What is a federal trial judge to do? One thing he may not do: face it as just another lawsuit in which the notice pleading's liberal policy of F.R. Civ. P. 8 counts on pre-trial discovery to ascertain the factual basis for the claim[.] ... Allowing pretrial depositions, especially those taken adversely of the government official to ferret all of his actions and the reasons therefor ... would defeat and frustrate the function and purpose of the ... immunity[.] ... [U]se of liberal discovery to establish the basis of a claim is directly at odds with the Court's direction in Harlow that government officials entitled to immunity [are to] be freed from the burdens, the stress, the anxieties and the diversions of pretrial preparations.
If a rule of law crafted to carry out the promise of Harlow requires the plaintiff to produce some evidence, and the plaintiff fails to do so, then Rule 56(c) allows the court to grant the motion for summary judgment without ado.
As has been our past practice, inmates transferring from DCDOC [the D.C. Department of Corrections] to BOP [the federal Bureau of Prisons] custody are permitted only a small amount of personal property which should be limited to personal care items and legal documents.
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.
There are special costs to “subjective” inquiries.... In contrast with the thought processes accompanying “ministerial” tasks, the judgments surrounding discretionary action almost inevitably are influenced by the decision maker's experiences, values, and emotions. These variables explain in part why questions of subjective intent so rarely can be decided by summary judgment ...
[c]arrying out the program of Harlow seems to imply attributing to the defendants the best intent they (objectively) could have under the circumstances, and asking whether the law at the time clearly establishes that persons with such an intent violate the Constitution. Yet that would be the functional equivalent of eliminating all recoveries when a mental state is part of the definition of the wrong—as it is in cases of racial discrimination, excessive punishment, and many other constitutional torts.
[1] Ms. Britton persistently displayed toward prisoners a cavalier attitude—manifesting a view that prisoners were beneath her, disentitled to dignity, and unworthy of civil treatment. [2] Ms. Britton was hostile to plaintiff, in particular, because she knew plaintiff ... had been in charge of the law library [and] had helped many prisoners prepare ... grievance forms or appeals of disciplinary actions, and had a reputation for asserting legal rights and knowing the administrative procedures for doing so. [3] Ms. Britton deemed plaintiff “too big for his britches.”
Ms. Britton was among those who were hostile to the Inmate Grievance Committee and to plaintiff's efforts to seek redress of prisoner grievances. On one occasion when plaintiff was typing [Housing and Adjustment] Board papers in the Q Block office, Ms. Britton came in and said to Cpt. (then Lt.) Brummell in a caustic manner that she (Cpt. Brummell) should watch out for plaintiff and make sure he wasn't using the typewriter to write up [grievance forms] or lawsuits. As Ms. Britton said this she stood over plaintiff to see what he was typing.
The day after the [first Washington Post] article was published [April 21, 1986], defendant Britton ordered plaintiff into her office. Corporal Barrett, then Officer in Charge of Dorm K2, escorted plaintiff there. Ms. Britton was visibly upset. After ignoring plaintiff for a considerable period, she asked him if he had arranged the visit by the reporter. When plaintiff said that he had, she asked him how he had done it. Plaintiff showed her the visitor application naming the reporters invited and their address and pointed out that Ms. Britton had approved the application. [7] Ms. Britton became enraged and accused plaintiff of tricking her. Plaintiff denied tricking her. [9] Ms. Britton said plaintiff had embarrassed her before her coworkers by having the reporter come. Ms. Britton made a telephone call trying to get plaintiff placed in restrictive confinement in Q Block. [11] When this effort failed she said that so long as plaintiff was incarcerated she was going to do everything she had to do to make it as hard for him as possible. A few days later Ms. Britton had plaintiff transferred to the Department's Central Facility.
[T]he only sure safeguard against crossing the line between adjudication and legislation is an alert recognition of the necessity not to cross it and instinctive, as well as trained, reluctance to do so.
plaintiffs might allege facts demonstrating that defendants have acted lawfully, append a claim that they did so with an unconstitutional motive, and as a consequence usher defendants into discovery, and perhaps trial, with no hope of success on the merits. The result would be precisely the burden Harlow sought to prevent.
[h]ad the Court intended its formulation of the qualified immunity defense to foreclose *851 **188 all inquiry into the defendants' state of mind, the Court might have instructed the entry of judgment for defendants ... on the constitutional claim without further ado. In fact, the Court returned the case to the district court in an open-ended remand, a disposition hardly consistent with a firm intent to delete the state of mind inquiry from every constitutional tort calculus.
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