Joubert-Vazquez v. Alvarez-Rubio

841 F. Supp. 2d 570, 2012 WL 149804, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6010
CourtDistrict Court, D. Puerto Rico
DecidedJanuary 19, 2012
DocketCivil No. 11-1194 (SEC)
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 841 F. Supp. 2d 570 (Joubert-Vazquez v. Alvarez-Rubio) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Puerto Rico primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Joubert-Vazquez v. Alvarez-Rubio, 841 F. Supp. 2d 570, 2012 WL 149804, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6010 (prd 2012).

Opinion

OPINION & ORDER

SALVADOR E. CASELLAS, Senior District Judge.

After launching a collateral attack on the Court’s determination that the Puerto Rico State Insurance Fund had failed to carry the burden of proof as to its Eleventh Amendment contentions, defendants filed a “Motion Requesting Stay of Pro[571]*571ceedings Pending Appeal.” Docket # 93.1 The Opinion and Order defendants appealed arose from a motion to dismiss that failed to identify and apply the controlling precedent—that is, Fresenius Med. Care Cardiovascular Res., Inc. v. P.R. & the Caribbean Cardiovascular Ctr. Corp., 322 F.3d 56, 59 (1st Cir.2003). See Docket # 80. The motion also depended, almost entirely, on an unpublished opinion containing a superficial one-paragraph discussion that left unattended most of the issues relevant to assess defendants’ contentions. Id. But even worse, as to the most important point of the Fresenius analysis—the risk that the damages at issue would be paid from the public treasury—the motion relied, without a legal discussion or a single legal citation, on arguments that ran contrary to well-settled law. Id. Put differently, the first time around, defendants brought forth a complex question of law but failed to put the Court in a position to perform the requisite analysis. See In re DiVittorio, 670 F.3d 273, 288 (1st Cir.2012) (“It is not enough merely to mention a possible argument in the most skeletal way, leaving the court to do counsel’s work, create the ossature for the argument, and put flesh on its bones.”) (citation omitted); see also United States v. Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir.1990) (“[I]ssues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by some effort at development argumentation, are deemed waived.”).

History repeats itself here. Without identifying, much less applying, the standard underpinning their request, defendants come before the Court with a two-and-a-half page motion, alleging that pressing forward with the proceedings at this level "would gravely prejudice [them] since immunity will be effectively lost if the case is erroneously permitted to proceed while the appeal is pending." Docket # 93, at ¶ 5.2 The determination whether to grant a stay pending appeal hinges on (1) whether the applicant has made a strong showing of success on the merits; (2) whether the applicant will be irreparably harmed absent injunctive relief; (3) whether issuance of the stay will injure other parties; and (4) where the public interest lies. Hilton v. Braunskill, 481 U.S. 770, 776-77, 107 S.Ct. 2113, 95 L.Ed.2d 724 (1987); see also Acevedo-Garcia v. Vera-Monroig, 296 F.3d 13, 16 (1st Cir.2002). Defendants fail each prong of this analysis.

In what appears to be their offering on the first prong of the analysis, defendants allude to three unpublished opinions which allegedly support their position. Defendants’ motion to dismiss relied on the most recent opinion of this trilogy with the outcome highlighted above. The other two, were presented to the Court in defendants’ motion for reconsideration. Docket # 85. The Court nonetheless discarded them, because, among other things, (1) the opinions preceded Fresenius by several decades; and (2) defendants had provided no courtesy copies even though the opinions were not available electronically. Docket # 91, p. 2 at n. 1. These shortcomings continue unaddressed; therefore, these two opinions do little to advance defendants position.

To support their motion to stay, defendants also point to arguments, documents, and case law brought forth for the first time in their motion for reconsideration. Docket # 93, p. 2 at n. 2, 3, and 4. [572]*572The law in this Circuit is unequivocal: “When a party makes an argument for the first time in a motion for reconsideration, the argument is not preserved for appeal.” Dillon v. Select Portfolio Servicing, 630 F.3d 75, 80 (1st Cir.2011). Defendants have provided no authority or argument that would allow a contrary determination.

The Court already described what it believes to be defendants’ position on the second prong of the analysis: that proceeding forward “would gravely prejudice Defendants since immunity will be effectively lost if the case is erroneously permitted to proceed while the appeal is pending.” Docket # 93, ¶ 5. The named defendants in this case are the Puerto Rico State Insurance Fund Corporation (“SIFC”) as well as two of its high ranking officials. Docket # 51. The Eleventh Amendment is inapplicable to the latter two who were sued on their personal capacities. As to the former, it would have to continue as a party to this case even if the relief requested on appeal were granted, because plaintiffs’ suit falls squarely within the Ex parte Young exception to the Eleventh Amendment. See Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908). Defendants, however, fail to address these issues.

Rather, defendants cite Lopez v. Massachusetts, 588 F.3d 69, 73 (1st Cir.2009) for the proposition that “proceedings before the district court should be stayed pending the outcome of defendants’ interlocutory appeal against the district court’s denial of Eleventh Amendment Immunity.” Docket # 93, ¶ 3. Lopez, however, stands for a much different proposition, totally unrelated with the one defendants advance. In fact, in Lopez, the Circuit Court relied on the doctrine of constitutional avoidance to sidestep the Eleventh Amendment inquiry altogether and only mentioned the subject of a stay pending appeal in discussing the procedural posture of the case. To be exact, the following quote contains the only instance in which the Lopez Court’s 21-page opinion alluded to a stay pending appeal: “On May 13, 2009, the district court ordered proceedings before it stayed until this court resolves the appeal.” Id., at 73.

Defendants also cite Apostol v. Gallion, 870 F.2d 1335, 1338 (7th Cir.1989), contending that such case holds that “during an interlocutory appeal from the denial of an eleventh amendment claim, the trial court should stay all further proceedings.” But Apostol was a qualified immunity appeal, with the Eleventh Amendment implicated nowhere. The same happens with Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526-27, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985) (qualified immunity case); Rivera-Torres v. Ortiz Velez, 341 F.3d 86, 93-95 (1st Cir.2003) (same); and Williams v. Brooks, 996 F.2d 728

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Candelario-Del Moral v. UBS Financial Services Inc.
290 F.R.D. 336 (D. Puerto Rico, 2013)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
841 F. Supp. 2d 570, 2012 WL 149804, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6010, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/joubert-vazquez-v-alvarez-rubio-prd-2012.