Unpublished Opinion Bartley v. Florida Intracity Patrol: Rude Reversal for New Federal District Judge

Unpublished Opinion Report

This blog rarely covers unpublished opinions, but the opinion in Bartley v. Florida Intracity Patrol, Inc., is notable for several reasons.  First of all, it is a 22 page unpublished opinion, which discusses the facts and law in some detail (based on the writing style, I would bet that the unsigned per curiam opinion was probably drafted by Judge Carnes’ chambers). 

 

Second, it directly takes the district court’s reasoning to task.  Often, in a polite reversal opinion, the panel does not even mention (or at least does not directly quote) the district court’s reasoning. 

This is not one of those opinions.  There are extensive quotes from the district court’s opinion.  (See slip opinion at 12-13, 20).  There is also explicit and strong disagreement with the district court’s conclusions.  (See slip opinion at 20 (“Each of the [district] court’s underlying premises, stated or unstated, is wrong.”); see also id. (noting that district court “wholly ignored” facts, “erroneously surmised,” and “mistakenly assumed”).) 

 

The main problem was that the district court had concluded that a plaintiff could make out a claim for an unlawful detention even where the plaintiff conceded that the detention was lawful! The panel also found that the district court erred in responding to a jury question without first notifying the parties and giving them an opportunity to be hard.   

Suffice it to say that the panel was not pleased with how the district court decided this case and let Judge Honeywell (a recent appointee of President Obama) know about it.