Andres M. Martinez v. G.D. Stanford W. Owen M. Atkinson D. Rockholt J. Stovall

Andres M. Martinez appeals the district court’s grant of the Calipatria State Prison correctional officers’ renewed summary judgment motion on his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim. Martinez claims that the correctional officers violated his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by using excessive force against him while breaking up a prison fight in an adjacent cell. We must decide whether summary judgment was erroneously granted, despite the failure of Martinez’s counsel to file a timely opposition to the officers’ motion and the existence of a local rule indicating that such failure may constitute consent to the granting of a motion. Because a district court may grant summary judgment on the basis of the moving papers and “such other papers as may be on file and specifically referred to,” Carmen v. S.F. Unified Sch. Dist., 237 F.3d 1026 , 1031 (9th Cir.2001), and because the motion papers here specifically referred to records demonstrating genuine issues of material fact defeating summary judgment, we must reverse.

I. BACKGROUND

On April 23, 1994, a skirmish broke out in the cell adjoining that of Martinez in Calipatria State Prison’s Administrative Segregation Unit. The correctional…