Dupree v. Younger

by Supreme Court of the United States

Note: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

DUPREE v. YOUNGER
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 22–210. Argued April 24, 2023—Decided May 25, 2023

Respondent Kevin Younger claims that during his pretrial detention in a Maryland state prison, petitioner Neil Dupree, then a correctional officer lieutenant, ordered three prison guards to attack him. Younger sued Dupree for damages under 42 U. S. C. §1983, alleging excessive use of force. Prior to trial, Dupree moved for summary judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(a), arguing that Younger had failed to exhaust administrative remedies as required by law. Rule 56 requires a district court to enter judgment on a claim or defense if there is “no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” The District Court denied the motion, finding no dispute that the Maryland prison system had internally investigated Younger’s assault, and concluding that this inquiry satisfied Younger’s exhaustion obligation. At trial, Dupree did not present evidence relating to his exhaustion defense. The jury found Dupree and four codefendants liable and awarded Younger $700,000 in damages. Dupree did not file a post-trial motion under Rule 50(b), which allows a disappointed party to file a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law. He appealed a single issue to the Fourth Circuit: the District Court’s rejection of his exhaustion defense. The Fourth Circuit—bound by its precedent which holds that any claim or defense rejected at summary judgment is not preserved for appellate review unless it was renewed in a post-trial motion—dismissed the appeal.

Held: A post-trial motion under Rule 50 is not required to preserve for appellate review a purely legal issue resolved at summary judgment. In Ortiz v. Jordan, the Court held that an order denying summary judgment on sufficiency-of-the-evidence grounds is not appealable after trial. 562 U. S. 180, 184. Because the factual record developed at trial “supersedes the record existing at the time of the summary-judgment motion,” ibid., it follows that a party must raise a sufficiency claim in a post-trial motion in order to preserve it for appeal, id., at 191–192. That motion allows the district court to take first crack at the question that the appellate court will ultimately face: Was there sufficient evidence in the trial record to support the jury’s verdict?

The same is not true for pure questions of law resolved in an order denying summary judgment. These conclusions are not “supersede[d]” by later developments in the litigation, id., at 184, and so such rulings merge into the final judgment, at which point they are reviewable on appeal, Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., 517 U. S. 706, 712. The reviewing court does not benefit from having a district court reexamine a purely legal pretrial ruling after trial, because nothing at trial will have given the district court any reason to question its prior analysis.

Younger’s counterarguments are unpersuasive. Ortiz does not hold, as Younger contends, that any order denying summary judgment—whether decided on legal or factual grounds—is unreviewable under 28 U. S. C. §1291. While an interlocutory order denying summary judgment is typically not immediately appealable, §1291 does not insulate interlocutory orders from appellate scrutiny, but rather delays their review until final judgment. And while Younger insists there should be no two-track system of summary judgment, in which factual and legal claims follow different routes, nothing in Rule 56 supports his argument for uniformity. On the contrary, fitting the preservation rule to the rationale (factual or legal) underlying the summary-judgment order is consistent with the text of Rule 56. It also makes sense: Factual development at trial will not change the district court’s pretrial answer to a purely legal question, so a post-trial motion requirement would amount to an empty exercise. Finally, while Younger predicts that a separate preservation rule for legal issues will prove unworkable because the line between factual and legal questions can be “vexing” for courts and litigants, Pullman-Standard v. Swint, 456 U. S. 273, 288, experience demonstrates that Younger overstates the need for a bright-line rule. “Courts of appeals have long found it possible to separate factual from legal matters.” Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 574 U. S. 318, 328. Here, the Court does not decide whether the issue Dupree raised on appeal is purely legal, and remands for the Fourth Circuit to evaluate that question in the first instance. Pp. 4–9.

Vacated and remanded.

Barrett, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

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