United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit

FILED July 30, 2021 No. 20-40136 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk

Steven K. Topletz,

Petitioner—Appellant,

versus

Jim Skinner,

Respondent—Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas USDC No. 4:19-CV-820

Before Dennis, Higginson, and Willett, Circuit Judges. James L. Dennis, Circuit Judge: Steven Topletz lost a civil case in Texas state court, and the victorious plaintiff served him with a number of discovery requests aimed at uncovering his assets and sources of income in order to collect on the judgment. Topletz supplied many of the requested records, but he failed to produce documents related to a family trust of which he is a beneficiary. The Texas state court ordered production, but the trustee—Topletz’s brother—purportedly refused to provide Topletz with several of the trust documents. Instead, the trustee sent a letter to Topletz stating that the trust agreement allowed Topletz only to inspect the documents, not to obtain copies of them, and that Case: 20-40136 Document: 00515958830 Page: 2 Date Filed: 07/30/2021

No. 20-40136

it would thus breach the trustee’s fiduciary duty to supply Topletz with the requested records. The state court granted a motion for contempt and sanctions against Topletz, finding that the trust agreement did in fact grant him the right to obtain the requested documents and that they were thus under his control for purposes of discovery. The court sentenced Topletz to detention for fourteen days or “until [he] has fully purged himself of this contempt by serving on [opposing counsel] full and/or proper responses and/or documentation.” After his attempts at overturning the decision in state court failed, Topletz filed a habeas petition in federal district court, arguing that the contempt order violated his constitutional right to due process by requiring him to produce documents that he could not obtain. He requested a preliminary injunction to allow him to remain free during the adjudication of his petition. The district court denied Topletz the preliminary injunction because it found that he was unlikely to succeed on the merits of his habeas claim, and Topletz now appeals. Because we agree that Topletz has failed to show a substantial likelihood that the state court’s decision was contrary to clearly established Supreme Court precedent or based on an unreasonable interpretation of the facts in light of the evidence, we AFFIRM. I. Background and Procedural History A. The Original Proceeding In 2015, the 416th District Court in Collin County, Texas, found Appellant Steven Topletz liable to Lynda Willis and awarded Willis damages of approximately $1.1 million. 1 A year later, Willis served a series of post-

1 Neither the record nor the parties’ briefing reveals the nature of the original civil suit against Topletz. However, the case records on the Collin County website lists the

2 Case: