2d 214, 217 (1st Cir. 1982).
Given that the main case remains to be tried and that the plaintiff
is seeking substantial damages, the presence of that deterrent
further reduces any risk of tampering.

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Holiday Inns of Am., Inc. v. B & B Corp., 409 F.2d 614, 618 (3d

Cir. 1969); 11A Wright, Miller, & Kane, supra § 2948.1, at 149.

That rule applies here. The plaintiff is more than three

years away from college graduation. She has alleged no short-term

intention of applying for either admission to a graduate school or

employment requiring a security clearance. Absent something that

indicates a need for immediate relief, a plaintiff's request for a

preliminary injunction ordinarily ought to be rejected. See, e.g.,

Pub. Serv. Co., 835 F.2d at 382-83; Phillips, 687 F.2d at 622. So

it is here.

We need go no further. While the plaintiff's complaint

raises a number of claims that remain live, the passage of time and

the occurrence of a series of easily predictable events have

minimized any need for a preliminary injunction. Her motion for

such relief is, for the most part, moot. What little of it remains

justiciable presents no adequate basis for a finding of irreparable

harm.4 For these reasons, we summarily reject her appeal.

Affirmed.

4
Should circumstances again change prior to trial so as to
present a cognizable danger of irreparable harm, the plaintiff
remains free to renew her motion for a preliminary injunction. See
Holiday Inns of Am., 409 F.2d at 618-19.

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