Almada

Opinion by Judge GWIN; Dissent by D.W. NELSON.

OPINION

Plaintiffs Anthony Smith and his wife Theresa Smith appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Defendant Santa Monica Police Sergeant Robert Almada on Smith’s claims for false arrest, malicious prosecution, and suppression of exculpatory evidence and on Theresa Smith’s substantive due process claim for deprivation of familial relations. 1 In support of his action against Almada, Smith claims that Sergeant Almada failed to disclose materially exculpatory evidence in Smith’s criminal arson trial — including a demonstrably false identification by a key *1081 witness against Smith. Although Smith’s first trial resulted a mistrial after the jury was unable to reach a verdict, he says that access to the exculpatory evidence would have resulted in an acquittal in the first trial, rather than a mistrial. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm.

I

In the early morning hours of February 13, 2003, a fire started inside Simply Sofas, a furniture store owned by Marilyn Nelson. The fire and smoke largely destroyed the store’s inventory, causing more than $2.8 million in damage.

After investigating,…

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent. It is unnecessary for the majority to use this case to define the scope of Brady. The majority concludes that the exculpatory evidence withheld from Smith was not material. The Brady analysis can and should end there. Until we are faced with a case that would otherwise meet the Brady requirements, as construed by the majority, we need not decide whether Brady applies when an unfair trial results in anything other than a conviction. Indeed, the majority cites to several cases in which the Seventh Circuit exercised the appropriate level of re *1090 straint. See Mosley v. City of Chicago, 614 F.3d 391, 397-98 (7th Cir.2010) (setting aside the question of whether Brady applies when a trial results in acquittal); Bielanski v. Cnty. of Kane, 550 F.3d 632, 643-44 (7th Cir.2008) (holding that a hypothetical, post-acquittal Brady claim would require plaintiff to establish a “reasonable probability” that the decision to go to trial would have been altered by the desired disclosure); see also Carvajal v. Dominguez, 542 F.3d 561, 569-70 (7th Cir.2008) (same). Instead of exercising similar restraint in the tradition of case-by-case adjudication, however,…