United States Court of Appeals 

For the First Circuit 

No. 16-1725 

VALENTINE UNDERWOOD, 

Plaintiff, Appellee, 

v. 

PATRICK BARRETT; ANTHONY CATALANO; JEFFREY CLEMENT; BRIAN 

DEVLIN; MICHAEL MCDONALD; ANTHONY FALCIANO; LEO MARCHAND; STUART 

MCCULLOCH; WILLIAM SHUGRUE, 

Defendants, Appellants, 

DOUGLAS BOWER; CORRECTIONAL OFFICER SWEETS, f/k/a John Doe 

(Sweets); DONALD DENOMME; JEFFREY FISHER; MICHAEL GRANT; JACK 

HAUGHEY; JASON LANPHER; ABBY NELLIGAN; JAMES NELSON; DINARTE 

REGO; JAMES J. SABA; SEAN SMITH; LUIS S. SPENCER, 

Defendants. 

 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS 

[Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge] 

Before 

Torruella, Thompson, and Kayatta, 

Circuit Judges. 

Nancy Ankers White, Special Assistant Attorney General, and 

Charles W. Anderson Jr., Sentencing Counsel, Department of 

Correction, on brief for appellants. 

Valentine Underwood on brief pro se. 
May 17, 2019 
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Per curiam. When plaintiff refused to exit a prison 

recreation cage to be brought to a new cell, prison officials used 

oleoresin capsicum ("pepper spray"), physical force, and handcuffs 

to secure his compliance with the officials' orders. Plaintiff 

subsequently brought this lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging 

the use of excessive force in violation of the Eighth Amendment to 

the U.S. Constitution. 

The prison officials eventually moved for summary 

judgment, contending that, at the very least, they were entitled 

to qualified immunity. See Gray v. Cummings, 917 F.3d 1, 10 (1st 

Cir. 2019) ("[G]overnment official[s] may invoke the defense of 

qualified immunity when [their] actions, though causing injury, 

did 'not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional 

rights of which a reasonable person would have known.'") (quoting 

Conlogue v. Hamilton, 906 F.3d 150, 154 (1st Cir. 2018)). After 

the district court denied the motion, the prison officials 

appealed. 

The record contains two versions of the relevant 

interaction between plaintiff and prison officials as they 

attempted to move him from the recreation cage. One version is 

the plaintiff's description of what happened. The other version 

is a videotape of the interaction taken by prison officials. No 

one disputes the authenticity of the video evidence. Nor is there 
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any claim that it was doctored in any way. The two versions 

conflict in several apparently crucial respects. Under plainly 

controlling law, the district court's job was to decide whether 

the video evidence "blatantly contradicted" the plaintiff's 

version of events, in which case the court's next job was to 

determine if, viewing the facts in the light depicted by the video 

evidence, the prison official violated plaintiff's constitutional 

rights. See Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 377 (2007) (quoting 

Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001)); id. at 380-81 ("When 

opposing parties tell two different stories, one of which is 

blatantly contradicted by the record, so that no reasonable jury 

could believe it, a court should not adopt that version of the 

facts for purposes of ruling on a motion for summary judgment."). 

The district court conceded that the video evidence was 

"compelling," but opted to reject the teaching of Scott, explaining 

that it preferred the contrary view expressed in both Justice 

Stevens's Scott dissent, see id. at 395 (Stevens, J., dissenting) 

(opining that the Court improperly "usurped the jury's factfinding 

function"), and in what the district court described as an 

"academic consensus" favoring the dissent. 

In so proceeding, the district court failed to fulfill 

its obligation to follow the law as set forth in controlling 

precedent. Id. at 380 (majority opinion); Agostini v. Felton, 521 
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U.S. 203, 238 (1997) (noting that the district courts are bound by 

Supreme Court decisions "unless and until this Court reinterpreted 

the binding precedent"). Because the denial of the qualified 

immunity defense was predicated on this error of law, it is 

appealable. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 672 (2009) 

(holding that an order denying a dispositive motion that "turned 

on an issue of law and rejected the defense of qualified immunity" 

was a final decision for purposes of 28 U.S.C. § 1291). We 

therefore vacate the district court's denial of the motion for 

summary judgment, and remand the case to another district court 

judge for further proceedings consistent with the law. See United 

States v. Hernández-Rodríguez, 443 F.3d 138, 148 (1st Cir. 2006) 

(remanding for proceedings before a different district court judge 

in order to allay "the possible appearance of injustice").