Stevens v. Corbell, 86-2609

• Decision Date: 25 November 1987
• Docket Number: No. 86-2609,86-2609
• Citation: 832 F.2d 884
• Parties: Kevin Lee STEVENS Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Gerald CORBELL, et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 884

832 F.2d 884

Kevin Lee STEVENS Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Gerald CORBELL, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 86-2609.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Nov. 25, 1987.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Jan. 22, 1988.

Gabriel G. Quintanilla, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jim Mattox, Atty. Gen., Austin, Tex., for defendants-appellants.

Curtis B. Stuckey, Timothy B. Garrigan, Nacogdoches, Tex., for plaintiff-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Before GARZA, WILLIAMS, and GARWOOD, Circuit Judges.

GARWOOD, Circuit Judge:

This appeal stems from section 1983 claims brought by plaintiff-appellee Kevin Lee Stevens against three police officers and a constable, in which Stevens alleged that the officers violated his constitutional rights by using excessive force in booking him into jail in Shelby County, Texas. Following an adverse jury verdict, the district court granted Stevens a new trial. Defendants-appellants Gerald Corbell, Hal Wyatt, and Jessie Wilburn (collectively, the police officers) brought this interlocutory appeal from the district court's new trial order on the ground that it deprived them of their right, under the doctrine of qualified immunity, not to go through a trial. We reject their arguments and, accordingly, affirm the district court's grant of a new trial.

Facts and Proceedings Below

Kevin Stevens spent the afternoon of March 4, 1984 drinking with some of his friends. At about 5:30 p.m., Stevens drove several friends to a nearby convenience store. In the parking lot of the convenience store, Stevens apparently hit a parked car owned by one of the girls riding with Stevens in his car. The girl whose car Stevens hit yelled at him, and Stevens threatened to strike her. An argument then ensued between Stevens and one of his male friends, and Stevens and the male friend began fighting in the parking lot.

Answering the convenience store manager's telephone call, Constable Johnny Williams arrived and arrested Stevens, who was twenty-one years old at the time, and two of his male friends. Williams handcuffed Stevens to one of the boys, and the other to himself. He ordered them into the police car and began driving to the Shelby County jail. En route, he radioed ahead for assistance, and was met at the jail by Officers Corbell, Wyatt, and Wilburn. As the young men entered the jail, they either tripped or were pushed, and fell to the ground.

What happened inside the jail is hotly disputed. According to Stevens, Officer Corbell slammed him against the wall. Corbell denies this. Stevens then punched Corbell in the face. Following this so-called "first incident," Stevens claims that he was unhandcuffed, taken into the kitchen area, and severely beaten by Corbell (the second incident). Stevens, allegedly unconscious by now, says Corbell subsequently dragged him into the intoxilizer room and beat him further (the third incident). Under Stevens' version of the facts, each of the other officers witnessed at least one of these incidents, yet made no attempt to intervene on his behalf or otherwise to stop Corbell.

Corbell, on the other hand, claims that Stevens was violent and combative throughout the events in question, and that he used only the amount of force necessary to subdue Stevens. The other police officers concur that Corbell used a reasonable amount of force against Stevens.

Following these three incidents, Stevens was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he remained for four days. His injuries included a broken eardrum, nose, and cheek bone, and several cuts and bruises.

On April 9, 1984, Stevens filed suit against the police officers in their individual and official capacities, alleging a claim under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 for deprivation of rights secured by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as a pendent state-law tort claim for assault and battery. The complaint averred that Officer Corbell used excessive force during each of the three incidents on March 4, 1984; that Officers Wyatt and Wilburn, and Constable Williams, acquiesced in and deliberately failed to prevent the "brutal beatings" by Officer Corbell; and that the actions and omissions of each of the defendants were "willful, wanton and reckless" and in "conscious disregard and reckless indifference to the constitutional ... rights" of Stevens. Stevens sought compensatory and punitive damages, and attorneys' fees. The officers answered by denying that they had deprived Stevens of any federal constitutional or state-law rights and by raising as an affirmative defense good faith immunity. Subsequently, following the death of defendant Williams, the district court dismissed Stevens' claims against him.

After a four-day trial that commenced on January 22, 1986, the district court instructed the jury, both orally and in writing, on Stevens' section 1983 claims and on the officers' defense of qualified immunity. The case was then submitted to the jury on special interrogatories, which asked with regard to each of the three incidents in question whether Corbell had used "unreasonable force" against Stevens. The jury answered "No" to each of these interrogatories. In compliance with the conditioning instructions on the verdict form, the jury did not answer the remaining interrogatories, which addressed Stevens' claims against the other officers and the amount of damages. The district court entered judgment in accordance with the jury's verdict, dismissing Stevens' suit with prejudice.

Stevens then timely moved for a new trial, claiming error in the court's instructions to the jury. The district court granted Stevens' motion. The officers then submitted a motion to vacate the order granting a new trial or, in the alternative, to amend the order to allow for immediate appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1292(b) and for a stay of district court proceedings pending the appeal. The district court denied this motion. The officers next filed in the district court a notice of appeal to the Fifth Circuit, and filed in this Court an emergency motion for stay of the district court proceedings pending the appeal. See Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(1), 8(a).

A motions panel of this Court granted the police officers' motion for stay pending appeal and, when Stevens subsequently moved for reconsideration of the order granting the stay, denied that motion. ¹ The motions panel reasoned that the police officers' appeal challenging the district court's decision to grant a new trial in effect raised the issue of their entitlement to qualified immunity; and that since the Supreme Court in Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985), had held that a court's denial of a claim of qualified immunity was an appealable final decision within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1291, this Court had jurisdiction over the police officers' appeal. The appeal was then assigned to the present panel for a decision on its merits, following briefing and oral argument.

Discussion

Jurisdiction

An order granting a new trial is interlocutory, and is therefore not ordinarily immediately appealable. Allied Chem. Corp. v. Daiflon, Inc., 449 U.S. 33, 101 S.Ct. 188, 66 L.Ed.2d 193 (1980); Dassinger v. South Central Bell Telephone Co., 537 F.2d 1345, 1346 (5th Cir.1976). Under the collateral order doctrine, however, an otherwise interlocutory order of the district court is appealable as a final decision under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1291 if it falls within "that small class [of cases] which finally determine claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action, too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated." Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 1225-26, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949).

The Supreme Court in Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2817, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985), held that a denial of a summary judgment motion brought on the basis of a qualified immunity defense, "to the extent that it turns on an issue of law," is an appealable final decision under the collateral order doctrine. According to Mitchell, immediate appealability was called for because the protection afforded by qualified immunity is not merely immunity from payment of damages, but also freedom from the burdens of standing trial and of undergoing unnecessary discovery in cases in which liability is foreclosed by the immunity doctrine as a matter of law. Id. at 2815-16 (citing Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2737-38, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). Since the entitlement includes immunity from suit in some cases, a court's wrongful denial of the defense could not in such cases be vindicated by appellate review after final judgment.

The police officers have argued, and the motions panel held, that the new trial order implicates the issue of their entitlement to qualified immunity. ² We think, however, that the district court's basis for granting the new trial goes more to the substantive elements the plaintiff must prove in his section 1983 claim than to the issue of qualified immunity. None of the interrogatories submitted to the jury dealt with qualified immunity. Although one part of the court's jury charge did describe the qualified immunity defense, that instruction is not the one upon the basis of which a new trial was granted.

Nevertheless, despite our doubt about whether the district court's order actually turned on the issue of qualified immunity, since the motions panel has already ruled not to dismiss the appeal, we choose not to reconsider the panel's determination of our jurisdiction. ³ However, since our jurisdiction over this appeal is based on the collateral order doctrine, as made applicable by Mitchell to issues of law involving entitlement to qualified immunity, we will examine the...