FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
April 1, 2008
PUBLISH Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT
STUART L. STEIN; THE STEIN
LAW FIRM, a professional law
corporation d/b/a The Stein Law Firm,
Plaintiffs - Appellants,
v. No. 06-2188
THE DISCIPLINARY BOARD, OF
THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW
MEXICO; RICHARD J. PARMLEY,
JR, Chair; JAMES F. BECKLEY;
PATRICK A. CASEY; FRANKIE D.
CLEMONS; ROGER L. COPPLE;
BRUCE HERR; MICHAEL H HOSES;
ROBERT S MURRAY; MIKE G
PAULOWSKY; WILLIAM G.W.
SHOOBRIDGE; SASHA SIEMEL;
ELIZABETH E. WHITEFIELD, all
members of the disciplinary board;
Honorable PETRA MAES, Honorable
PAMELA B. MINZNER, Honorable
PATRICIO M SERNA, Honorable
RICHARD C. BOSSON, Honorable
EDWARD L. CHAVEZ, The Chief
Justice and Justices of the Supreme
Court of New Mexico; VIRGINIA L.
FERRARA; SALLY SCOTT-
MULLINS; SARAH KARNI,
Disciplinary Counsel & Assistant
Disciplinary Counsel,
Defendants - Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW MEXICO
(D.C. NO. CIV-04-840-JB/DJS)
Stuart L. Stein, The Stein Law Firm, Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Plaintiffs -
Appellants.
Jerry A. Walz, Walz & Associates, Cedar Crest, New Mexico, for Defendants -
Appellees.
Before LUCERO, HARTZ, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.
HARTZ, Circuit Judge.
This is the latest episode in the battle between attorney Stuart Stein and the
Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of New Mexico (the Board). Mr. Stein
and the Stein Law Firm (Plaintiffs) have apparently won a long struggle over the
application of state disciplinary rules to their advertising, but Mr. Stein has lost a
separate disciplinary matter regarding his representation of a client. Now before
us is the appeal from dismissal of a civil suit filed by Plaintiffs in the United
States District Court for the District of New Mexico, a suit that arose from both
sets of proceedings. Plaintiffs’ claims in the suit expanded considerably over
time. This appeal concerns only certain claims against the Board’s Chief
Disciplinary Counsel, Virginia Ferrara; two Deputy Assistant Disciplinary
Counsel, Sally Scott-Mullins and Sarah Karni; and the New Mexico Supreme
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Court itself. These claims allege that Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights were
violated (1) by Ms. Ferrara, when she (a) did not serve them with a copy of the
opinion by a Board hearing committee in the advertising matter that it could not
issue a declaratory judgment, (b) provided the Supreme Court with a copy of the
hearing committee’s opinion, and (c) requested the Supreme Court to appoint a
special review committee to review the opinion; (2) by Ms. Ferrara, Ms. Scott-
Mullins, and Ms. Karni in pursuing disciplinary charges regarding Mr. Stein’s
representation of a former client when they had inadequately investigated the
allegations; and (3) by the Supreme Court when it issued a show-cause order and
later rejected the hearing committee’s opinion on declaratory judgments. The
district court dismissed all the claims on the grounds of absolute immunity. We
affirm the dismissal. We hold that Ms. Ferrara’s actions in the advertising matter
did not infringe any constitutionally protected interest of Plaintiffs and that all
other actions of the defendants were absolutely privileged.
I. BACKGROUND
The events leading to Plaintiffs’ current litigation began in June 2002 when
the Board threatened Mr. Stein with disciplinary action if he did not modify his
legal advertisements to comport with the New Mexico Rules of Professional
Conduct. Mr. Stein protested that the advertising restrictions were
unconstitutional. Plaintiffs claim that Mr. Stein informed the Board’s disciplinary
counsel that the Legal Advertising Committee was applying the rules in an
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unconstitutional fashion and that despite being aware of United States Supreme
Court precedent on the matter, disciplinary counsel ignored his protests.
In July 2002 Plaintiffs filed their first suit in federal court, requesting,
among other relief, an injunction to prevent the Board from acting against
Mr. Stein with respect to the advertising. The district court held that Younger v.
Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971), required it to abstain from hearing the case because
the state disciplinary proceeding was ongoing. It dismissed the case without
prejudice, noting that Mr. Stein would have an opportunity to raise his
constitutional claims in the state proceeding. See Stein v. Legal Adver. Comm. of
the Disciplinary Bd., 272 F. Supp. 2d 1260, 1274–75 (D.N.M. 2003) (Stein I).
Two later federal cases brought by Plaintiffs within the next year on the same
grounds reached the same result. See Stein v. Legal Adver. Comm. of the
Disciplinary Bd., 304 F. Supp. 2d 1274, 1276 (D.N.M. 2003) (Stein II); Stein v.
Legal Adver. Comm. of the Disciplinary Bd., No . CIV 03-631 LFG/RHS, 2003
U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24394 (D.N.M. June 17, 2003) (unpublished) (Stein III).
In October 2002, while Stein I was pending, the Board filed formal charges
against Mr. Stein relating to his advertising. In May 2003 he brought his
constitutional challenges in a petition to the Board for a declaratory judgment.
That November the Board appointed a hearing committee chaired by Norman
Thayer (the Thayer Committee) to consider the declaratory-judgment petition.
While the Thayer Committee was considering the petition, the disciplinary
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charges were stayed. When the Thayer Committee had not reached a decision by
December 30, 2003, Mr. Stein moved the committee for judgment, contending
that the Legal Advertising Committee had defaulted. Plaintiffs claim that the
Thayer Committee never responded.
Meanwhile, in July 2003 the Board had filed a second set of 21 allegations
against Mr. Stein, apparently arising out of his representation of a client. A year
later a Board hearing committee found four violations of ethical requirements.
The New Mexico Supreme Court imposed sanctions on Mr. Stein in September
2005.
On July 26, 2004, Plaintiffs filed the current lawsuit (Stein IV) in federal
district court. The original complaint contended that Plaintiffs’ free-speech rights
were violated by a state rule protecting the confidentiality of disciplinary
proceedings. This state rule is not at issue on appeal.
On August 27, 2004, Mr. Stein renewed his motion before the Thayer
Committee for a default judgment on his declaratory-judgment petition. In a
letter dated September 3, 2004, Ms. Ferrara disclosed to Mr. Stein and the
attorney for the Legal Advertising Committee that the Thayer Committee had
already filed its opinion (which said that the Committee had no authority to issue
declaratory judgments). She also informed them that the New Mexico Supreme
Court had been requested to appoint a special panel to review the opinion.
Ms. Ferrara’s letter apologized for the oversight in not providing the attorneys
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with copies of the opinion. But in a letter dated September 8, she explained to
Mr. Stein that the parties had not been provided with copies because findings are
generally distributed to the parties when the Board Chair announces which Board
members will serve as a panel to review the committee’s opinion, and no panel
had yet been designated. In that letter she also wrote that the reason for
requesting a special review panel composed of persons not members of the Board
was that Plaintiffs were suing the Board.
At the time that Mr. Stein learned of the Thayer Committee’s opinion,
Plaintiffs’ appeal in their third federal case, Stein III, was pending before this
court. The district court had dismissed the case after finding that the conditions
requiring Younger abstention continued to be met. See Stein III, 2003 U.S. Dist.
LEXIS 24394. On October 20, 2004, one month before the scheduled oral
argument, the New Mexico Supreme Court sua sponte ordered the Plaintiffs and
the Legal Advertising Committee to show cause why the court should not (1)
reject the Thayer Committee’s opinion that it did not have jurisdiction to consider
a declaratory action and (2) remand the matter to the Board. On October 26,
2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the Board did have the authority to consider a
declaratory action and sent the case back to the Board.
In this court’s December 22, 2004, decision in the Stein III appeal, we took
judicial notice of the October 26 order of the New Mexico Supreme Court and
upheld the district court’s dismissal of the case. See Stein v. Legal Advertising
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Comm. of Disciplinary Bd., 122 Fed. App’x 954 (10th Cir. 2004) (unpublished).
We explained: “The State of New Mexico is attempting to provide Mr. Stein with
a forum to present his federal challenges to New Mexico’s attorney advertising
rules. . . . [T]he proceedings continue to meet the conditions that require a
Younger abstention.” Id. at 957.
On January 18, 2005, the Plaintiffs filed an amended complaint in this
action, including, in addition to its previous challenge to the state confidentiality
rule, new claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 arising from (1) disciplinary counsel’s
handling of the Thayer Committee opinion and the October 2002 and July 2003
charges and (2) the Supreme Court’s issuance of the show-cause order and
rejection of the Thayer Committee opinion. Count III of the complaint alleges
that Ms. Ferrara acted in violation of Plaintiffs’ rights in not timely serving
Mr. Stein with the Thayer Committee’s opinion and by contacting the Supreme
Court ex parte to request a special committee to review that opinion. It also
alleges that she wrongfully supplied the Supreme Court with a copy of the Thayer
Committee opinion. Count IV alleges various improprieties in the handling of the
July 2003 charges, including that the ethical charges were baseless and filed
against Mr. Stein in retaliation for Plaintiffs’ federal lawsuit, that Ms. Scott-
Mullins and Ms. Karni failed to investigate adequately the accusations of
Mr. Stein’s ethical violations, that they failed to provide him with proper notice
of the charges, that they failed to produce discovery when required to do so, and
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that they failed to take action when they realized that one of their witnesses had
lied to keep information from Plaintiffs. The count also alleges that Ms. Scott-
Mullins, Ms. Karni, and Ms. Virginia Ferrara became overly friendly with the
complainant. Ms. Ferrara, it contends, approved the actions of Ms. Scott-Mullins
and Ms. Karni and did not adequately supervise them or respond to complaints
about their conduct. And Count V alleges that the Supreme Court’s issuance of
the show-cause order and its rejection of the Thayer Committee opinion were
without jurisdiction and in violation of Plaintiffs’ due-process and equal-
protection rights.
Defendants moved for dismissal or summary judgment. Among their
contentions were that the state-rule challenges were not ripe for adjudication; that
the allegations against Ms. Ferrara regarding her handling of the Thayer
Committee opinion failed to state a constitutional claim and she was entitled to
qualified immunity; that disciplinary counsel were entitled to absolute
prosecutorial immunity for their actions regarding the July 2003 charges; and that
the Justices of the New Mexico Supreme Court were entitled to judicial immunity
for their issuance of the show-cause order and the opinion rejecting the Thayer
Committee opinion. Plaintiffs responded to these arguments on the merits; they
also moved for limited discovery and for leave to amend their complaint
thereafter.
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The district court dismissed the claims challenging the state rule, agreeing
that they did not present a case or controversy. It granted summary judgment on
the § 1983 claims, holding that they were barred by absolute prosecutorial and
judicial immunity. The court also denied the Plaintiffs’ motions for limited
discovery and for leave to amend on the grounds that no rule entitles a party to
discovery for the purpose of amending a complaint, that the claims the Plaintiffs
sought to add were “distinct in time, parties, and relevance” from the complaint
before the court, Joint App. Vol. 4 at 851, and that the Plaintiffs had failed to
comply with a local rule requiring the proposed amendment to accompany the
motion to amend.
II. DISCUSSION
Plaintiffs appeal the grant of summary judgment on their § 1983 claims but
do not challenge the dismissal of the claims regarding the state confidentiality
rule. We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo,
applying the same standard that applies in district court. See Allstate Ins. Co. v.
Murray Motor Imports Co., 357 F.3d 1135, 1138 (10th Cir. 2004). “Summary
judgment is proper ‘if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and
admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no
genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to
judgment as a matter of law.’” Id. (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)).
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The conclusion of Plaintiffs’ opening brief also requests that we order the
district court to permit limited discovery and an amended complaint, but the brief
fails to present any argument on these issues, so we decline to address them. See
Adler v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 144 F.3d 664, 679 (10th Cir. 1998) (arguments
inadequately briefed are waived).
A. Absolute Immunity
The district court held that all defendants were absolutely immune from suit
under § 1983. “The Supreme Court has recognized the defense of absolute
immunity from civil rights suits in several well-established contexts involving the
judicial process.” Snell v. Tunnell, 920 F.2d 673, 686 (10th Cir. 1990). As we
have explained:
The rationale for [this defense] is to incorporate traditional common
law immunities and to allow functionaries in the judicial system the
latitude to perform their tasks absent the threat of retaliatory § 1983
litigation. Because the judicial system often resolves disputes that
the parties cannot, the system portends conflict. Win or lose, a party
may seek to litigate the constitutionality of circumstances which
required him to endure a lawsuit or suffer defeat. Such suits by
dissatisfied parties might target judges, prosecutors and witnesses.
Though such suits might be satisfying personally for a plaintiff, they
could jeopardize the judicial system’s ability to function.
Id. at 686–87. (footnote and citations omitted). Typically, judges, prosecutors,
and witnesses enjoy absolute immunity. See id. at 686; Valdez v. City and County
of Denver, 878 F.2d 1285, 1287 (10th Cir. 1989). But such immunity is not
always available to them. The Supreme Court has adopted a functional approach:
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that is, “immunity is justified and defined by the functions it protects and serves,
not by the person to whom it attaches.” Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 227
(1988).
B. Specific Claims
1. Handling by Counsel of Thayer Committee Decision
Count III alleges that Chief Disciplinary Counsel Ferrara violated
Plaintiffs’ due-process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment when (1) she did
not timely serve a copy of the Thayer Committee opinion on Plaintiffs and
opposing counsel, and (2) she improperly contacted the New Mexico Supreme
Court by supplying it with a written copy of the Thayer Committee opinion and
requesting the appointment of a special committee of persons who were not
members of the Board to review that opinion. The district court held that
Ms. Ferrara was protected against these claims by prosecutorial immunity. We
understand Plaintiffs to be arguing that Ms. Ferrara is entitled only to qualified
immunity, rather than absolute immunity, because her acts were “administrative”
in nature.
In addition to investigating and prosecuting disciplinary actions, counsel
for the Board perform administrative functions. The New Mexico Supreme Court
has charged disciplinary counsel with “maintain[ing] permanent records of all
matters processed and the disposition thereof, and [acting] as the general
administrative officer for the Disciplinary Board under its direction and
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supervision.” Rule 17-105(C)(3). Vesting this mix of functions in one person
can obscure the line between acts taken by the Chief Disciplinary Counsel as a
prosecutor and acts taken by the Chief Disciplinary Counsel as an administrator.
But prosecutorial immunity applies only to actions taken by a prosecutor in the
role of advocate. See, e.g., Kalina v. Fletcher, 522 U.S. 118, 126 (1997). In our
view, the allegations against Ms. Ferrara in Count III do not emanate from her
role as an advocate. We now proceed to explain why, beginning with a brief
description of the New Mexico attorney-discipline procedures.
Under the New Mexico disciplinary rules, formal hearings are conducted by
a hearing committee appointed by the Board. See Rules 17-104(A) (appointment
of a hearing committee), 17-313 (hearings). After conducting the hearing, the
committee issues findings of fact, conclusions, and a recommended disposition,
which it transmits to the Board. See id. 17-313(D)(8). The Board chairman is
then to transmit copies of the committee’s opinion to disciplinary counsel, the
respondent, and respondent’s counsel. See id. Before rendering its decision, the
Board (or a panel of Board members) may permit briefing and oral argument, but
will not consider evidence other than what is in the hearing committee’s record.
See id. 17-314, 17-315. The Board’s decision is subject to review by the state
supreme court. See id. 17-316.
Turning first to Ms. Ferrara’s failure to notify Mr. Stein of the hearing
committee’s opinion, the rules provide that the method of transmission is from the
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hearing committee to the Board chairman to the respondent (Mr. Stein). If
Ms. Ferrara was to assist in that transmission, it would not be as a party to the
proceeding; after all, the chief disciplinary counsel is to be notified by the Board
chair at the same time as the respondent is notified. See id. 17-313(D)(8).
Rather, her involvement in any notification would be as an accommodation to the
Board and the hearing committee. Such involvement should be treated as action
in her capacity as administrator for the Board.
We reach the same conclusion as to Ms. Ferrara’s notifying the Supreme
Court of the hearing committee’s opinion so that it could appoint a panel as an
alternative to a panel of Board members. This was not the action of a party
seeking relief from a higher authority. She was not appealing the committee’s
opinion. The opinion by itself has no effect. It is a report and a recommendation,
akin to a report and recommendation to a federal district court from a magistrate
judge. The actual decision must be made by a panel of Board members.
Ordinarily, selection of the panel would be the duty of the Board chair. See id.
17-314(A). But with all Board members apparently disqualified by Mr. Stein’s
suit against the Board, Ms. Ferrara had to notify the state supreme court of the
need for special action. Her notification to that court was, again, an act in her
capacity as administrator for the Board, not as an advocate. That the New Mexico
Supreme Court proceeded to take the matter itself, rather than appoint a special
panel of non-Board members, was not the consequence of her appealing a Board
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decision to the court (which could well be characterized as part of her
prosecutorial duties). She filed no such appeal.
In short, as Ms. Ferrara acknowledges, the duties at issue in Count III “are
not of the type generally assigned to criminal prosecutors.” Aplee Br. at 21. We
characterize her acts as administrative functions, and therefore they are not
entitled to prosecutorial immunity.
Ms. Ferrara contends that an alternate ground for absolute immunity applies
because she was acting as a clerk of court when she undertook the challenged
actions. There is a substantial question, however, whether the doctrine of
absolute immunity extends so far. As stated by the Supreme Court, “The
presumption is that qualified rather than absolute immunity is sufficient to protect
government officials in the exercise of their duties.” Antoine v. Byers &
Anderson, Inc., 508 U.S. 429, 432 n.4 (1993) (internal quotation marks omitted)
(rejecting absolute immunity for court reporters). Absolute immunity is not
available simply because one’s work is “‘functionally part and parcel of the
judicial process.’” id. at 432 (quoting Antoine v. Byers & Andrews, Inc., 950 F.2d
1471, 1476 (9th Cir. 1991)). Thus, in Henriksen v. Bentley, 644 F.2d 852, 856
(10th Cir. 1981), we stated that court clerks are generally entitled only to
qualified immunity. To be sure, we also stated that court clerks may be entitled
to absolute immunity in some circumstances, but we recognized only two. First,
absolute immunity may be available to protect clerks performing quasijudicial
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duties, such as setting bail. See id. at 855. Second, it may protect clerks “acting
under the command of a court decree or explicit instructions from a judge.” Id.
Ms. Ferrara contends that our decision in Whitesel v. Sengenberger, 222
F.3d 861 (10th Cir. 2000), supports absolute immunity for her conduct. She cites
it for the proposition that when a nonjudicial officer’s duties have “an integral
relationship with the judicial process,” absolute quasijudicial immunity applies.
Aplee. Br. at 21. But that statement of the scope of absolute immunity appears
inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion in Antoine. And one could easily
read Whitesel more narrowly, as protecting only quasijudicial acts. In Whitesel
the plaintiff sued several pretrial service officers who had prepared a temporary
restraining order (TRO) against him after he was charged with assault and child
abuse. See id. at 863–64. By state statute the TROs had to contain certain
restrictions; other restrictions were discretionary. See id. Contrary to the statute,
the officers issued a TRO containing some of the discretionary provisions before
the court gave the accused a hearing on those provisions. See id. We concluded
that “as a matter of law, these are judicial acts integral to the judicial process and
therefore are cloaked in absolute immunity.” Id. at 868. Ms. Ferrara’s reading
overlooks the language: “these are judicial acts.” Issuing a TRO was
indisputably a judicial act; the TRO authoritatively adjudicated private rights.
There remains the possibility of recognition of absolute immunity for a
clerk “acting under the command of a court decree or explicit instructions from a
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judge.” Henriksen, 644 F.2d at 856. But Ms. Ferrara has not pointed to any
directive, order, or even a rule, under which she was acting.
In any event, we leave to another day any determination of the precise
boundaries of absolute quasijudicial immunity for clerks. We need not resolve
whether such immunity would protect Ms. Ferrara against the claims here because
Plaintiffs have not stated any constitutional violation. Although the district court
did not decide the matter on this ground, Ms. Ferrara raised the absence of a
constitutional violation in the motion for summary judgment, and Plaintiffs
responded to this argument. It is therefore fair to address this argument now. See
Rogers v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 491 F.3d 1165, 1169 (10th Cir. 2007).
The Fourteenth Amendment to our Constitution declares that no State shall
“deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” To
state a violation of this amendment, Plaintiffs must identify a liberty or property
interest of which they were deprived. In their response to the motion for
summary judgment, the only interest that they identified as such was “a vested
interest and confidence that the rules of procedure would be followed.” Joint
App. Vol. 2 at 374. But “[p]rocess is not an end in itself. Its constitutional
purpose is to protect a substantive interest to which the individual has a legitimate
claim of entitlement.” Olim v. Wakinekona, 461 U.S. 238, 250 (1983). Hence,
“an entitlement to nothing but procedure cannot be the basis for a [liberty or]
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property interest.” Teigen v. Renfrow, 511 F.3d 1072, 1081 (10th Cir. 2007)
(internal quotation marks omitted).
Nor does Plaintiffs’ response to the motion for summary judgment even
mention any other protected interest that was infringed. The response asserts that
had Ms. Ferrara not requested a special panel to review the Thayer Committee
opinion and forwarded a copy of that opinion to the New Mexico Supreme Court,
that court would not have issued its October 26 order rejecting the Thayer
Committee opinion. In a footnote the response speculates that if the court had not
issued that order, this court would have resolved the Stein III appeal in their
favor. Presumably, Plaintiffs believe that if the New Mexico Supreme Court had
not determined that the Thayer Committee had jurisdiction to hear their
declaratory-judgment petition, the grounds for Younger abstention would have
been negated. This is a dubious assumption, given that the Thayer Committee
apparently told Mr. Stein that he could raise his constitutional objections in a
motion to dismiss or as an affirmative defense in his answer to the charges. See
Stein III appeal, 122 Fed. App’x at 956.
But more importantly, no property interest of Plaintiffs was injured by
Ms. Ferrara’s alleged procedural error in communicating with the state court.
Plaintiffs do not suggest that Ms. Ferrara’s actions influenced the substance of the
Supreme Court’s decision—that is, its ruling that the Thayer Committee could
hear a declaratory-judgment action. Their complaint in essence is only that the
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effect of her actions was to advance the time in which the court would issue its
ruling. Plaintiffs’ interest in a court’s declaration of law being delayed (or even
never being made) is not, however, an interest protected by the Fourteenth
Amendment. “An individual has a property interest in a benefit for purposes of
due process protection only if he has a ‘legitimate claim of entitlement’ to the
benefit, as opposed to a mere ‘abstract need or desire’ or ‘unilateral
expectation.’” Teigen, 511 F.3d at 1078–79 (quoting Bd. of Regents of State
Colls. v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 577 (1972)). We refuse to recognize an entitlement
to a more tardy announcement of applicable law. After all, a party in one case
can hardly preclude the court from declaring the applicable law in a different
case. When Ms. Ferrara set in motion events that led to the New Mexico Supreme
Court’s decision, she deprived Plaintiffs of nothing to which they were
legitimately entitled. We therefore affirm the dismissal of Count III.
2. Prosecution of October 2002 and July 2003 Charges
Count IV alleges that Ms. Ferrara and Ms. Scott-Mullins used a state rule
that they knew to be unconstitutional to bring charges against Mr. Stein in the
October 2002 advertising case. It also alleges that Ms. Ferrara, Ms. Scott-
Mullins, and Ms. Karni brought baseless ethical charges against him in July 2003
and engaged in several forms of prosecutorial misconduct, including becoming
overly friendly with the complainant, failing to produce required discovery, and
allowing a witness to lie.
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Prosecutors are absolutely immune from civil liability for damages for
“acts undertaken by a prosecutor in preparing for the initiation of judicial
proceedings or for trial, and which occur in the course of his role as an advocate
for the State.” Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 273 (1993). One such
protected act is the decision to prosecute. See, e.g., Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S.
409, 431 (1976). In Clulow v. Oklahoma, 700 F.2d 1291, 1298 (10th Cir. 1983),
this court said that prosecutorial immunity extends to “bar officials charged with
the duties of investigating, drawing up, and presenting cases involving attorney
discipline.”
We agree with the district court that Clulow’s language indicating that
absolute immunity extends to disciplinary officials’ investigative functions
appears to conflict with later Supreme Court precedent that grants only qualified
immunity to the investigative activities of prosecutors. See Burns v. Reed, 500
U.S. 478, 495 (1991) (“Almost any action by a prosecutor, including his or her
direct participation in purely investigative activity, could be said to be in some
way related to the ultimate decision whether to prosecute, but we have never
indicated that absolute immunity is that expansive.”). Indeed, this inconsistency
is the sole basis of Plaintiffs’ appeal of the district court’s dismissal of this count:
Plaintiffs challenge the dismissal only to the extent that any of the underlying
activities should be characterized as investigative activities. We note that Clulow
involved no allegations of investigative misconduct, but we need not consider
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whether Clulow’s dictum regarding investigations must be modified, because
none of the actions of which Plaintiffs complain can be properly characterized as
the exercise of investigative, as opposed to prosecutorial, functions.
Only two allegations of the complaint mention the investigation of the
charges against Mr. Stein. The first is that Ms. Scott-Mullins and Ms. Karni
“filed an unsupported ethical complaint . . . without adequate investigation . . . for
the purposes of destroying the practice of Plaintiffs without adequate basis.”
Joint App. Vol. 2 at 321. We hold that absolute immunity protected the
defendants on this claim. Deciding whether to bring charges—which necessarily
includes an evaluation of whether there has been sufficient investigation to
support charges—is a quintessential prosecutorial function protected by absolute
immunity. See Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273 (prosecutorial immunity extends to the
prosecutor’s evaluation of evidence assembled by investigators). If the
prosecutor does not believe that the investigation has been adequate to support
bringing charges, she can simply refrain from doing so. To be sure, an
investigator may distort the prosecutor’s exercise of discretion by falsifying
information given to the prosecutor or by concealing from the prosecutor
evidence already obtained or the availability of potential evidence. But Plaintiffs
have made no allegation that the disciplinary counsel in their investigative
capacities committed any act that would prevent them, in their prosecutorial
capacities, from making a fully informed decision about whether the evidence
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already obtained was adequate to justify bringing charges. In this circumstance,
any failure-to-investigate claim against disciplinary counsel amounts to a claim
that they should not have exercised their discretion to bring charges without
obtaining more information. Against such a claim, counsel are protected by
absolute immunity. Allowing Plaintiffs to frame a grievance about the filing of
unfounded charges as a claim for misconduct in investigation would improperly
expose prosecutors to litigation concerning their exercise of discretion to
prosecute.
The complaint’s second allegation involving investigation is that “during
the litigation stage of the . . . ethical charges,” Defendants Scott-Mullins and
Karni “fail[ed] to do a proper investigation by making a conscience [sic] decision
not to contact . . . a key witness for Plaintiffs” until shortly before trial. Joint
App. Vol. 2 at 322. It is settled law, however, that actions taken by the
prosecutor in preparation for trial in the role of advocate are protected by absolute
immunity. See Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273 (“[A]cts undertaken by a prosecutor in
preparing for the initiation of judicial proceedings or for trial, and which occur in
the course of his role as an advocate for the State, are entitled to the protections
of absolute immunity.”). A decision regarding when during the course of
litigation to contact an adverse witness is a prosecutorial, not an investigative,
decision. It is therefore protected by absolute immunity. Moreover, Plaintiffs
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fail to specify how they were harmed by the decision not to contact their witness
until shortly before the hearing. Accordingly, Count IV was properly dismissed.
3. Claim Against Supreme Court
Count V alleges that the Justices of the Supreme Court of New Mexico
violated Plaintiffs’ due-process and equal-protection rights when the court issued
its October 2004 show-cause order and the later decision holding that the
Disciplinary Committee had jurisdiction to consider a declaratory-judgment
action. We reject this claim, as did the district court, because the Justices are
protected by absolute judicial immunity.
The Supreme Court of the United States has long held that judges are
generally immune from suits for money damages. Mireles v. Waco, 502 U.S. 9,
9–10 (1978). There are only two exceptions to this rule: (1) when the act is “not
taken in [the judge’s] judicial capacity,” and (2) when the act, “though judicial in
nature, [is] taken in the complete absence of all jurisdiction.” Id. at 12.
Regarding the second exception, an act taken in excess of a court’s jurisdiction is
not to be confused with an act taken in the “complete absence of all jurisdiction.”
As Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. 335, 351–52 (1871), explained,
Where there is clearly no jurisdiction over the subject-matter any
authority exercised is a usurped authority, and for the exercise of
such authority, when the want of jurisdiction is known to the judge,
no excuse is permissible. But where jurisdiction over the
subject-matter is invested by law in the judge, or in the court which
he holds, the manner and extent in which the jurisdiction shall be
exercised are generally as much questions for his determination as
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any other questions involved in the case, although upon the
correctness of his determination in these particulars the validity of
his judgments may depend.
To illustrate this distinction, the Supreme Court has stated:
[I]f a probate judge, with jurisdiction over only wills and estates,
should try a criminal case, he would be acting in the clear absence of
jurisdiction and would not be immune from liability for his action; on
the other hand, if a judge of a criminal court should convict a
defendant of a nonexistent crime, he would merely be acting in
excess of his jurisdiction and would be immune.
Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 357 n.7 (1978) (citing Bradley, 80 U.S. at
352).
There can be no question that the state supreme court’s allegedly
unconstitutional acts—the issuance of the show-cause order and the remand to the
Disciplinary Board —were taken in a judicial capacity. As stated in Clulow,
“even informal attorney disciplinary matters presented to the states’ highest
courts are judicial proceedings.” 700 F.2d at 1298. Thus, the first exception to
judicial immunity is not at issue. Rather, Plaintiffs invoke the second exception,
arguing that the acts were taken in the complete absence of all jurisdiction.
Plaintiffs insist that the New Mexico Supreme Court, as a court of limited and
appellate jurisdiction, was clearly without jurisdiction to issue the orders because
no party had “invoked” the jurisdiction of the court.
We disagree. The New Mexico Supreme Court has jurisdiction over the
subject matter of attorney discipline. First, the New Mexico Constitution endows
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the Supreme Court of New Mexico with “superintending control over all inferior
courts” in the state. N.M. Const. art. VI, § 3. The New Mexico Supreme Court
has held that authority over attorney discipline is encompassed within this power.
See In re Treinen, 131 P.3d 1282, 1284 (N.M. 2006). In addition, New Mexico
Statutes Annotated § 36-2-1, titled “Authority of supreme court to regulate
practice of law,” provides that “[t]he supreme court of the state of New Mexico
shall, by rules promulgated from time to time, define and regulate the practice of
law within the state of New Mexico.” Under Bradley a court invested with
jurisdiction over the subject matter in question does not act in the clear absence of
all jurisdiction.
Moreover, the Board itself is an agency of the state supreme court,
established by that court, see Rule 17-101, and its decisions are subject to review
by the supreme court, see id. 17-316. In this case, the Thayer Committee opinion,
which was only a report and recommendation, apparently could not be reviewed
by a Board panel because all Board members were disqualified. Therefore, the
supreme court needed to take action to resolve the problem. Rather than take the
extraordinary step of appointing a special panel, it decided to hear the dispute
itself. Nothing in the disciplinary rules divests that court of this inherent
authority.
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These provisions of state law establish that the Justices of the Supreme
Court of New Mexico did not act in the clear absence of jurisdiction in issuing the
show-cause order. They are therefore protected by absolute judicial immunity.
III. CONCLUSION
We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
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Stein v. Disciplinary Bd. of Supreme Court of NM
Court: Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
Date filed: 2008-04-01
Citations: 520 F.3d 1183
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