Martin v. Board of County Com'rs of County of Pueblo

• Decision Date: 18 July 1990
• Docket Number: No. 89-1210,89-1210
• Citation: 909 F.2d 402
• Parties: Kathy MARTIN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF the COUNTY OF PUEBLO; Florence Chacon; Patrick Fleming; Pueblo, Colorado Sheriff's Department; Sheriff Larry E. Buckallew, Defendants-Appellants, and Does I Through X, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 402

909 F.2d 402

Kathy MARTIN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF the COUNTY OF PUEBLO;

Florence Chacon; Patrick Fleming; Pueblo,

Colorado Sheriff's Department; Sheriff

Larry E. Buckallew,

Defendants-Appellants,

and

Does I Through X, Defendant.

No. 89-1210.

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

July 18, 1990.

Terry Tomsick, Aspen, Colo., for plaintiff-appellee.

Cathy S. Harris and Diane L. Vaksdal, of Hall & Evans, Denver, Colo., for defendants-appellants.

Before LOGAN, JONES, ^* and SEYMOUR, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

This is an interlocutory appeal ¹ from an order of the district court denying summary judgment sought on immunity grounds by the individual defendants named in plaintiff's civil rights/tort suit. We affirm.

I.

Plaintiff alleged in her complaint that throughout her arrest at Parkview Hospital in Pueblo, Colorado for failure to appear on a speeding violation, and her subsequent transportation to and brief detention at the Pueblo County Jail, the conduct of defendant deputies Chacon and Fleming violated her fourth amendment right to be free from the use of excessive force during arrest and her fourteenth amendment due process right to adequate regard for her medical needs during pretrial detention. Defendants moved for summary judgment based on absolute or, alternatively, qualified immunity.

The evidence submitted on summary judgment consisted of several affidavits by the parties and other witnesses. Defendants' stated in their affidavits that on December 11, 1987, they were instructed to execute an arrest warrant against plaintiff, who was to be released that day from the hospital, and that they verified the warrant by telephone after locating plaintiff. Defendants asserted that both plaintiff and an unidentified nurse said plaintiff could walk out of the hospital, that defendants offered to obtain plaintiff a robe which she declined, and that they then escorted her out of the hospital and into a police van. Defendants drove the van at less than five m.p.h. to the county jail, and plaintiff was released on bond approximately one and one-half hours after she was arrested. Officer Rusick, who received the request from the Canon City Police Department to pick up plaintiff upon her release from the hospital, stated in his affidavit on behalf of defendants that he instructed defendants to execute the warrant and verified the warrant upon defendants' telephone inquiry.

Plaintiff's affidavits contained significant details absent in defendants' account. Both plaintiff and her mother, a physician present at the hospital when defendants arrived, attested that plaintiff had been in a serious accident on December 5, resulting in a fractured neck requiring a brace and hospitalization until December 11. Plaintiff and her mother informed defendants of her condition, the risk of injury--including paralysis--should she be moved other than by wheelchair or gurney, and that she was to be released only to the care of her parents (both medical doctors) and returned to bed under instructions from her attending physician. Defendants replied by threatening plaintiff with handcuffing and her mother with arrest. In response to plaintiff's mother's request that defendants at least contact plaintiff's attending physician before moving her, defendants stated that no calls would be made and that plaintiff would be taken to the county jail "no matter what." As a result of being required to walk, inadequately clothed, to the van, climb in, ride to the jail, make her way inside and then sit there for another hour without medical attention, plaintiff asserts that her existing neck injury was aggravated, causing additional physical and emotional pain, medical expense, and lost earnings.

Against this evidentiary background, the district court held that two constitutional claims--excessive force in arrest and inadequate medical attention--could be made out, both of which involved conduct violative of standards clearly established at the time the operative events occurred. Defendants maintain that the district court erred in rejecting their qualified immunity defense on this basis, and in denying their claim to absolute immunity. Our task on appeal is to

review the summary judgment [determinations] de novo, applying the same legal standard used by the district court under Rule 56(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Osgood v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 848 F.2d 141, 143 (10th Cir.1988). Summary judgment should be granted only if "there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and ... the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). When applying this standard, we are to examine the factual record and reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to the party opposing summary judgment. Gray v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 858 F.2d 610, 613 (10th Cir.1988).

Abercrombie v. City of Catoosa, 896 F.2d 1228, 1230 (10th Cir.1990).

II.

Defendants rest their claim to absolute "quasi-judicial" immunity on Valdez v. City and County of Denver, 878 F.2d 1285 (10th Cir.1989), where we held that several peace officers who had enforced a state court's contempt order were absolutely immune from damages for the contemnor's claims of false arrest and imprisonment. See also Henry v. Farmer City State Bank, 808 F.2d 1228, 1238-39 (7th Cir.1986) (law enforcement officers have absolute immunity in executing facially valid court order). While the immunity granted in Valdez protects defendants from liability for the actual arrest, it does not empower them to execute the arrest with excessive force or a deliberate indifference to an individual's known medical needs.

In Valdez, we repeatedly emphasized our concern that law enforcement officers not become scapegoats for unconstitutional court orders simply by virtue of their status as the only available targets for challenging the authority of the immune judicial official actually responsible:

Enforcing a court order or judgment is intrinsically associated with a judicial proceeding. If losing parties were free to challenge the will of the court by threatening its officers with harassing litigation, the officers might neglect the execution of their sworn duties....

....

To force officials ... to answer in court every time a litigant believes the judge acted improperly is unacceptable.... [I]t is simply unfair to spare the judges who give orders while punishing the officers who obey them. Denying these officials absolute immunity for their acts would make them a "lightning rod for harassing litigation aimed at judicial orders." 878 F.2d at 1288-90 (footnotes and citations omitted). The holding in Valdez was, accordingly, expressed specifically in terms of the direct relationship between the challenged conduct and the underlying directive of the court: "In this case, we hold that an official charged with the duty of executing a facially valid court order enjoys absolute immunity from liability for damages in a suit challenging conduct prescribed by that order." Id. at 1286 (emphasis added).

Neither the rationale nor the express holding of Valdez supports defendants' argument that peace officers are absolutely immune from liability for the manner in which they carry out otherwise proper court orders. ² To the contrary, a judicial warrant contains an implicit directive that the arrest and subsequent detention be carried out in a lawful manner. Insofar as defendants exceeded legal bounds in executing the warrant for arrest, defendants have a fortiori violated the very judicial order under which they seek the shelter of absolute immunity. ³ Regardless of whether the absolute immunity granted by Valdez with respect to enforcement of judicial contempt orders extends to bench warrants of the sort involved here, ⁴ an issue we need not reach, defendants are not entitled to quasi-judicial immunity. We conclude that absolute immunity does not protect defendants from damage claims directed not to the conduct prescribed in the court order itself but to the manner of its execution. See Turney v. O'Toole, 898 F.2d 1470, 1474 (10th Cir.1990).

III.

Turning now to defendants' qualified immunity defense, we must determine whether a reasonable officer could have believed the manner of plaintiff's arrest and detention in this case to be constitutionally permissible, in light of clearly established law and the information defendants possessed at the time. See Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640-41, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3039-40, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987); see also Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2817, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985).

In reviewing qualified immunity questions at the summary judgment stage, we employ the following analysis:

Once the defense has been raised and the plaintiffs have met their burden of identifying both the clearly established law that the government official is alleged to have violated and the conduct that violated that law, the defendant must demonstrate that no material issues of fact remain as to whether his or her actions were objectively reasonable in light of the law and the information he or she possessed at the time. A defendant who makes such a showing of objective reasonableness is entitled to summary judgment unless the plaintiff can demonstrate that there are factual disputes relevant to the defendant's claim to immunity.

Zuchel v. Spinharney, 890 F.2d 273, 274 (10th Cir.1989) (quoting Coen v. Runner, 854 F.2d 374, 377 (10th Cir.1988)).

Plaintiff has identified both a due process right to medical attention afforded to pretrial detainees under the fourteenth amendment, and a right not to be unreasonably seized by the use of excessive force in violation of the fourth amendment. We analyze each right in turn.

A. Fourteenth Amendment Due Process

More than two years prior to the events underlying the present suit, we held in Garcia v. Salt Lake County, 768 F.2d 303,...