Ilya Kovalchuk v. City of Decherd, Tennessee

This dispute concerns municipal liability in a § 1983 action against the City of Decherd, Tennessee (“City”), and a Decherd police officer. The officer violated Petitioner’s Fourth Amendment rights and the City deliberately failed to investigate the officer’s background before hiring him, causing injury to Petitioner. The City moved to dismiss, and two members of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ panel held that the police chiefs failure to screen the officer’s background before hiring was insufficiently pled under Twombly and Iqbal—requiring allegations to be plausible—to subject the City of Decherd to liability. One member of the panel dissented, asserting Petitioner sufficiently pled a claim for Monell failure-to-screen liability, and that discovery was the appropriate mechanism for proving or foreclosing the claim on summary judgment. Question 1 Whether the Sixth Circuit’s rejection of the “plausibility” of Petitioner’s Monell claim is erroneous, given its departure from the Twombly standard as followed by other circuits. Question 2 Whether limited discovery, as suggested by the Second Circuit, should be allowed to Petitioner, who would not otherwise have been able to obtain it without a federal subpoena prior to the dismissal of his complaint.