Filed: Feb. 21, 2002
Latest Update: Feb. 22, 2020
Summary: summary judgment.favorable divorce decree to the former Mrs. Hamilton.not name Judge Rotman as a party defendant. evidence of improper ex parte meetings between Joan, Arnold and the judge, as suggested by the defendants, regular presence in the judges chambers;County Probate Courts records.
[NOT FOR PUBLICATION--NOT TO BE CITED AS PRECEDENT]
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 01-1580
WILLIAM T. HAMILTON,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
JOAN E. ARNOLD
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Nathaniel M. Gorton, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Boudin, Chief Judge,
Rosenn*, Senior Circuit Judge,
and Lipez, Circuit Judge.
Edward Greer for appellant.
Brent A. Tingle with whom Joseph A. Seckler was on brief for
appellee.
January 23, 2002
________________
*Of the Third Circuit, sitting by designation.
Per Curiam. This litigation is a continuation of a
lengthy marital campaign waged in the Massachusetts state
courts. After eleven years of marriage and the birth of three
children, Janet Guy-Hamilton sued her husband, William T.
Hamilton (Hamilton) for divorce in the Worcester County Probate
and Family Court in Massachusetts. After a protracted and
contentious trial, the presiding judge, Arline Rotman, granted
the divorce. The judge awarded joint legal custody of the
children, the central issue in the suit, to both parents, with
physical custody to the mother. The judge also ordered the
father to pay child support and directed that he pay $10,000
toward his former wife’s legal fees, because the judge found
that Hamilton had needlessly protracted the litigation.
Hamilton appealed to the Massachusetts Appeals Court.
That court affirmed the judgment of the county court. In its
decision, the appellate court noted that Hamilton appealed from
“every significant aspect” of the judgment of divorce entered by
the Worcester Probate and Family Court. The appellate court’s
review of the record and arguments of the parties convinced it
that the appeal lacked merit. Hamilton petitioned the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for leave to obtain further
review. On July 24, 1995, the Supreme Judicial Court denied
both the petition for review and a motion for reconsideration.
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While the appeals and petition for review were pending in the
Massachusetts appellate courts, the Massachusetts Commission on
Judicial Conduct conducted an investigation of a complaint
concerning the improper assignment of the judge to the divorce
suit, because of her friendship with Joan Arnold (Arnold), the
attorney for Mrs. Hamilton. The Commission issued its findings
on April 25, 1995, announcing that the claims had been
investigated, computer records analyzed, many witnesses
interviewed and the court files reviewed, and that the
complainant’s allegations were unsubstantiated.
Following the bitter, hard-fought and lengthy divorce
proceedings in the state courts, Hamilton resourcefully filed
this action in the United States District Court for the District
of Massachusetts. In his complaint as amended, he alleged that
the defendant, Arnold, the attorney who represented his former
wife in their divorce proceedings, conspired with the presiding
judge in that lawsuit to deprive Hamilton of his constitutional
right to a fair divorce trial, in contravention of 42 U.S.C. §
1983. The plaintiff seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
The district court denied Arnold’s motion to dismiss the
complaint, finding it “marginally sufficient to state a claim.”
After extensive discovery extending over eighteen months, the
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district court granted the defendant’s motion for summary
judgment. Hamilton timely appealed. We affirm.
Although Hamilton specifically finds fault with several
of the district court’s findings of fact, his basic contention
is that the district court erred in granting summary judgment
because there is a genuine issue of material fact that must be
submitted to the jury. As Hamilton contends, this court
exercises de novo review over the district court’s granting
summary judgment. Guzman-Rivera v. Rivera-Cruz, 29 F.3d 3, 4
(1st Cir. 1994). Summary judgment is only appropriate if “the
record discloses no trialworthy issue of material fact and the
moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”
Alexis v. McDonald’s Rests. Inc.,
67 F.3d 341, 346 (1 st Cir.
1995). The record must be viewed in the light most favorable to
the nonmoving party. Griggs-Ryan v. Smith,
904 F.2d 112, 115
(1st Cir. 1990). All reasonable inferences must be accepted in
favor of the nonmoving party.
Id.
Hamilton argues that the evidence, when viewed in the
light most favorable to him, is sufficient for a reasonable jury
to infer a conspiracy and that summary judgment therefore was
inappropriate. Because the sine qua non of a conspiracy, the
agreement, is exceedingly difficult to prove directly, it
usually must be inferred from the circumstances. Earle v.
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Benoit, 850 F.2d 836, 843 (1st Cir. 1988). Indisputably, there
is no proof of any explicit agreement on the part of the judge
in the divorce proceedings and Arnold to unlawfully grant a
favorable divorce decree to the former Mrs. Hamilton. The
question for this court is whether the evidence Hamilton adduced
is sufficient for a reasonable jury to find a conspiracy
“‘without speculation and conjecture.’”
Id. at 844 (quoting
Aubin v. Fudala,
782 F.2d 280, 286 (1st Cir. 1986)). Hamilton
asserts that it was. The district court held that it was not.
Hamilton forcefully argues that the due process clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees him “an impartial and
disinterested tribunal” in his divorce proceeding. Marshall v.
Jerrico, Inc., 446 U.S. 238, 242 (1980). Therefore, trials
require an absence of actual bias. In re Murchison,
349 U.S.
133, 136 (1955). Redress for such a violation is available
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 when the constitutional right is violated
under color of state law. A private attorney who conspires with
a state judge is within § 1983’s purview. Casa Marie, Inc. v.
Superior Court,
988 F.2d 252, 258-59 (1st Cir. 1993). Because
judges generally enjoy absolute immunity from suits for money
damages, Mireless v. Waco,
502 U.S. 9 (1991), the plaintiff did
not name Judge Rotman as a party defendant.
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Because the facts accumulated in the related
proceedings are very extensive, the plaintiff has reduced them
to six categories, each disputed by the defendant. Hamilton
argues that drawing all reasonable inferences therefrom in his
favor, they establish genuine issues of material fact in dispute
sufficient to preclude summary judgment. The categories as
stated by him are:
1. evidence of signaling in the courtroom between the
defendant and the presiding judge associated with
skewed evidentiary rulings;
2. evidence of improper ex parte meetings between Joan
Arnold and the judge, as suggested by the defendant’s
regular presence in the judge’s chambers;
3. evidence of improper ex parte communications between
the defendant and the judge, as demonstrated by
judicial comments on “grandparent intermeddling;”
4. the judge’s improper award of reverse attorney’s fees
to the defendant without any proof whatsoever of time
expended;
5. the defendant’s and the judge’s denials, during
discovery, of maintaining a friendship and socializing
with one another, which were contradicted by multiple
witnesses and documentary evidence; and
6. testimonial and statistical evidence demonstrating
that, contrary to the random judicial assignment
system in effect, Arnold tried the vast majority of
her contested cases before the presiding judge, rather
than appearing randomly before all three judges of the
Worcester Probate Court, and had an unusually
favorable record with the presiding judge in the
Hamilton case.
The district court here, viewing the evidence in the
light most favorable to Hamilton, found that Judge Rotman and
the defendant were close personal friends who frequently
associated with one another. He also found that “they
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improperly flaunted their friendship” and may have engaged in
other inappropriate conduct that gave the appearance of a
potential conflict of interest. D.C. op. at 9. However, the
court held that the obvious friendship and appearance of
impropriety did not, without more, “constitute circumstantial
evidence of an express or implicit agreement to deprive Hamilton
of a fair proceeding.” Id.
At oral argument, Hamilton’s counsel stressed as
“overwhelming” and “powerful” the statistical evidence Hamilton
adduced. Hamilton claims the statistical evidence proves that
the judge and the defendant manipulated the trial assignments in
the Worcester Probate Court so that Arnold appeared
disproportionately often in front of Judge Rotman. Hamilton
himself gathered the statistics by searching the Worcester
County Probate Court’s records. Because assignments were
random, Hamilton assumed that the defendant should have appeared
before two of the court judges about an equal number of times.
Hamilton discovered that in open court appearances Arnold
appeared before Judge Rotman 120 times, and before her
colleague, Judge Lian, 37 times. Although on the surface this
disparity appears striking, it is less so when examined in the
context of actual cases: Judge Rotman was assigned to 36 of
Arnold’s cases, while Judge Lian was assigned to 23. This 3:2
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ratio is hardly eye-opening, and could result from nothing more
than a simple stroke of circumstance. Moreover, assuming
arguendo that Arnold’s cases were not randomly assigned, there
is no evidence inculpating Arnold in any manipulation. Such
chicanery can only be inferred through conjecture and
speculation, which are not acceptable bases for finding a
conspiracy.
Hamilton’s other evidence is similarly unconvincing.
There are witnesses who testified that the defendant had at
times been seen in Judge Rotman’s chambers, but no witnesses saw
them there together during the trial. Hamilton also argues that
Judge Rotman’s admonition to Hamilton’s parents about
denigrating his former wife in front of their children must have
been the result of ex parte communications between the defendant
and the presiding judge. However, divorces are often bitter, as
was this one, and children are often used as pawns by one or
both parents. The caution to the grandparents is more likely an
expression of sound advice rather than the result of an ex parte
communication.
Hamilton further asserts that there was improper
signaling, such as winks and nods, between the judge and Arnold
while he was testifying. Hamilton submitted affidavits from
witnesses who, in other cases, claimed to have seen similar
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signaling between the judge and the defendant. Such behavior,
if it occurred, is not to be condoned, but without more it is
not evidence of a conspiracy. The alleged winks and nods in an
open court between the judge and a lawyer in a case at trial is
wholly inconsistent with a clandestine conspiracy to subvert the
trial. Hamilton alleges that the signaling was followed by
“skewed” evidentiary rulings from the judge, but he has not
drawn our attention to anything specific or insidious.
The issue here is not the apparent impropriety of some
of the actions of the judge and Arnold in the divorce
proceedings, but whether such impropriety proves a conspiracy
depriving Hamilton of his right to a fair and impartial trial.
Hamilton challenged that conduct in the Massachusetts Court of
Appeals and that court found it unsubstantiated. We have
carefully reviewed the record and briefs with respect to all the
allegations. We are satisfied that no reasonable jury could
have found a conspiracy between the judge and this defendant on
the speculative evidence presented by Hamilton, even giving him
the benefit of all inferences. Thus, we see no error in the
district court’s finding that “[t]here is simply no evidence of
any ex parte communications regarding Hamilton’s divorce case,
much less of an agreement to deprive him of a fair divorce
proceeding.” (D.C. op. at 9).
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Affirmed. Costs taxed against the appellant.
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