William F. Delaney v. Dennis Rariden

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 09a0263n.06
Filed: April 7, 2009
No. 08-1189
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
WILLIAM F. DELANEY,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
DENNIS RARIDEN; WESLEY EVANS; JANE
HARRIS; MATTHEW BAUSERMAN; GARY
ELFORD; JOHN AND/OR JANE DOE, POLICE
OFFICER; RICK AND/OR ROBIN ROWE, GRAND
BLANC TOWNSHIP OFFICIAL, AGENT
EMPLOYEE AND/OR REPRESENTATIVE; AND,
THE CHARTER TOWNSHIP OF GRAND BLANC,
Defendants-Appellees.
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ON APPEAL FROM THE
UNITED STATES DISTRICT
COURT FOR THE EASTERN
DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
O P I N I O N
BEFORE: NORRIS, BATCHELDER and ROGERS, Circuit Judges.
ALAN E. NORRIS, Circuit Judge. Cleanliness, it is said, is next to godliness. In the
federal courts, as this appeal demonstrates, the same might be said of timeliness. In this appeal
Plaintiff William Delaney (“Delaney”) questions the propriety of two of the district court’s
determinations regarding his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suit alleging wrongful arrest and malicious
prosecution. First, the district court granted a motion made by defendants who are police officers
in Grand Blanc Township, and Grand Blanc Township itself, for summary judgment on all claims,
a motion which went unopposed by Delaney. Second, the district court denied Delaney’s

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Delaney v. Rariden
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subsequent–and untimely–request for leave to allow him to file a memorandum in opposition to
defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Delaney’s notice of appeal regarding the first decision
was untimely, and we affirm the district court on the second.
Untimeliness is a problem that has plagued Delaney throughout this case. The district court
granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment on October 26, 2007. Federal Rule of Appellate
Procedure 4 required Delaney to file his notice of appeal within thirty days. He failed to do so,
instead filing his notice on January 21, 2008, eight weeks late. And Delaney’s request for leave to
file a memorandum, filed five weeks after the entry of the summary judgment order, did not extend
the filing deadline for the notice of appeal. Appellate Rule 4(a)(4)(A) contemplates several motions
which may do just that, but Delaney’s motion was not one of those. All of which is to say that
Delaney’s notice of appeal was, by a wide margin, untimely, and so we do not consider this aspect
of his appeal.
We are left, then, with the question of whether the district court properly denied Delaney’s
request for leave to file a memorandum in opposition to defendant’s motion for summary judgment.
We have no trouble concluding that it did. This request, too, was untimely filed, a full five weeks
after the district court had ruled on the summary judgment motion. Delaney tells us only that
“extraordinary circumstances” prevented him from timely filing his brief in opposition. Not only
does he fail to cite to any legal support for his position, but he fails in even the more modest aim of
marshaling some factual support for it, by neglecting to spell out what, exactly, these “extraordinary
circumstances” were. We therefore deem this argument waived. See Moore v. Lafayette Ins. Co.,
458 F.3d 416, 448 (6th Cir. 2006) (“[The courts of appeals] are not self-directed boards of legal

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Delaney v. Rariden
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inquiry and research, but essentially arbiters of legal questions present and argued by the parties.”);
Indeck Energy Servs., Inc. v. Consumers Energy Co., 250 F.3d 972, 979 (6th Cir. 2000) (issues
adverted to in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation, are
deemed waived). Delaney presents no other arguments for reversing the decision of the district
court.
Delaney’s appeal is dismissed to the extent that it relates to the district court’s grant of
summary judgment against him, and the district court’s decision denying Delaney’s request for leave
to file a memorandum in opposition is affirmed.

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