{"id":990,"date":"2007-05-14T08:08:38","date_gmt":"2007-05-14T08:07:23","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-14T08:07:23","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=990","title":{"rendered":"Declaratory judgment unnecessary in \u00a7 1983 damages action"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Yesterday, there were 24 cases to sort through; today 1. Sometimes Mondays have 7-9.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Pro se plaintiff got past the pleading stage in his \u00a7 1983 false arrest case, and he filed a request for declaratory judgment under F.R.C.P. 57 (which incorporates 28 U.S.C. \u00a7 2201). The court held that declaratory relief was unnecessary to determine the rights of the parties in this type of civil rights case. Nail v. Gutierrez, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34568 (N.D. Ind. May 10, 2007):<\/p>\n

The purpose of the Declaratory Judgment Act is to afford relief from uncertainty and insecurity with respect to legal relations. Nucor Corp. v. Aceros Y Maquilas de Occidente, S.A. de C.V.,<\/em> 28 F.3d 572, 578 (7th Cir. 1994); Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. American Mut. Liability Ins. Co.,<\/em> 372 F.2d 435, 438 (7th Cir. 1967). Otherwise stated, the purpose of declaratory judgments are “to avoid accrual of avoidable damages to one not certain of his rights and to afford him an early adjudication, without waiting until his adversary should see fit to begin suit, after damage had accrued.” Nucor Corp.,<\/em> 28 F.3d at 578.<\/p>\n

Although the defendants have not responded to Nail’s motion and the court could summarily rule on the motion pursuant to N.D. Ind. L.R. 7.1(a), the court will address the merits of Nail’s motion. In this case, Nail has filed a complaint for monetary damages based upon an unreasonable search and seizure. There is no uncertainty with respect to the legal relations between the parties in this case because the Fourth Amendment has defined the legal relations between the parties with regards to unreasonable search and seizure cases. The issue in this case is not determinative on whether a legal relation exists, but whether or not the officers’ conduct rose to the level of an unreasonable search and seizure. This type of determination is not within the purpose of the Declaratory Judgment Act. As a result, Nail’s motion for a declaratory judgment (docket # 71) is DENIED.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}