Alexander v. City of New York
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:17-cv-03170
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Alexander v. City of New York, Judge Schofield denied Defendants’ reconsideration motion, leaving summary-judgment rulings about detention and a pocket search unchanged.
The order directly affected the defendants, including the individual defendants and Defendant McCloud, by denying their request to revisit the earlier partial summary-judgment ruling. The earlier ruling remained in place for the unlawful-detention and pocket-search claims described in the order.
What happened
In Alexander v. City of New York, the court had granted summary judgment partly to the defendants and partly to Alexander. It ruled that the individual defendants unlawfully detained Alexander after finding his two dollars, and that Defendant McCloud unlawfully searched Alexander’s pocket during that detention.
The defendants asked the court to reconsider, relying on affidavits that offered a different account of when Alexander tried to leave, what the defendants knew about the dropped item, and when they found the two dollars. They also argued that qualified immunity protected them because the unlawfulness of their conduct was not clearly established.
Judge Lorna G. Schofield denied the motion. She held that the defendants had an opportunity to submit their evidence with the original motion and could not change the facts they had previously presented as undisputed. She also left unchanged her conclusions that the detention was unlawful and that the defendants were not protected by qualified immunity.
The detailed version
- Alexander v. City of New York · No. 1:17-cv-03170
- Lorna Schofield
- Dec. 20, 2019
Background
On November 19, 2019, the court granted summary judgment in part to the defendants and in part to the plaintiff. Summary judgment is a decision without a trial when the court determines that no material facts require a trial. As described in this order, the court ruled for the plaintiff against the individual defendants on an unlawful-detention claim covering the period after they found his two dollars and before drugs were found. The court also ruled for the plaintiff against Defendant McCloud on the claim that McCloud searched the plaintiff’s pocket during the unlawful detention.
The court had concluded that the individual defendants could not reasonably have believed that the plaintiff violated New York City Administrative Code § 16-118(1)(a). The court read that provision as implying that a person must discard something, rather than accidentally drop it and try to retrieve it. It also concluded that no reasonable officer could have treated the two dollars as “ashes, garbage, paper, dust or other rubbish or refuse” under that provision. Because the detention was unlawful, the court concluded that McCloud’s pocket search was also unlawful because it was not part of a valid arrest.
Motion for Reconsideration
The defendants moved for reconsideration on November 22, 2019. Reconsideration is an extraordinary request asking the court to revisit an earlier decision. The court stated that it generally requires a party to identify a change in controlling law, genuinely new evidence, or a clear error or manifest injustice. It is not a way to relitigate old issues or present evidence that was available during the original motion.
The defendants submitted affidavits from McCloud and Defendant Hernandez. According to the order, the affidavits supported a different factual account: that the plaintiff tried to walk away before the individual defendants approached him; that the defendants did not know what he had dropped and thought it resembled crumpled paper; and that the two dollars were found only after McCloud recovered drugs from the plaintiff’s pocket. The defendants explained that they had not submitted this evidence earlier because they had accepted the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and because the plaintiff, who was not represented by a lawyer, had not opposed their motion.
The defendants alternatively argued that qualified immunity protected them. Qualified immunity can protect government officials from liability when the law did not clearly establish that their conduct was unlawful. They argued that the court’s earlier denial of qualified immunity was a clear error.
Court’s Ruling
The court denied the motion for reconsideration. It found the defendants’ explanation for withholding the affidavits insufficient because the defendants had had ample opportunity to submit their version of the events with the original summary-judgment motion. The defendants had presented one set of facts and represented that those facts were undisputed. The court held that they could not change those facts later because the result was unfavorable to them.
The court also rejected the qualified-immunity argument and stated that its original conclusions remained unchanged. It again concluded that the individual defendants could not reasonably have believed that the plaintiff violated § 16-118(1)(a), and that no reasonable officer could have concluded that the two dollars fell within the provision’s listed categories of rubbish or refuse. The clerk was directed to close the reconsideration motion and mail a copy of the order to Ms. Alexander at the address stated in the order.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.