Trish Sifka—Senior Attorney
It should be no surprise that a federal appellate court generally does not have jurisdiction to review immediate appeals of denials of motions for summary judgment. See Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546, 69 S. Ct. 1221, 93 L. Ed. 1528 (1949); Iko v. Shreve, 535 F.3d 225, 234 (4th Cir. 2008) (noting this exception to the rule that "interlocutory appeals are generally disallowed"). “But, under the collateral order doctrine, appellate jurisdiction extends to ‘a narrow class of decisions that do not terminate the litigation,' but are sufficiently important and collateral to the merits that they should 'nonetheless be treated as final.'" United States ex rel. Citynet, LLC v. Gianato, 962 F.3d 154, 158 (4th Cir. 2020) (“Gianato”) (citing Will v. Hallock, 546 U.S. 345, 347, 126 S. Ct. 952, 163 L. Ed. 2d 836 (2006) (quoting Digital Equip. Corp. v. Desktop Direct, Inc., 511 U.S. 863, 867, 114 S. Ct. 1992, 128 L. Ed. 2d 842 (1994))).
One such exception is a denial of a motion for summary judgment which was based on the qualified immunity defense. Williams v. Strickland, 917 F.3d 763, 767-68 (4th Cir. 2019). Such a decision may be immediately appealable because the qualified immunity defense is a defense from suit, not just liability, so “it is effectively lost if a case is erroneously permitted to go to trial." Gianato, 962 F.3d at 158 (citing Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526, 105 S. Ct. 2806, 86 L. Ed. 2d 411 (1985)); see also Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231, 129 S. Ct. 808, 172 L. Ed. 2d 565 (2009). However, the Fourth Circuit reaffirmed the long-standing principle that the jurisdiction to hear such immediate appeals applies "only to the extent that the court's decision turned on an issue of law." English v. Clarke, 90 F.4th 636, 650 (4th Cir. 2024) (citing Cox v. Quinn, 828 F.3d 227, 235 (4th Cir. 2016)).
In English v. Clarke, Sheriff Deputy Joseph Clarke arrested two men, Kewon English and Earl Powell for burglary and sexual assault of a woman in her apartment in South Carolina in 2015. 90 F.4th at 650. Although the room was dark at the time of the assault, the victim stated during the investigation that she heard one man say his name was Kewon, and he provided other information about his mother, the particular subdivision where he lived, and other details regarding her interaction with the men. Her son had a friend named Kewon. No detailed information was given about the other assailant. The hospital nurse and other confirmed that the victim repeated these details. Id. at 641-42.
The investigation led to Kewon English as the suspect. The victim’s son stated that he had stayed at English’s home the night before and there was another man there, whose name was Earl, who was later identified as Powell. Id. at 642.
Both suspects were interrogated by Clarke and subsequently signed confessions. The parties disagreed about what happened at the station, but Powell and English claimed they were abused while in custody and confessions were forced. Id. at 642-44. After being detained for over 300 days and indicted by a grand jury, the case was nolle prossed due to DNA evidence indicating a different assailant. Id. at 644. Thus, English and Powell filed a complaint in federal court for violation of their constitutional claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and for malicious prosecution. The district court granted summary judgment for all of English’s claims based on qualified immunity. The court dismissed Powell’s constitutional claims but retained his malicious prosecution claim. 90 F.4th at 644. The malicious prosecution claim concerned disputed questions of facts surrounding the voluntariness of his confession, so summary judgment was denied. Id. at 645. The Fourth Circuit stated that it had no jurisdiction to review an immediate appeal of the court’s summary judgment decision because the district court denied summary judgment solely because there were genuine issue of material facts, not based on the law of qualified immunity. Id. at 650 (quoting Iko, 535 F.3d at 235 ("[A] defendant, entitled to invoke a qualified immunity defense, may not appeal a district court's summary judgment order insofar as that order determines whether or not the pretrial record sets forth a 'genuine' issue of fact for trial." (quoting Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 319-20, 115 S. Ct. 2151, 132 L. Ed. 2d 238 (1995)))).
Federal courts recognize these decisions as complicated “by the fact that nearly every decision of a district court denying . . . qualified immunity will encompass both a factual and a legal determination—that the facts are sufficiently controverted to warrant a trial and that the legal right purportedly violated was clearly established." Iko, 535 F.3d at 234-35 (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis omitted). Ultimately, to resolve the issue, the court will likely review the appellant’s arguments to see if they are so heavily focused on factual disputes that the appeal hinges on a view of the facts contrary to that reached by the district court in evaluating his or her summary judgment motion. Minifield v. Sills, No. 20-1301, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 3138, at *4, 2022 WL 327001 (4th Cir. Feb. 3, 2022). In such situations, the court will dismiss the appeal because there is no jurisdiction to review it as an immediate appeal.
