Kevin Briggs v. Gallatin County

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: July 14, 2025
• Docket: 22-35527
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JUL 14 2025 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

KEVIN BRIGGS, No. 22-35527

Plaintiff-Appellant, D.C. No. 2:18-cv-00010-KLD

v. MEMORANDUM* GALLATIN COUNTY; JOHN DOES, 1-8, as individuals and in their official capacity as detention officers,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Montana Kathleen Louise DeSoto, Magistrate Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted June 3, 2025 San Francisco, California

Before: CALLAHAN, BADE, and KOH, Circuit Judges.

Plaintiff-Appellant Kevin Briggs sued Defendant-Appellant Gallatin County

alleging violations of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights while he was a

pretrial detainee at the Gallatin County Detention Center. After a five-day trial, the

jury awarded Briggs nominal damages on two of his claims and found in favor of

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. the County on his remaining claims. Briggs now challenges the jury instructions

and the partial denial of his motion for summary judgment.1 We have jurisdiction

to review the final judgment under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We affirm the final

judgment and dismiss Briggs’s challenge to the denial of summary judgment.

1. “We review de novo whether a district court’s jury instructions

accurately state the law, and we review for abuse of discretion a district court’s

formulation of jury instructions.” Coston v. Nangalama, 13 F.4th 729, 732 (9th

Cir. 2021) (quoting Hung Lam v. City of San Jose, 869 F.3d 1077, 1085 (9th Cir.

2017)). “Jury instructions must fairly and adequately cover the issues presented,

must correctly state the law, and must not be misleading.” White v. Ford Motor

Co., 312 F.3d 998, 1012 (9th Cir. 2002). But if an “error in the jury instruction is

harmless, it does not warrant reversal.” Clem v. Lomeli, 566 F.3d 1177, 1181 (9th

Cir. 2009) (quoting Dang v. Cross, 422 F.3d 800, 805 (9th Cir. 2005)).

Assuming, without deciding, that the jury instructions contained an error, we

affirm the final judgment because any such error was harmless. See id. The record

shows that the County’s disciplinary action against Briggs was supported by “some

evidence” with “some indicia of reliability.” Cato v. Rushen, 824 F.2d 703, 705

1 Briggs concedes that we lack jurisdiction to consider his appeal from the denial of his motion for attorneys’ fees and costs under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54, and we dismiss the appeal on that basis. See Nutrition Distrib. LLC v. IronMag Labs, LLC, 978 F.3d 1068, 1072 (9th Cir. 2020); Cal. Med. Ass’n v. Shalala, 207 F.3d 575, 576 (9th Cir. 2000).

2 (9th Cir. 1987). Briggs’s alternative argument that the “some evidence” standard

does not apply to pretrial detainees is unpersuasive, and we decline to adopt his

proposed “objectively reasonable evidence” standard to determine whether the

County’s disciplinary action satisfied procedural due process.

2. We dismiss Briggs’s challenge to the partial denial of his motion for

summary judgment because “the denial of a motion for summary judgment is not

reviewable on an appeal from a final judgment entered after a full trial on the

merits.” Price v. Kramer, 200 F.3d 1237, 1243 (9th Cir. 2000) (quoting Locricchio

v. Legal Servs. Corp., 833 F.2d 1352, 1358–59 (9th Cir. 1987)). Briggs concedes

that the magistrate judge’s denial of summary judgment “relied entirely on

disputed testimony,” and he summarily argues that the evidence before trial

supported his due process claim. The jury has already concluded that Briggs’s

rights were not violated, so there is no need for us to “engage in the pointless

academic exercise of deciding whether a factual issue was disputed after it has

been decided.” Banuelos v. Constr. Laborers’ Tr. Funds for S. Cal., 382 F.3d 897,

903 (9th Cir. 2004).

AFFIRMED IN PART AND DISMISSED IN PART.