Gennie v. Byrd v. Investigator D.A. Jones

673 F. App'x 968
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedDecember 22, 2016
Docket16-12052 Non-Argument Calendar
StatusUnpublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 673 F. App'x 968 (Gennie v. Byrd v. Investigator D.A. Jones) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gennie v. Byrd v. Investigator D.A. Jones, 673 F. App'x 968 (11th Cir. 2016).

Opinion

PER CURIAM:

Bridget Byrd, her father Lamond Byrd, and her stepmother, Gennie Byrd, filed lawsuits against Bridget’s mother, Bridget’s stepfather, several police officers, a state court magistrate judge, and the City of Tuscaloosa, alleging various violations of their civil rights. 1 The district court granted summary judgment to most of the defendants and certified its judgment as final under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b). This is the plaintiffs’ appeal.

I.

In February 2003 the Washtenaw, Michigan probate court appointed Bridget’s mother, Lenora Williams, as the guardian of Bridget’s daughter, with Bridget’s consent. A little over three years later Williams and the child moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, prompting the Washtenaw County • probate deputy register to send Williams a letter instructing her that she needed to establish her guardianship over the child in Alabama and that the Michigan guardianship would be administratively closed. There is no evidence in the record showing that Williams established her guardianship in Alabama.

On July 4, 2012, Bridget (who was still residing in Michigan) went to the Tuscaloosa City Police Department and spoke to Dornelle Cousette, an investigator in the department’s juvenile division. Bridget told Cousette that she was the legal guardian of her daughter and that Williams had unlawfully refused to return the child to *971 her custody. Bridget gave Cousette a copy of the letter that the Michigan probate court had sent to Williams notifying her that the Michigan guardianship would be administratively closed, because Bridget believed that this letter showed that Williams’ guardianship over the child had been terminated. Bridget also gave Cous-ette a petition for withdrawal of Williams’ guardianship that she told him she had recently filed in Tuscaloosa probate court in order to regain custody of the child. Cousette made copies of the letter and the petition, and he told Bridget that she needed to wait for the court to determine the custody issue before law enforcement could take the child from Williams and return her to Bridget. A few days later, Bridget called Cousette. He told her that he had spoken to Williams, who had admitted that Bridget had legal custody of the child but refused to return her. 2

On August 6, 2012, David Jones, another investigator in the department’s juvenile division, received an incident report from an officer about a kidnapping involving Bridget’s daughter that had occurred in a restaurant parking lot. The report listed Bridget, Lamond, and Gennie as the kidnapping suspects. The report’s narrative statement of the crime noted that Williams, who claimed that she was the child’s legal guardian, had agreed to meet Bridget, Lamond, and Gennie at a local restaurant so that they could visit with the child. While Williams and the child were walking into the restaurant, Lamond ran up, grabbed the child, and quickly put her in a car where Bridget and Gennie were waiting. Williams and her husband chased Lamond through the parking lot and they were halfway inside of the vehicle attempting to pull the child out when Bridgét began driving the car, dragging them through the parking lot. Eventually Williams and her husband were thrown from the car, and Bridget, Lamond, and Gennie fled to Michigan with the child.

Based on information given in that incident report, along with what Jones refers to as “other .information learned by the Juvenile Division,” Jones prepared affidavits to submit in order to obtain arrest warrants. He took those affidavits to Magistrate Judge Rosenia Smith, who reviewed them and concluded that there was probable cause to support Bridget, La-mond, and Gennie’s arrest for interference with the custody of a child. Smith issued warrants for their arrests. Bridget was arrested in Michigan based on the warrant against her and was held in the Washte-naw County jail for ten days, at which point the charges against her were withdrawn. Lamond and Gennie turned themselves in, and eventually the charges against them were dropped as well. Neither Jones nor Cousette was involved in executing those arrest warrants.

II.

Bridget filed a lawsuit against Williams, Williams’ husband, Smith, Jones, Cousette, and the city of Tuscaloosa. 3 Bridget asserted 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and § 1985 claims against Smith, Cousette, Jones, and the City alleging false arrest, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution. She also claimed that the defendants violated her First Amendment right to freely associate *972 and her Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection related to the custody and care of her child. She also brought certain state law claims against the defendants. In a separate action, La-mond and Gennie brought § 1983 claims against Jones, Cousette, and the City alleging false imprisonment, false arrest, and malicious prosecution. The district court consolidated the two actions at the defendants’ request.

Jones, Cousette, and the City filed a motion for summary judgment, which Smith later joined, on all of the claims asserted against them in both actions. The plaintiffs opposed that motion and filed a motion to strike Jones’ and Cous--ette’s affidavits, which had been submitted in support of their motion for summary judgment. The district court denied that motion to strike and granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants. This is the plaintiffs’ appeal of both the denial of the motion to strike and the grant of summary judgment.

III.

A.

Bridget, Lamond, and Gennie contend that the district court erred in denying the motion to strike Jones’ and Cous-ette’s affidavits. They mention Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(c) and assert that an affidavit must contain firsthand knowledge. They argue, in effect, that before the officers attested to the statements in the affidavits, they were required to research official court records and make a legal determination about whether Williams had lawful custody of Bridget’s child. Because no authority imposes that requirement, their argument fails. And while they argued to the district court that the affidavits contained hearsay, they have abandoned that argument on appeal. See Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 681 (11th Cir. 2014) (“We have long held that an appellant abandons a claim when he either makes only passing references to it or raises it in a perfunctory manner without supporting arguments and authority.”).

B.

Applying the doctrine of judicial immunity, the district court granted summary judgment to Magistrate Judge Smith on Bridget’s § 1983 claims alleging false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and violations of her First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. 4

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Bluebook (online)
673 F. App'x 968, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gennie-v-byrd-v-investigator-da-jones-ca11-2016.