Jones v. City of Elyria

• Decision Date: 17 January 2020
• Docket Number: No. 18-4157,18-4157
• Citation: 947 F.3d 905
• Parties: Cody JONES, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CITY OF ELYRIA, OHIO, et al., Defendants, Anthony J. Weber, Badge #328, Nicholas Chalkey, Badge #53, and Paige Mitchell, Badge #229, individually and in their official capacities, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

947 F.3d 905

Cody JONES, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v. CITY OF ELYRIA, OHIO, et al., Defendants,Anthony J. Weber, Badge #328, Nicholas Chalkey, Badge #53, and Paige Mitchell, Badge #229, individually and in their official capacities, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 18-4157

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Decided and Filed: January 17, 2020

CHAD A. READLER, Circuit Judge.

Three Elyria (Ohio) police officers were named as Defendants in this civil rights lawsuit brought by Plaintiff Cody Jones, following Jones’s acquittal on charges arising from an altercation with those officers. At summary judgment, the district court allowed the lion’s share of claims against those officers to proceed to trial, denying the officers qualified immunity. In doing so, the district court largely assessed the officers’ conduct collectively, without distinguishing between their individual acts.

Our cases, however, require that each officer be assessed on her own terms. And while we agree with the district court’s treatment of the claims against Officers Nicholas Chalkley and Anthony Weber, Officer Paige Mitchell is uniquely situated. As she arrived at the scene after Jones had already been detained and was being patted down, her actions, taken in view of the circumstances apparent to her at the time of her arrival, were not objectively unreasonable for purposes of overcoming qualified immunity. Accordingly, we AFFIRM IN PART and REVERSE IN PART the judgment of the district court.

I. BACKGROUND

A small set of facts is undisputed. Officers Chalkley (often referred to as "Chalkey" in court documents) and Weber received a call that a potentially intoxicated white male was eating out of a dumpster located behind a shopping plaza. But when the pair responded to the call, they did not see anyone by the dumpsters. Scanning the plaza, the officers eventually spotted Jones, the only white male in the area, talking to two women in the plaza parking lot. Although, as the officers acknowledge, they were not investigating a crime upon making first contact, Weber called out to Jones, asking him to approach the police cruiser. What happened next is deeply disputed.

A. The Officers’ Version Of Events.

According to the officers, as Weber called out to Jones, the two women who had been speaking with Jones hurriedly walked away. As they walked past Weber, they thanked him for his help. At the same time, Jones ran behind a nearby clothing donation bin. After repeated instructions from the officers to approach the cruiser, Jones reluctantly complied, emerging from behind the bin with his palms turned down and an unidentified object in each hand. Weber instructed Jones to drop the objects. Jones complied, dropping two green peppers.

Jones then resumed approaching the cruiser. This time, his hands were in his pockets. Concerned that Jones might be concealing a weapon, Weber ordered Jones to keep his hands visible. Jones obeyed only momentarily, quickly returning his hands to his pockets. Once Jones reached the cruiser, Weber instructed Jones to place his hands on the hood. Weber then gave Jones a pat-down, as Chalkley assisted. When Jones again attempted to return one hand to his pocket, Chalkley grabbed Jones’s hand. Startled, Jones pushed off the hood of the car and attempted to punch Chalkley.

The officers took Jones to the ground. Jones resisted. He drew his arms underneath his body to avoid being handcuffed while kicking his feet at the officers. He attempted to draw his knees under his body in an effort to stand up. And he attempted to reach for Chalkley’s holstered firearm. In an effort to subdue Jones, Weber and Chalkley placed their weight on Jones’s hip area and struck Jones in his arms and sides with closed fists. Chalkley also punched Jones in the face after Jones grabbed Chalkley’s testicles.

Officer Mitchell arrived at the scene during the pat-down. As the scuffle with Jones ensued, Mitchell helped hold Jones’s legs, to keep him on the ground. With Mitchell’s assistance, Weber was able to tase Jones and end his resistance.

B. Jones’s Version of Events.

Jones tells a different story. Making his way home after buying two green peppers from a nearby café, Jones stopped in the plaza to have a conversation with two women. After talking to the women, Jones resumed walking, at which point he heard Weber call out.

Eventually realizing that Weber was speaking to him, Jones says he did as he was told. As he came toward the cruiser, Jones removed his hands from his pockets, kept them visible at all times, and then placed them on the hood of the cruiser. Weber and Chalkley performed a pat-down. Jones became nervous that he was being detained for no stated reason, so he looked over his left shoulder to speak with the two officers. In response, the officers took Jones to the ground.

Jones says he offered no resistance, and in fact struggled to breathe as his face was pressed against the concrete by an officer’s forearm. Jones could not move his arms due to the weight of the officers on top of him. Despite his lack of resistance, Jones says he was repeatedly punched and tased by Weber and Chalkley, barely maintaining consciousness. Though Mitchell arrived later and assisted Weber and Chalkley with the arrest, Jones does not allege that Mitchell struck or tased him.

C. The Aftermath.

Following the confrontation, Weber transported Jones to a nearby hospital, where Weber filled out a form to have Jones involuntarily committed. In that form, Weber stated that Jones was found searching for food in dumpsters, speaking nonsensically, and hallucinating. Weber’s statements combined with Jones’s history of mental health problems resulted in him being committed for psychiatric evaluation. That same day, Weber, Chalkley, and Mitchell each filled out patrol narratives describing the incident.

Shortly thereafter, the Lorain County prosecutor sought to indict Jones. To support an indictment, the prosecution called upon Lieutenant Juncker of the Elyria Police Department to testify before the grand jury. In his testimony, Juncker drew entirely from the patrol narratives prepared by the three officers.

Jones was indicted on charges of assault on a peace officer, obstructing official business, and resisting arrest. Before trial, the Lorrain County Court of Common Pleas held a suppression hearing to examine whether the officers had probable cause to arrest Jones. Jones, the officers, and Ruth Kennedy, a witness at the scene, all participated in the hearing. The officers and Jones offered testimony consistent with their respective versions of events described above. Kennedy testified that she was one of the two women seen talking to Jones immediately before the incident. She denied that she hurriedly walked away from Jones, denied that she thanked Weber, and denied that she saw Jones resist officers. Despite that testimony, the Common Pleas Court concluded that officers had probable cause to arrest Jones.

Much of this same testimony was given at the ensuing jury trial. After five days of proceedings, the jury acquitted Jones on all charges.

Following his acquittal, Jones filed this § 1983 action. Jones asserted: (1) an excessive-force claim against Weber, Chalkley, and Mitchell, (2) a supervisory-liability claim against Chief Duane Whitely, (3) Monell and ratification claims against Whitely and the City of Elyria, and (4) wrongful-arrest and malicious-prosecution claims against all Defendants. He also brought state-law claims for assault, battery, wrongful arrest, and malicious prosecution against all Defendants along with a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress against all Defendants except Whitely.

After discovery, Defendants moved for summary judgment. Defendants invoked qualified immunity to Jones’s § 1983 claims and state-law immunity to Jones’s remaining claims. In opposing the motion, Jones offered the affidavit of Dominique Camel, a second woman who claimed to have observed the altercation between Jones and the officers. Like Kennedy, Camel contradicted the officers’ version of events, stating that she never observed Jones resist the officers.

The district court granted summary judgment to Whitely and the City of Elyria on all claims, and it granted summary judgment to all Defendants on the assault and battery claim, finding that it was barred by the statute of limitations. The district court, however, denied immunity to the individual officers on the federal excessive-force claim as well as the federal and state-law wrongful-arrest and malicious-prosecution claims.

II. JURISDICTION

The district court had federal-question jurisdiction over the § 1983 claims. See 28 U.S.C. § 1331. And as the state-law claims arose from the same common nucleus of operative fact as the federal claims, the district court had supplemental jurisdiction over those claims. Watson v. Cartee , 817 F.3d 299, 303 (6th Cir. 2016) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted).

That covers the district court’s subject matter jurisdiction. But what about our appellate jurisdiction? Ordinarily, an order denying summary judgment is not a final order from which a party may appeal. Hoover v. Radabaugh , 307 F.3d 460, 465 (6th Cir. 2002) (internal citations omitted). In the § 1983 setting, however, the collateral order doctrine allows for an interlocutory appeal when a government actor is denied qualified immunity based on an issue of law. Chesher v. Neyer , 477 F.3d 784, 793 (6th Cir. 2007) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, we have appellate jurisdiction to consider questions of federal law at stake in this appeal.

Because Jones’s state-law claims were before the district court on the basis of supplemental jurisdiction, we apply the substantive law of the forum state in evaluating them. Rishoi v. Deutsche Bank Nat’l Tr. Co. , 552 F. App'x 417, 421 (6th Cir. 2013) (quoting Super Sulky, Inc. v. U.S. Trotting Ass’n , 174 F.3d 733, 741 (6th Cir. 1999) ("A federal court...