Phelps v. Coy

• Decision Date: 10 April 2002
• Docket Number: No. 00-4257.,00-4257.
• Citation: 286 F.3d 295
• Parties: Glenn W. PHELPS, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robert M. COY, Jr., Defendant-Appellant, Christin Stutes, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 295

286 F.3d 295

Glenn W. PHELPS, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robert M. COY, Jr., Defendant-Appellant, Christin Stutes, et al., Defendants.

No. 00-4257.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: September 11, 2001.

Decided and Filed: April 10, 2002.

David M. Deutsch (argued and briefed), Dayton, OH, for Appellee.

Lawrence Edward Barbiere (argued and briefed), Schroeder, Maundrell, Barbiere & Powers, Cincinnati, OH, for Appellant.

Before SILER, CLAY, and GIBSON, Circuit Judges.^*

OPINION

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge.

In this case, a civil rights defendant takes an interlocutory appeal from the district court's denial of his motion requesting summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity. Glenn Phelps sued Robert M. Coy, Jr., a sergeant in the Xenia, Ohio police department, alleging that Coy used unnecessary force while booking Phelps for a misdemeanor, specifically that Coy threw Phelps to the ground and banged his head against the floor of the police station. Coy moved for summary judgment, contending that he was entitled to qualified immunity because there was no evidence that his actions were unreasonable, nor that he acted maliciously, for the purpose of causing harm. The district court held that the facts taken in the light most favorable to Phelps indicated that Coy used unnecessary force, in violation of Phelps's clearly established Fourth Amendment rights, and accordingly it denied Coy's qualified immunity motion. Coy argues that the district court applied the wrong constitutional standard, that the law governing excessive force during booking was not clearly established, and that Coy's actions were not unreasonable. We affirm.

We state the facts as the district court recited them. See Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 319, 115 S.Ct. 2151, 132 L.Ed.2d 238 (1995) ("When faced with an argument that the district court mistakenly identified clearly established law, the court of appeals can simply take, as given, the facts that the district court assumed when it denied summary judgment for that (purely legal) reason."). The litigation arises out of the events of August 30, 1997. Coy and Christin Stutes, another Xenia police officer, arrested Phelps for violating a municipal open container ordinance. They put Phelps in handcuffs and took him to the police station for booking. While Stutes was booking Phelps, who was still handcuffed, he asked him to take off his shoes and socks, so Stutes could see if he had anything hidden about his feet. Stutes asked Phelps to lift his feet, but as Phelps tried to comply, one of his feet got close to Stutes's face. Stutes grabbed the foot and pushed it away, but Coy saw the incident and interpreted it as an attempt to kick Stutes. Coy tackled Phelps, and they both fell to the floor, with Coy on top of the handcuffed Phelps. Coy told Phelps not to try to kick one of his officers, and he hit Phelps in the face twice. Then he grabbed Phelps's shirt and banged his head into the floor at least three times. There was no evidence that Phelps posed a threat to Coy or anyone else after Coy was on top of him. Coy then told Phelps to calm down and he helped him to his feet.

Phelps filed suit against Coy, Stutes, the City of Xenia, Eric Prindle (the police chief of Xenia), and the City Commissioners of Xenia, alleging violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Supp. IV 1998), in addition to various state law claims. The defendants moved for summary judgment. The court granted summary judgment to the City of Xenia and its Commissioners, holding that Phelps failed to raise an issue of fact as to whether Coy's alleged use of excessive force resulted from a custom or policy of Xenia. The City of Xenia and the Commissioners were also entitled to judgment on the state law claims, because of state governmental immunity. As for Prindle, who was a police lieutenant, not chief of police, at the time of the incident, there was no evidence that he encouraged or otherwise participated in the alleged use of excessive force, and so the court entered judgment for him. The court granted Stutes summary judgment on the section 1983 claim because there was no evidence that Stutes had the opportunity to prevent Coy from hurting Phelps.

Coy sought summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity, arguing that Phelps's excessive force claim had to be evaluated under the objective reasonableness standard of the Fourth Amendment, and that under this standard, Coy had not violated Phelps's constitutional rights. Phelps responded that the claim was governed either by the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendments. Later, in his reply memorandum, Coy argued that the Eighth Amendment should govern Phelps's claim, so that Coy could be liable only if he used force "maliciously and sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm."

The district court held that Phelps's excessive force claim was governed by the Fourth Amendment standard and that under that standard there was an issue of fact as to whether Coy used unreasonable force. The facts, taken in the light most favorable to Phelps, showed that Coy saw Phelps's foot approach Stutes's face, and he concluded that Phelps was trying to kick Stutes. Coy tackled the handcuffed Phelps. As the two fell to the ground, with Coy on top of Phelps, Coy told Phelps he wouldn't be permitted to kick "one of his officers," and Coy hit Phelps in the face twice. Then, "[w]hile holding [Phelps's] shirt collar, Coy proceeded to slam his head into the floor at least three times." The district court concluded that a jury could find that the beating was not necessary to gain control of Phelps: "Coy was on top of [Phelps], who was handcuffed when the incident occurred. There is no evidence that, while in that position, [Phelps] presented a threat to Coy or to any other officer." The court also held that Phelps's right to be free from use of excessive force was clearly established at the time of the events in question. The district court denied Coy's motion for summary judgment.

Coy filed this interlocutory appeal. Phelps moved to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction and also asked this court for sanctions. We took Phelps's motion with the case.

I.

To begin with, we must address Phelps's motion to dismiss this appeal for lack of jurisdiction. The relevant statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1291 (1994), grants appellate jurisdiction over final judgments only, and denial of summary judgment is usually considered an interlocutory order, not a final judgment. Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 309, 115 S.Ct. 2151, 132 L.Ed.2d 238 (1995). However, denial of a motion for summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity may be deemed a final, appealable order by the following reasoning: the qualified immunity doctrine exists partly to protect officials from having to stand trial; a defendant wrongly forced to go to trial loses the benefit of the immunity even if he or she is exonerated after trial; therefore, the order cannot effectively be reviewed after trial and is considered final. Id. at 311-12, 115 S.Ct. 2151. Accordingly, denial of summary judgment can be appealed immediately, but only if the appeal presents a "neat abstract [issue] of law" rather than the question of whether the record demonstrates a genuine issue of fact for trial. Berryman v. Rieger, 150 F.3d 561, 563 (6th Cir.1998) (quoting Jones, 515 U.S. at 317, 319-20, 115 S.Ct. 2151). "If ... the defendant disputes the plaintiff's version of the story, the defendant must nonetheless be willing to concede the most favorable view of the facts to the plaintiff for purposes of the appeal," id.; otherwise, we cannot entertain the defendant's arguments, no matter how meritorious they may be.

In this case, Coy clearly has failed to limit his argument to questions of law taking the facts in the light most favorable to Phelps. Coy argues, for instance, that he "did not attempt to injure Phelps and intended to use no more force than was necessary to restrain and control him." If these assertions were crucial to Coy's appeal, we would be obliged to dismiss it for lack of jurisdiction. Where, however, the legal issues are discrete from the factual disputes, we may exercise our jurisdiction to resolve the legal issues only. Claybrook v. Birchwell, 274 F.3d 1098, 1103 (6th Cir. 2001). In this case, even taking the facts in the light most favorable to Phelps, Coy does present a series of strictly legal questions: Were Phelps's rights at the time of the alleged use of excessive force governed by the Fourth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment, or the Fourteenth Amendment? And, whatever our answer to that question, was that answer so clearly established at the time of the events in question that a reasonable officer would have known what standard governed his conduct and that the conduct was wrong under that standard? We conclude that these are the kind of questions that may be raised by interlocutory appeal and that we have jurisdiction over this appeal. We deny Phelps's motion to dismiss and for imposition of sanctions.

II.

A claim of qualified immunity presents two closely linked questions: whether the defendant violated the plaintiff's rights and whether those rights were clearly established at the time of the alleged violation. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 2156, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001). "The relevant, dispositive inquiry in determining whether a right is clearly established is whether it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted." Id. Because in this procedural posture we must take the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, these questions are strictly legal and we review them de novo. Dickerson v. McClellan, 101 F.3d 1151, 1157 (6th Cir.1996).

To decide whether Phelps presented evidence that Coy violated his constitutional right not to be subjected to unnecessary beating, we must first ascertain the source of that right. See Graham v....