Sharon Marie Evans v. Sir Pizza of Kentucky, Inc.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 12a0046n.06
No. 10-6098
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
SHARON MARIE EVANS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
SIR PIZZA OF KENTUCKY, INC., et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
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ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED
STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
EASTERN DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY
Before: BOGGS, ROGERS and SUTTON, Circuit Judges.
SUTTON, Circuit Judge. On the evening of Feburary 12, 2008, Sharon Evans ordered a
pizza and salad from Sir Pizza, a restaurant in Lexington that pledges on its website to deliver food
“fast as the law allows.” What caught the attention of the police was not the speed of the delivery,
but odors emanating from Evans’s home, which smelled like the kinds of chemicals used in a meth
lab. All of this set off a bizarre chain of events that led to her arrest, trial and acquittal on a charge
of harassing a police officer. Evans sued Sir Pizza, its deliveryman, various local officials and the
Lexington–Fayette Urban County Government on a dozen or so legal theories. The district court
granted summary judgment to all defendants on the ground that the lawsuit lacked merit. On appeal,
Evans has filed briefs that, despite going on for nearly 150 pages, fail to give any cogent explanation
of what the district court got wrong. We affirm.

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Evans v. Sir Pizza of Kentucky, Inc.
I.
After Evans phoned in her order, deliveryman Brian Taylor brought it to her house. While
making the delivery, he noticed a strong chemical odor coming from inside. Taylor thought the odor
could be a byproduct of a meth lab, which worried him because he thought it might show up on a
drug test he had to take. Later that night, he voiced his concern to Lexington Police Officer Dawn
Dunn, when he ran into her at a gas station. Dunn, along with her colleagues Raymond Terry and
Noel Warren, investigated. They determined that Evans had an outstanding arrest warrant for
contempt of family court, then went to her house to serve her with the warrant and to investigate
possible drug activity. When they got there, they too smelled a strong chemical odor, which Evans
told them was a combination of Pine-Sol and bleach used to clean the house earlier in the day. The
officers claim that Evans tried to close the door on them and physically harassed Officer Terry. They
arrested her on the outstanding warrant and for harassment, but after searching the house (with
Evans’s consent) they decided there was insufficient evidence to charge her with any other offense.
The government prosecuted Evans on the harassment charge, but a jury acquitted her.
Evans filed this lawsuit against Taylor, Sir Pizza, the officers and the city/county government
on a bevy of grounds: violations of 42 U.S.C. § 1983; criminal conspiracy to violate her civil rights,
see 18 U.S.C. § 241; criminal trespassing and assault; slander, libel and defamation of character;
invasion of privacy; a RICO violation; municipal and corporate liability for failure to train and
negligent hiring and retention; false arrest and false imprisonment; intentional infliction of emotional
distress; malicious prosecution; and negligence. The district court granted summary judgment to all
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No. 10-6098
Evans v. Sir Pizza of Kentucky, Inc.
defendants on all claims. It reasoned that Evans had failed to produce any evidence that the county
government had a policy or custom of insufficient training or negligent hiring; that the supervising
officers were not involved in the incident in question; that Evans’s arrest was lawful because it was
made in connection with a valid arrest warrant; that the officers had not used excessive force in
arresting her; that the criminal statutes under which Evans sought to bring claims do not provide for
civil liability; that RICO is inapplicable; that Taylor and Sir Pizza were not acting under color of
state law for the purposes of § 1983; and that Evans had failed to produce sufficient evidence to
create an issue of material fact on any of her other state-law claims.
II.
Totaling 145 pages in length, Evans’s appellate papers are not brief. What is brief are the
seven pages she devotes to trying to explain the relief she seeks from this court. Acting through
counsel, she purports to raise five issues on appeal, but all of them fall into one of two categories
(and sometimes both of them): they lack sufficient coherence and specificity to warrant our
consideration or they are meritless.
First, and emblematic of everything that follows, Evans says that “[e]ach Order of the
[District] Court . . . constitutes a clearly erroneous, arbitrary and capricious abuse of discretion that
denies Evans equal protection of the law, and due process, meaningful access to the Court, and
adequate assistance of counsel . . . in contravention of Amendments 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 14 to the U.S.
Constitution.” Br. at 42. Evans does not attempt to explain how a district court order could violate
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any of those amendments, let alone all six of them. Because “[i]ssues adverted to in a perfunctory
manner, unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation, are deemed waived,” we
decline to address this claim (or perhaps claims). United States v. Sandridge, 385 F.3d 1032, 1035
(6th Cir. 2004).
Second, Evans says that the district court should not have granted summary judgment on her
claims because “more than 34 genuine issues of material fact[ ] appear affirmatively of record.” Br.
at 43. But Evans does not tell us what those issues of fact are, or which of her thirteen claims they
relate to. To survive summary judgment, a party must “designate specific facts showing that there
is a genuine issue for trial.” Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 324 (1986); see also Fed. R.
Civ. P. 56(c). Evans did not do that before the district court and has not done so on appeal. To the
extent that she attempts to offer examples of disputed material facts in her reply brief and in
pleadings before the district court, she still fails to link these facts to any of her claims.
Third, Evans says that the district court erred in denying her serial motions to compel
discovery. We review denials of motions to compel discovery for an abuse of discretion. United
States v. One Tract of Real Property Together with All Buildings, Improvements, Appurtenances,
and Fixtures Situated in District Three of Monroe County, Tenn., 95 F.3d 422, 426 (6th Cir. 1996).
Evans does not explain why it was an abuse of discretion for the district court to deny her motions,
nor does she tell us what information she could have gleaned from discovery that would have created
a genuine issue of material fact on any of her claims. No error occurred.
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No. 10-6098
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Fourth, Evans says that the district court “erred in misapplying state and federal statutes and
civil rules.” Br. at 45. But she does not provide any specifics other than her complaints about
discovery, discussed above, and other docket-management decisions the district court made, such
as its scheduling orders. Evans does not explain why these decisions were an abuse of discretion,
or for that matter how any of them prejudiced her. We decline to address this argument as a result.
See Sandridge, 385 F.3d at 1035.
Fifth, Evans says that the district court erred in denying her motion to disqualify opposing
counsel. Evans argues that the same attorney should not have represented Taylor and Sir Pizza due
to an alleged conflict of interest. We perceive no such conflict, nor do we see any basis for
disqualifying any of the other attorneys in the case. The district court properly denied her motions.
III.
For these reasons, we affirm.
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