Valladares v. Cordero

• Decision Date: 12 January 2009
• Docket Number: No. 07-1995.,07-1995.
• Citation: 552 F.3d 384
• Parties: James VALLADARES, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Victor CORDERO, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

552 F.3d 384

James VALLADARES, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Victor CORDERO, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 07-1995.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: October 30, 2008.

Decided: January 12, 2009.

Mary Alice Rowan, County Attorney's Office, Prince William, Virginia, for Appellant. James Arthur DeVita, Butler Legal Group, P.L.L.P., Washington, D.C., for Appellee.

Before GREGORY and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges, and RICHARD D. BENNETT, United States District Judge for the District of Maryland, sitting by designation.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge GREGORY wrote the opinion, in which Judge DUNCAN and Judge BENNETT joined.

OPINION

GREGORY, Circuit Judge:

In this case, Officer Victor Cordero, Appellant, challenges the district court's denial of his motion for summary judgment in which he asserted the affirmative defense of qualified immunity. For the reasons stated herein, the district court's decision is affirmed.

I.

At approximately 8:00 p.m. on December 8, 2005, Officers Cordero and Anthony Notarantonio arrived at the home of Josefina Valladares in response to a domestic disturbance reported to the Prince William County Police Department. The officers discovered that Ms. Valladares called the police because she was having a dispute with her elder son, Boris Valladares ("Boris"), age twenty-five, who had come home intoxicated. Officer Cordero, a native Spanish speaker, attempted to mediate the dispute. According to Officer Cordero, he told Boris to respect his mother but, despite Ms. Valladares' insistence, refused to arrest Boris.

Before the officers arrived, James Valladares ("James"), Ms. Valladares' fifteen-year-old son, became so frustrated by the fight between his mother and brother that he ran outside to his driveway and sat by his mother's car text messaging his girlfriend. When Officer Cordero left the Valladares' home he approached James, shined a flashlight in James' eyes, asked him where he lived, and asked him to put his cell phone away. James answered the officer's question and complied with the request to put his phone away.

While the officers were talking to James, Boris came out of the house to smoke a cigarette. When he saw the officers talking to his younger brother he yelled, "Why are you talking to him? He didn't do anything wrong." (J.A. 38-39.)¹ According to James, Officer Notarantonio responded, "You're 25-years-old. You're living with your mom. She needs to kick your ass out." (J.A. 39.) Boris responded by yelling, "Get off my property white boy." (Id.) Officer Notarantonio immediately placed Boris under arrest, in response to which Boris repeatedly asked what he had done wrong and refused to put his arms behind his back.

Officer Cordero attempted to assist his partner in Boris' apprehension by grabbing the resisting man's legs, which resulted in Boris falling to the ground and hitting his face on the concrete driveway. At some point, Officer Notarantonio sprayed Boris with pepper spray. James saw his brother bleeding and the two officers "still on top of him," so he jumped into the middle of the dispute and tried to push Officer Cordero off of Boris. (J.A. 39.) Officer Cordero claims that James was enraged and punched him repeatedly in the back of the head. Nonetheless, James testifies that he did not hit the officer.

At this point in the altercation, the facts that the Valladares family asserts and the facts that the officers assert differ greatly. Officer Cordero's version of the facts are as follows: After James "attacked him," he grabbed and held James with his arms behind his back as the boy kicked rearward at the officer. The kicks made James lose his balance and caused them both to fall facedown on the driveway. On the way down they both hit James' stepfather's truck. Officer Cordero speculates that James broke his jaw when they fell to the ground. Once they were on the ground, the officer could not handcuff James because his body armor was in the way, so he lifted James up off the ground and handcuffed him against the car.

Conversely, James testifies that the officer grabbed him and swung him headfirst into his mother's car several times. Eventually, James fell to the ground; Officer Cordero stood him up and had him under full control. The officer then slammed the teenager's face into the car, at which point James heard his jaw snap.

At the time of the incident, James was fifteen years old, five-feet-three-inches tall, and weighed 130 pounds. Officer Cordero was six-feet-two-inches tall and weighed approximately 250 pounds.

After the altercation, an ambulance transported James to Prince William County Hospital, where an x-ray confirmed that his jaw was broken. The following day, a doctor wired his jaw shut and it remained shut for the next six weeks. During those six weeks, James could consume only liquid meals; as a result, he lost eighteen pounds. Further, during this period he vomited, which caused his jaw to crack open again. Ultimately, James missed two months of school, experienced great pain, and incurred significant medical expenses.

On December 7, 2006, Ms. Valladares filed her complaint, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2000), alleging that her son had been battered, negligently injured, and subjected to excessive force in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. On January 5, 2007, Officer Cordero moved to dismiss the complaint or, in the alternative, for summary judgment, claiming he was entitled to qualified immunity. On February 5, 2007, the district court denied the motion on the grounds that the facts in the case are heavily disputed. On February 5, 2007, Officer Cordero submitted a supplement to his motion for summary judgment. On March 8, 2007, the district court granted the supplemental motion as to the claims of negligence and denied the motion as to the claims of battery and gross negligence.

On July 19, 2007, Officer Cordero filed a motion for leave to renew his motion to dismiss or for summary judgment. The district court denied this motion on August 27, 2007, finding that Ms. Valladares alleged sufficient facts to demonstrate the existence of excessive force. On September 4, 2007, Officer Cordero filed a notice of appeal and a motion for reconsideration, again on the basis of qualified immunity. On September 24, 2007, the district court denied this motion and on October 4, 2007, Officer Cordero filed an amended notice of appeal.

II.

Under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 (2000), this Court possesses jurisdiction over final orders of district courts. To the extent that a district court's rejection of a government official's qualified immunity defense turns on a question of law, it is a final decision under the collateral order doctrine and is subject to immediate appeal; but if the appeal seeks to argue the insufficiency of the evidence to raise a genuine issue of material fact, this Court does not possess jurisdiction under § 1291 to consider the claim. Bailey v. Kennedy, 349 F.3d 731, 738 (4th Cir.2003). Thus, this Court has appellate jurisdiction to consider appeals from denials of qualified immunity only "to the extent that the official maintains that the official's conduct did not violate clearly established law." Winfield v. Bass, 106 F.3d 525, 529 (4th Cir.1997) (en banc).

The inquiry into whether a defendant is entitled to qualified immunity includes a two-part analysis. First, we must determine whether the underlying allegations of a claim substantiate a violation of a constitutional right. See Ridpath v. Bd. of Governors Marshall Univ., 447 F.3d 292, 306 (4th Cir.2006). In order to determine whether the facts demonstrate that the officer's conduct violated a constitutional right, we evaluate the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001). Second, if there is an alleged violation of a constitutional right, the court must determine whether the violation was of a "clearly established" right. Ridpath, 447 F.3d at 306. In order for the right to be clearly established it must be:

"sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violated that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful; but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent."

Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987) (internal citation omitted); see also Ridpath, 447 F.3d at 306 (citing Mellen v. Bunting, 327 F.3d 355, 365 (4th Cir.2003) (noting that if there is an alleged violation of a constitutional right, the court must determine whether the "violation was of a `clearly established' right `of which a reasonable person would have known.'")); Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151.

It is clearly established that citizens have a Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures accomplished by excessive force. Waterman v. Batton, 393 F.3d 471, 476 (4th Cir.2005). In this case, the district court found that Ms. Valladares alleged sufficient facts to establish a violation of a constitutional right. Here, Officer Cordero appeals the court's conclusion that he knew or should have known that his actions were excessive. See Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982).

The test for whether an officer knew or should have known whether a particular seizure under the Fourth Amendment was excessive is a "reasonableness" test. See Rowland v. Perry, 41 F.3d 167, 172 (4th Cir.1994); see also Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989); Jones v. Buchanan, 325 F.3d 520, 527 (4th Cir. 2003) (providing that a court determines "whether an officer has used excessive force to effect a seizure based on a standard of `objective reasonableness.'") (quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 399, 109 S.Ct. 1865). The Supreme Court...