UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 14-1027

ANDREW KANE, Individually and as Personal Representative of 

the Estate of Andrew Dwayne Cornish,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

BRIAN LEWIS; OFFICER JOHN LEWIS; OFFICER JENSEN SHORTER; 

OFFICER LEAF A. LOWE; KENNETH MALIK, Individually and in his 

Official Capacity as Chief of Police for the Cambridge 

Police Dept.; THE COMMISSIONERS OF CAMBRIDGE, A Body 

Corporate and Politic,

Defendants - Appellants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of 

Maryland, at Baltimore. J. Frederick Motz, Senior District 

Judge. (1:08-cv-01157-JFM) 

Argued: December 10, 2014 Decided: March 13, 2015

Before DUNCAN, AGEE, and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded with 

instructions by unpublished opinion. Judge Duncan wrote the 

opinion, in which Judge Agee joined. Judge Harris wrote a

separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.

ARGUED: Victoria M. Shearer, KARPINSKI, COLARESI & KARP, P.A., 

Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellants. Terrell Roberts, ROBERTS & 

WOOD, Riverdale, Maryland, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Daniel Karp,
2

KARPINSKI, COLARESI & KARP, P.A., Baltimore, Maryland, for 

Appellants.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
3

DUNCAN, Circuit Judge:

This appeal is the second to come before us in a 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1983 challenge to Maryland police officers’ alleged use of 

excessive force and failure to properly knock and announce at 

the residence of Andrew Cornish on May 6, 2005. The jury found 

in favor of the police (the “Officers”) on the excessive force 

claim, and in favor of Plaintiff-Appellee Andrew Kane, on behalf 

of his deceased son, Cornish, on the knock-and-announce claim. 

For the reasons that follow, we vacate the portion of the 

district court’s judgment awarding Kane monetary relief in the 

amount of $250,000 and remand for an entry of an award of 

nominal damages only. We affirm the judgment of the district 

court on all other grounds.

I.

We take many of the facts and much of the procedural 

history from our prior opinion, adding to them as necessary. 

See Kane v. Lewis, 483 F. App’x 816 (4th Cir. 2012)

(unpublished). In this exposition, we indicate where the facts 

are in dispute.

A.

On May 6, 2005, the Officers set out to execute warrants at 

408 High Street in Cambridge, Maryland, a residence consisting 

of an upstairs apartment and a downstairs apartment. Andrew 
4

Cornish and Bradrick Cornish (“Brad”) occupied the upstairs 

apartment, Apartment B. The Officers wore clothing 

“display[ing] the word ‘police,’ and had their badges clipped to 

or screen printed on their shirts.” J.A. 36; see also J.A. 554.

The Officers testified that they breached the exterior door 

of the building at approximately 4:30 a.m. J.A. 534. The four 

officers assigned to search Apartment B--Officer Jensen Shorter, 

Detective Brian Lewis, Detective Leaf Lowe, and Sergeant John 

Lewis--climbed the stairs and lined up outside of the apartment. 

They allege that they pounded on the door two separate times,

yelling “Cambridge Police, search warrant” and pausing one to 

two seconds after each set of knocks, and that they used a 

sledge hammer to knock down the apartment door when there was no 

response. J.A. 828-29; see also J.A. 553. The downstairs 

residents testified that they did not hear the police announce 

themselves at Cornish’s door. See J.A. 457-59, 288.

Officer Shorter was the first inside Cornish’s apartment. 

The exterior apartment door opened into the kitchen. A door on 

the left side of the kitchen led to the living room and master 

bedroom. The door between the kitchen and living room was 16.5 

feet away from the master bedroom door. J.A. 243. A second 

bedroom and a bathroom were located to the right of the kitchen. 

The apartment was illuminated by a light in the kitchen and a 
5

television set in the living room, both of which were turned on 

at the time of the search. See J.A. 38, 570, 602, 639-40.

The following facts are drawn from the Officers’ testimony. 

Upon entry into the apartment, Officer Shorter headed left 

toward the living room and master bedroom, followed by Detective 

Lewis. Detective Lowe and Sergeant Lewis moved to the right 

side of the apartment towards the second bedroom. Officer

Shorter and Detective Lewis testified that they shouted 

“Cambridge Police, search warrant” as they entered the apartment

and headed towards Cornish’s master bedroom door. See J.A. 853-

54. The master bedroom door was closed, and Officer Shorter 

unsuccessfully attempted to kick it down. After the Officers 

had been in Cornish’s apartment for about “30 seconds,” the 

master bedroom “door fl[ew] open” and knocked Officer Shorter 

off balance to the right side of the doorway. J.A. 856-57. 

Officer Shorter lost sight of Detective Lewis at that point, but 

testified that he saw Cornish charging across the living room 

with a knife. Detective Lewis testified that Cornish emerged 

from the master bedroom with a knife, swinging it in a “back and 

forth” motion, and crossed the living room towards him at a 

“steady pace.” J.A. 859. Detective Lewis backpedaled “15 feet 

or more” to the kitchen while yelling at Cornish repeatedly to 

“drop the knife.” J.A. 858-59. Cornish was approximately three 

feet away when Detective Lewis backed into an object in the 
6

kitchen and was unable to retreat further. At this point,

Detective Lewis fired two shots at Cornish.

The first shot hit Cornish in the cheek, and the second hit 

Cornish’s forehead, fatally wounding him. Cornish’s body landed

halfway through the doorway between the kitchen and the living 

room--in other words, a distance from his master bedroom 

amounting to the length of the living room. See J.A. 243. A

15–inch knife, still in its sheath, was recovered from 

underneath his right leg.

On May 5, 2008, Kane filed a complaint in his individual 

capacity and as representative of Cornish’s estate in the U.S. 

District Court for the District of Maryland. As relevant here, 

Kane sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the Officers 

violated the Fourth Amendment by using excessive force and 

failing to knock and announce their presence. Kane sought 

damages for wrongful death and physical and emotional pain and 

suffering.

The Officers moved for summary judgment, arguing that their 

actions were protected by qualified immunity. The Officers 

claimed that they knocked and announced their presence prior to 

breaching both the exterior door at 408 High Street and the 

interior door to Cornish’s apartment. Kane, on the other hand,

claimed that the officers failed to knock and announce at either 
7

door, thus failing to alert Cornish to the fact that the men 

forcefully entering his apartment were police officers.

The district court granted the Officers’ summary judgment 

motion in part and denied it in part. Kane v. Lewis, No. 08–cv1157, 2010 WL 1257884, at *6–7 (D. Md. Mar. 26, 2010). With 

respect to the issues before us, the district court held that 

Detective Lewis was entitled to qualified immunity on the 

excessive force claim because a reasonable officer under the 

circumstances could have believed Cornish presented a deadly 

threat as he approached the Officers with a knife. The court, 

however, denied summary judgment on Kane’s knock-and-announce 

claim, finding it based on a genuine issue of material fact.

As the case progressed toward trial, the Officers filed a 

motion in limine seeking to limit the type of damages a jury 

could award Kane were it to find that the Officers violated the 

knock-and-announce rule. By order dated July 9, 2010, the 

district court concluded that Kane could recover nominal damages 

for such a violation and, separately, damages for the emotional 

distress Cornish experienced from the time the Officers entered 

his home until his death. The court held that Kane could not 

recover wrongful death damages for Cornish’s death itself 

because the evidence suggested that Cornish “must have known 

that the men in his apartment were police officers but advanced 

on them nonetheless, and that no reasonable jury could conclude 
8

otherwise.” J.A. 79. The court determined that Cornish’s 

conduct constituted a superseding cause of his death that 

extinguished monetary liability for these damages.

As a result of this order, the case was set to proceed to 

trial to resolve two questions: First, whether the Officers 

knocked and announced prior to entering Cornish’s apartment. If

the jury determined that they did not, Kane would be entitled to 

nominal damages for the violation of Cornish’s rights. Then, 

the jury would have to resolve a second question: whether to 

award actual damages to Kane to compensate for Cornish’s 

emotional distress prior to his death.

On April 4, 2011, the day of trial, Kane voluntarily 

dismissed with prejudice his § 1983 claims for damages for pain, 

suffering, and emotional distress. Kane then sought to appeal

the partial grant of summary judgment and the order limiting 

damages. The Officers cross-appealed.

We dismissed both appeals for lack of jurisdiction. See

Kane v. Lewis, 483 F. App’x 816 (4th Cir. 2012). We held that 

Kane’s appeal was premature because there remained a genuine 

factual dispute over “whether the officers knocked and announced 

prior to entering Cornish’s apartment.” Id. at 822. Indeed, we 

noted that Kane might still “be able to recover nominal damages 

under § 1983 for the violation of Cornish’s constitutional 

rights” if the jury determined that the Officers failed to knock 
9

and announce. Id. We also held that this factual dispute 

precluded review of the Officers’ cross-appeal because 

Defendants’ qualified immunity defense would require the 

resolution of disputed facts. See id. at 822-23.

B.

On remand, Kane asked the court either to reconsider its 

ruling denying wrongful death damages or to enter summary

judgment in favor of Kane on his knock-and-announce claim. The 

court denied the request and set the case for trial to 

“determine whether a knock-and-announce violation occurred.” 

J.A. 83.

On December 7, 2012, the case was reassigned to a different 

district court judge1 and Kane made the same request that the 

previous court had denied. The second district court reversed

several of the prior rulings. Significantly for our purposes, 

instead of allowing trial to proceed solely on the knock-andannounce issue, the second district court also permitted the 

jury to “consider the excessive force claim and the claim for 

wrongful damages arising from the alleged unlawful entry.”2

 J.A. 

84.

 1 For ease of reference, we shall refer to this as the 

second district court.

2 The claim for emotional distress, having previously been 

dismissed with prejudice at Kane’s request, was not reinstated 

(Continued)
10

At the close of trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor 

of Kane on the knock-and-announce claim, but found in favor of 

Detective Lewis, the officer who fired the fatal shot, on the 

excessive force claim. The jury awarded non-economic damages in 

the amount of $250,000 for wrongful death associated with the 

knock-and-announce violation and the district court entered 

judgment pursuant to this verdict.

The district court denied in part and granted in part the 

Officers’ subsequent motion to alter or amend the judgment. It 

held that the excessive force verdict did not conflict with the 

knock-and-announce verdict because the Officers “created an 

unnecessary risk of harm to Cornish by their violation of the 

knock and announce rule.” J.A. 1110.

The district court also denied the Officers qualified 

immunity, holding that the law with respect to the Officers’ 

duty to knock and announce in these circumstances was clearly 

established. This appeal followed.

II.

On appeal, the Officers claim that they are liable only for 

nominal damages arising out of their failure to properly knock 

and announce and that they are entitled to qualified immunity on 

 

by the second district court, nor could it have been at that 

point in the case.
11

the knock-and-announce claim. We devote our attention to the 

knock-and-announce and qualified immunity issues because they 

were the primary focus of this appeal, and consider each 

argument in turn.3

As a threshold issue, however, we must first determine the 

governing standard of review. The Officers’ motion to alter or 

amend the judgment, the denial of which they appeal here, cites 

both Rule 50 and Rule 59 of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 

and the district court did not identify either authority in its 

ruling. See J.A. 1108-10.

Although the Officers styled their motion as one to alter 

or amend the judgment, it is more appropriately viewed as one 

under Rule 50(b). The Officers moved for judgment as a matter 

of law under Rule 50(a) before the jury retired to deliberate, 

arguing that Detective Lewis’s use of force was justified as a 

matter of law and, as a consequence, that Kane could recover 

only nominal damages on the knock-and-announce claim. See J.A. 

734 (moving for judgment as a matter of law at close of Kane’s

evidence), J.A. 907-08 (renewing the motion at the close of the 

Officers’ evidence). The district court denied the motions. 

See J.A. 763, 908. Following the jury’s verdict--and as 

contemplated by Rule 50(b)--the Officers filed this post-

 3 We have considered the Officers’ challenges to the 

district court’s jury instructions and find them without merit.
12

judgment motion raising the same arguments. See Mem. Supp. 

Defs.’ Mot. Alter Am. J., Kane, No. 08-cv-01157 (D. Md. Nov. 7, 

2013), ECF No. 199-1. Accordingly, we consider the Officers’ 

motion to alter or amend the judgment under Rule 50(b). See

Cosgrove v. Bartolotta, 150 F.3d 729, 732 (7th Cir. 1998) 

(holding under similar circumstances that a motion styled as a 

Rule 59(e) motion was properly treated as a Rule 50(b) motion).

We review a district court’s denial of a Rule 50(b) motion 

de novo. See White v. Cnty. of Newberry, S.C., 985 F.2d 168, 

172-73 (4th Cir. 1993). A Rule 50(b) motion should be granted 

if a district court determines, without considering the 

credibility of the witnesses or weighing the evidence, that 

substantial evidence does not support the jury’s findings. See

id. at 173. In reviewing a district court’s decision on a Rule 

50(b) motion, “we view the evidence adduced at trial ‘in the 

light most favorable to the prevailing party,’” Durham v. Jones, 

737 F.3d 291, 298 (4th Cir. 2013) (quoting Sloas v. CSX Transp., 

Inc., 616 F.3d 380, 392 (4th Cir. 2010)), and “reverse only if 

‘the evidence favoring the [plaintiff] is [not] legally 

sufficient to overcome the defense,’” id. (alterations in 

original) (quoting Ortiz v. Jordan, 131 S. Ct. 884, 889 (2011)).

A. 

We turn now to the Officers’ primary argument on appeal--

that the district court erred by failing to remit the jury’s 
13

damages award in favor of Kane on the knock-and-announce claim 

to nominal damages. For the reasons that follow, we agree.

The Officers argue that, in finding in the Officers’ favor 

on the excessive force claim, the jury determined that Detective 

Lewis shot Cornish in self-defense, and therefore “necessarily 

concluded that Cornish realized and appreciated that the 

Officers were police officers prior to advancing upon 

[Detective] Lewis with a knife.” Appellants’ Br. at 33-34. 

They therefore contend that “Cornish’s undisputed [conduct] in 

attacking [Detective] Lewis” was the “superseding cause of his 

death,” id. at 39--and that there was no evidence that would 

have allowed the jury reasonably to conclude otherwise.

Kane responds, and the second district court agreed, that 

“[t]he jury had sufficient evidence to conclude that in the 

absence of a knock and announcement . . . it was reasonably 

foreseeable that a surprised Cornish may rush to the front door 

and take action in supposed self-defense and that a police 

officer may view that action as threatening and shoot and kill 

him.” Appellee’s Br. at 33. This view, however, does not 

accurately reflect either the applicable law or the facts of 

record.

Damages awarded under § 1983 for violations of 

constitutional rights are ordinarily governed by common law tort 

principles. See Memphis Cmty. Sch. Dist. v. Stachura, 477 U.S. 
14

299, 305-06 (1986). “[T]he basic purpose of a § 1983 damages 

award should be to compensate persons for injuries caused by the 

deprivation of constitutional rights . . . .” Carey v. Piphus, 

435 U.S. 247, 254 (1978) (emphasis added). A plaintiff 

asserting a constitutional tort under § 1983 must therefore

satisfy the familiar element of proximate causation. See Murray 

v. Earle, 405 F.3d 278, 290 (5th Cir. 2005) (“Section 1983 . . . 

require[s] a showing of proximate causation, which is evaluated 

under the common law standard.”); see also Shaw v. Stroud, 13 

F.3d 791, 800 (4th Cir. 1994) (“[T]he causal link in § 1983 

cases is analogous to proximate cause.”). Section 1983 tort 

defendants are certainly “responsible for the natural 

consequences of [their] actions.” Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 

335, 344 n.7 (1986) (quoting Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 187 

(1961)) (internal quotation mark omitted). However, “[a] 

superseding cause [will] break[] the chain of proximate 

causation.” Lamont v. New Jersey, 637 F.3d 177, 185 (3d Cir. 

2011); see also Warner v. Orange Cnty. Dep’t of Prob., 115 F.3d 

1068, 1071 (2d Cir. 1996) (noting that “in cases brought under § 

1983 a superseding cause, as traditionally understood in common 

law tort doctrine, will relieve a defendant of liability”). 

Specifically, the “subsequent acts of independent decisionmakers . . . may constitute intervening superseding causes that 

break the causal chain” and insulate police officers from § 1983 
15

liability. Evans v. Chalmers, 703 F.3d 636, 647 (4th Cir. 

2012).

In similar circumstances, the Third Circuit has held that 

officers are liable only for “the harm ‘proximately’ or 

‘legally’ caused by [their illegal entry]” and not “for all of 

the harm caused in the ‘philosophic’ or but-for sense by the 

illegal entry.” Bodine v. Warwick, 72 F.3d 393, 400 (3d Cir. 

1995) (Alito, J.).4 As such, officers who have unlawfully 

entered a home are not liable for “harm produced by a 

‘superseding cause’” or the harm caused by the officers’ “nontortious, as opposed to . . . tortious, ‘conduct,’ such as the 

use of reasonable force.” Id. The Bodine court illustrated its 

view with a hypothetical similar to the facts before us:5 if 

officers improperly entered a suspect’s house without knocking 

and announcing their presence but--once the officers were inside 

and had identified themselves--the suspect broke away and killed 

two of the officers, a third officer would not “necessarily [be] 

liable for the harm caused to the suspect [in attempting to 

 4 The Fifth and Tenth Circuits have cited Bodine favorably. 

See Freeman v. Gore, 483 F.3d 404, 417 (5th Cir. 2007); Trask v. 

Franco, 446 F.3d 1036, 1046 (10th Cir. 2006).

5 Bodine involved police officers carrying out a custody 

order, rather than a search warrant. However, the court in 

Bodine noted that the “troopers’ authority to enter the Bodine 

residence in carrying out the mandate of that [custody] order 

was similar to that of an officer executing an ordinary [search

or arrest] warrant.” 72 F.3d at 397.
16

disarm him] on the theory that the illegal entry without 

knocking and announcing rendered any subsequent use of force 

unlawful.” Id.

Other courts have also addressed § 1983 causation in 

similar circumstances and determined that a plaintiff’s conduct 

was the superseding cause of harm when it precipitated 

subsequent harm caused by an officer’s use of force. See James 

v. Chavez, 511 F. App’x 742, 750 (10th Cir. 2013) (unpublished)

(concluding that, when a suspect was killed while attempting to 

stab a police officer, it was the suspect’s “unlawful and 

deliberate attack on the SWAT team [that] constitute[d] a 

superseding cause of his death”); Estate of Sowards v. City of 

Trenton, 125 F. App’x 31, 41 (6th Cir. 2005) (unpublished)

(holding that the suspect’s “actions in threatening . . . 

officers with [a] handgun are what led to his injuries and 

death”).

Turning to the record, we conclude that no reasonable jury 

could have found that the Officers’ knock-and-announce violation 

proximately caused Cornish’s death.6

 See Bodine, 72 F.3d at 400. 

 6 The dissent states that “[i]t was up to the Officers . . . 

to prove that Cornish’s advance on them was knowing and 

intentional, thus qualifying it as a superseding cause.” Diss. 

Op. at 28. However, because “a superseding cause acts as an 

affirmative defense,” id. (emphasis added), a defendant bears 

the burden of establishing this defense only after a plaintiff 

proves the proximate cause element of a § 1983 claim. Here, for 

(Continued)
17

The evidence Kane presented at trial was insufficient to 

establish that Cornish did not recognize that the men in his 

apartment were police officers, and therefore that the Officers’ 

illegal entry was the legal cause of Cornish’s death. Kane 

presented the testimony of Cornish’s roommate, Brad, who was not 

at home at the time of the search, and the expert testimony of

Dr. John Adams, a physician and board certified pathologist.7

 

Brad testified that the door to the master bedroom, which was 

old and had to be lifted before it could be opened, was open 

when he left the apartment approximately two hours before the 

search. See J.A. 481-83. He also testified that a bicycle and 

a stereo were located in the area where Officer Shorter stumbled 

to the right of Cornish’s master bedroom door, J.A. 483; a crime 

scene photo indicated that neither item toppled during the 

confrontation. J.A. 205-06. Dr. Adams testified that he 

believed that Cornish moved “a foot or two . . . forward” in 

between the first and second shots before landing in the doorway 

between the living room and kitchen, and that he was unable to 

determine how fast Cornish was moving when he was shot. J.A. 

688. Dr. Adams also testified that he could form only a “very 

 

the reasons we explain below, Kane failed to show proximate 

causation, which ends our analysis.

7 Dr. Adams was deceased at the time of trial. His 

deposition testimony was read into the record. See J.A. 680.
18

incomplete” opinion as to Cornish’s position at the time of each 

shot, J.A. 684, and that he could not definitely conclude 

whether Cornish was holding a sheathed knife in his hand at the 

time of the first shot, although the knife was found under his 

body. J.A. 697. Drawing all reasonable inferences in Kane’s 

favor, this evidence reveals nothing about Cornish’s state of 

mind as he advanced on the Officers or his opportunity to 

recognize them as police.8

 Accordingly, Kane’s evidence is 

insufficient to establish that Cornish’s death was “the natural 

consequence[] of [the Officers’] actions.” Malley, 475 U.S. at 

344 n.7. 

Moreover, the undisputed evidence establishes that Cornish 

must have recognized that the men in his apartment were police 

officers. It is undisputed that Cornish was found in the 

doorway between the living room and the kitchen. To reach that 

point, he had to travel more than 16 feet across an illuminated 

living room toward an illuminated kitchen in the direction of 

two police officers in SWAT gear who were shouting their 

 8 The dissent points out that, “at the moment [Cornish] 

heard the commotion at his front door, Cornish simply had no 

reason to expect . . . the police.” Diss. Op. at 29. We agree, 

but that Cornish may have initially thought the intruders in his 

home were not the police has no bearing on the issue of whether, 

after then traveling more than 16 feet across the apartment, 

Cornish knew that he was advancing on police officers.
19

identity.9 On these facts, as the first district court aptly 

recognized, Cornish “must have known that the men in his

apartment were police officers but advanced on them nonetheless, 

and . . . no reasonable jury could conclude otherwise.” J.A. 

79.

Unfortunately for Kane, the strategic decision to abandon 

his claim for damages for emotional distress Cornish suffered 

during the period of time between the Officers’ entry and 

Cornish’s death constrains him here. Kane is no longer able to 

 9 In concluding “that Cornish never had a chance to . . . 

properly identify the Officers,” Diss. Op. at 31, the dissent 

does not account for critical facts. The dissent states that an 

illuminated television set was the only source of light in the 

apartment. But, as we mention above, the apartment’s kitchen 

light was also on, providing an additional source of brighter 

light. Given the layout of the apartment and the fact that the 

fatal shooting occurred when the Officers were in the kitchen 

and Cornish was in the kitchen doorway, this fact is critical. 

The dissent also relies on the fact that the Officers “were not 

wearing the traditional and easily recognizable blue police 

uniform.” Id. at 10. All of the Officers, including Detective 

Lewis, were wearing clothing “marked ‘police,’” J.A. 894, and 

some wore SWAT gear that included “military-style helmet[s] with 

goggles,” J.A. 893, and “bulletproof vest[s]” displaying the 

word police “in bright white letters,” J.A. 593, 638. And aside 

from this distinctive clothing, the Officers were also shouting 

their identity as police throughout the encounter. Finally, the 

dissent does not meaningfully account for how, in the time it 

took to cross 16 feet, Cornish could have failed to perceive the 

Officers’ identity. Although it may be the case in some 

circumstances that “[o]nce officers breach the door unannounced 

. . . it is too late to count on badges or other forms of notice 

to prevent the surprised and violent conflict with which the 

[knock-and-announce] rule is concerned,” id. at 12, this is not 

true here. The uncontroverted evidence shows that Cornish 

chose, for reasons unknown, to advance with a knife on people he 

knew to be police officers. 
20

pursue recovery for that critical interval, which the claim 

itself recognizes existed.10 Had those claims been presented to 

the jury, it would have been easier for us to find an 

evidentiary basis for a monetary award other than nominal 

damages.

Because Cornish must have known that the men were police 

officers, yet advanced toward them with a knife, his “unlawful 

and deliberate attack on the [police] constitute[d] a 

superseding cause of his death.” James, 511 F. App’x at 750. 

In other words, the Officers’ illegal entry was not the legal 

cause of Cornish’s death; rather, he was “killed as a direct 

result of trying to stab a police officer.” Id. Accordingly, 

Kane is entitled only to nominal damages to vindicate the 

deprivation of Cornish’s constitutional rights on the knock-andannounce claim.

B.

The Officers next contend that they are entitled to 

qualified immunity on Kane’s knock-and-announce claim. We 

 10 Kane’s own recognition of the time lapse between the 

Officers’ unannounced entry and Cornish’s death refutes the 

dissent’s contention “that Cornish never had a chance to 

reassess the situation and properly identify the Officers.” 

Diss. Op. at 31.
21

disagree.11

The Officers argue that “the jury found that the Officers 

knocked and announced their presence at Andrew Cornish’s door, 

but . . . also determined that the Officers did not ‘properly’ 

wait long enough before entering.”12 Appellants’ Br. at 44. 

They further contend that, at the time of this search, it was 

not clearly established how long “police officers must wait 

after knocking and announcing their presence before forcibly 

 11 The Officers also argue that they are entitled to 

statutory public-official immunity under Maryland law. Unlike 

the objective analysis of federal qualified immunity, Maryland

public-official immunity turns on a subjective inquiry into 

“malice”; an official may not be held liable even for 

objectively unreasonable conduct if it is undertaken without an 

improper motive. See, e.g., Shoemaker v. Smith, 725 A.2d 549, 

557-59 (Md. 1999); Moxley v. Town of Walkersville, 601 F. Supp. 

2d 648, 665-66 (D. Md. 2009). However, we need not separately 

address the state-law immunity question here. The parties 

agree that there is only one jury verdict, for $250,000, 

covering both the federal and state constitutional violations. 

See ECF No. 37-2 (letter memorializing agreement between the

parties); J.A. 1112 (amended judgment). And because state-law 

immunity cannot inoculate the Officers from liability for a 

federal constitutional violation, our holding that the Officers 

are not entitled to qualified immunity on the federal knock-andannounce claim is sufficient to impart liability for the entire 

verdict, without respect to the state constitutional claim. 

Moreover, under Maryland law the municipality--here the City of 

Cambridge--is responsible for the first $200,000 of damages on 

the state constitutional claim. See J.A. 1110. Therefore,

given our holding limiting Kane’s recovery to nominal damages, 

there will be no personal liability on the state-law claim in 

any event.

12 We note that the jury verdict found that the Officers 

failed to “properly” knock and announce. It did not include a 

temporal reference.
22

entering a dwelling to execute a narcotics search warrant, 

particularly where, as here, both an outer and inner door are 

involved.” Appellants’ Br. at 51.

Qualified immunity shields government officials from civil 

liability for § 1983 claims unless “(1) the allegations, if 

true, substantiate a violation of a federal statutory or 

constitutional right and (2) the right was ‘clearly established’ 

such that a reasonable person would have known his acts or 

omissions violated that right.” Brockington v. Boykins, 637 

F.3d 503, 506 (4th Cir. 2011) (quoting Ridpath v. Bd. of 

Governors Marshall Univ., 447 F.3d 292, 306 (4th Cir. 2006)). 

The knock-and-announce rule, in the absence of unusual 

circumstances not present here, is a clearly established right. 

See Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927, 931-36 (1995). Therefore, 

if the Officers violated the knock-and-announce rule here, they 

would not be entitled to qualified immunity.

The evidence substantiates the jury’s verdict finding that 

the Officers “fail[ed] properly to knock and announce before 

entering [Cornish’s] apartment.” J.A. 1091. For example, the 

downstairs residents testified that they did not hear the 

Officers knock at the exterior door to the house, J.A. 285-88, 

451-59, nor did they hear, though the walls in the High Street 

residence were thin, the police announce themselves at Cornish’s 

door, J.A. 288, 457. And despite the Officers’ testimony that 
23

they used a battering ram to breach the outside door, Kane 

presented evidence that the glass portion of the door was

unbroken. J.A. 547. As the first district court noted below, 

“[b]ecause the officers synchronized their entry into both 

[apartments], and because the walls were thin, the silence 

supports the proposition that the police failed to knock and 

announce before entering either apartment.” J.A. 53.

Because there was sufficient evidence that the Officers 

failed to properly knock and announce their presence and the 

requirement is clearly established, we reject the Officers’ 

argument that they are entitled to qualified immunity.

III.

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district 

court is

AFFIRMED IN PART, VACATED IN PART,

AND REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTIONS.
24

PAMELA HARRIS, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting 

in part:

This case began with an anonymous tip of drug activity at 

408 High Street in Cambridge, Maryland, a duplex in which Andrew 

Cornish (“Cornish”) lived in the upstairs apartment. To 

investigate, the Cambridge police inspected the contents of 

trash bags left on the sidewalk in front of the residence. What 

they found, in bags associated with each of the two apartments, 

was trace amounts of marijuana and associated drug 

paraphernalia. Based on that discovery, they obtained search 

warrants for both apartments, and then assembled two Emergency 

Response Teams (commonly known as SWAT teams) — heavily armed, 

dressed in black, and carrying battering rams — to execute the 

warrants in the middle of the night. In Cornish’s apartment, 

they recovered two bags of marijuana.

They also, as the majority recounts, failed to knock and 

announce their presence before breaking down the door to 

Cornish’s home, as required by the Fourth Amendment. And no 

more than a minute later, in the confusion that immediately 

followed their unannounced 4:30 a.m. entry on suspicion of 

marijuana use, the police shot and killed Cornish.

After a four-day trial, the jury found that the officers 

who executed the warrant in Cornish’s apartment (the “Officers”) 

did not properly knock and announce before entering, and awarded 
25

Cornish’s father, Andrew Kane (“Kane”), damages of $250,000 for 

the death of his son caused by the knock-and-announce violation. 

Today, the majority sets aside that damages award on the ground 

that no reasonable jury could have found that the Officers’ 

unlawful execution of the search warrant was a proximate cause 

of Cornish’s death. I disagree, and respectfully dissent from 

that portion of the majority’s decision.1

I.

The tort-law principles that govern this case are a matter 

of common ground. It is clear, as the majority holds, that the 

jury could award damages for Cornish’s death only on a finding 

that it was proximately caused by the Officers’ knock-andannounce violation. Indeed, the jury was so instructed by the 

district court, and the court’s proximate cause instructions 

were never challenged by the Officers. And it follows that 

officers who unlawfully enter a home may not be held responsible 

for harm produced by a “superseding cause,” or some 

unforeseeable intervening event that breaks the causal link 

between entry and ultimate injury. See, e.g., Massey v. 

 1 I agree fully with the majority’s disposition of the 

Officers’ claim to federal qualified immunity and state-law 

immunity, as well as its determination that there was no error 

in the district court’s instructions to the jury.
26

Ojaniit, 759 F.3d 343, 355 (4th Cir. 2014) (analyzing proximate 

causation in the Section 1983 context).

Finally — and this is the crux of the matter — there is 

agreement that an attack on the Officers by Cornish, if it were 

knowing and deliberate, would constitute just such a superseding 

cause and thus insulate the Officers from liability for 

Cornish’s death. See Maj. Op. at 18.2

 Both district courts to 

review the case endorsed that premise, and for good reason. As 

the cases cited by the majority uniformly hold, when a resident 

reacts violently to an unlawful police entry, knowing full well 

that he is dealing with the police, that intentional act of 

aggression is a superseding cause of any resulting harm to the 

resident. See, e.g., Bodine v. Warwick, 72 F.3d 393, 400 (3d 

Cir. 1995); Maj. Op. at 18. As the first district court to 

consider this case explained: “If Cornish knew that the 

intruders were the police when he advanced on them, there can be 

no recovery for his death,” because the Officers are not liable 

“for harm produced by a superseding cause, such as an occupant’s 

knowing decision to attack them.” J.A. 53.

The pivotal question, then, is whether Cornish in fact knew 

that the men who broke into his home at 4:30 a.m. were police 

 2 Citations to “Maj. Op.” refer to the majority slip 

opinion.
27

officers — or, more precisely, whether the evidence presented at 

trial compelled such a finding. The majority answers that 

question in the affirmative, holding that based on the record 

evidence, “Cornish must have known that the men were police 

officers, yet advanced on them” with a sheathed knife anyway. 

Maj. Op. at 18. It is on that narrow but important point that 

we disagree. For the reasons outlined below, I believe there 

was ample evidence from which a jury could conclude that in the 

minute that elapsed after the officers unlawfully broke down his 

door and before he was shot, Cornish never realized that he was 

confronting the police.

II.

A.

Because we “accord the utmost respect to jury verdicts and 

tread gingerly in reviewing them,” a party challenging the 

result reached by a jury — like the Officers here — “bears a 

hefty burden.” Price v. City of Charlotte, N.C., 93 F.3d 1241, 

1249, 1250 (4th Cir. 1996). We must view the evidence presented 

at trial in the light most favorable to Kane, the prevailing 

party, and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the jury’s 

verdict. Durham v. Jones, 737 F.3d 291, 298 (4th Cir. 2013); 

ABT Bldg. Prods. Corp. v. Nat'l Union Fire Ins. Co. of 

Pittsburgh, 472 F.3d 99, 113 (4th Cir. 2006). And we cannot 
28

reject the jury’s conclusions simply because we would have 

reached different ones: “If reasonable minds could differ about 

the verdict, we are obliged to affirm.” King v. McMillan, 594 

F.3d 301, 312 (4th Cir. 2010).

In applying this standard, we must keep in mind that it is 

the Officers, not Kane, who bore the burden of proof on the 

dispositive question. In tort law, a superseding cause acts as 

an affirmative defense, and the defendant bears the burden of 

proving its existence. See In re Neurontin Mktg. & Sales 

Practices Litig., 712 F.3d 21, 45 (1st Cir. 2013); Bouriez v. 

Carnegie Mellon Univ., 585 F.3d 765, 773 n.4 (3d Cir. 2009); BCS 

Servs., Inc. v. Heartwood 88, LLC, 637 F.3d 750, 757 (7th Cir.

2011); Beck v. City of Upland, 527 F.3d 853, 863 (9th Cir. 

2008). It was up to the Officers, that is, to prove that 

Cornish’s advance on them was knowing and intentional, thus 

qualifying it as a superseding cause — and not Kane’s obligation 

to prove otherwise. So whether Kane’s evidence on Cornish’s 

state of mind at the crucial moment is inconclusive, Maj. Op. at 

18, is beside the point. What matters is whether a reasonable 

jury could have found that the Officers’ evidence was 
29

inconclusive, and that they had failed to prove that Cornish was 

aware of their identity before he died.3 

B.

Drawing every reasonable inference in favor of the jury’s 

verdict, as we must, I can find no reason to second-guess the 

jury’s judgment on this score. For three principal reasons, I 

believe there was more than sufficient evidence from which a 

reasonable jury could have concluded that Cornish need not have 

known that the men who forced their way into his apartment at 

4:30 a.m. were police officers, and could have died while 

running toward his door to investigate the source of the violent 

break-in. 

First, at the moment he heard the commotion at his front 

door, Cornish simply had no reason to expect that it might be 

 3 As Bodine and all of the other precedent cited by the 

majority make clear, the existence of a superseding cause is the 

only proximate-cause question in this case and cases like it. 

See Bodine, 72 F.3d at 400 (no proximate causation because 

resident’s reaction is superseding cause); see also Brief of 

Appellants at 38-41 (citing Bodine and cases following it to 

argue against proximate cause solely on the ground that 

Cornish’s knowing attack on Officers was a superseding cause); 

J.A. 53 (district court holding that Officers cannot be held 

liable for Cornish’s death if Cornish’s reaction qualifies as a 

superseding cause). Because violence in the wake of an 

unannounced home entry is eminently foreseeable, see Hudson v. 

Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 594 (2006) (explaining rationale for 

knock-and-announce rule), the standard for proximate cause is

met unless the Officers can show the existence of a superseding 

cause that will insulate them from liability.
30

the police. Indeed, thanks to the knock-and-announce rule, he 

was entitled to and likely did assume the opposite: that if 

somebody was coming crashing into his home at 4:30 a.m. without 

knocking and announcing, it must be someone other than the 

police. 

Certainly there is nothing about the facts of this case 

that would have deprived Cornish of the right to rest on that 

presumption. Cornish was not some drug kingpin who might be on 

notice as to the possibility of an unannounced police raid. On 

the contrary, Cornish enjoyed a cordial relationship with the 

police; one of the Officers testified that while on duty he 

would occasionally stop by Cornish’s building and share a Pepsi 

with Cornish on the front porch. And as noted above, as to 

Cornish, this was a case about trace amounts of marijuana found 

in a trash rip, which ultimately led to the seizure of a small 

quantity of marijuana in Cornish’s apartment — not exactly the 

stuff of no-knock nighttime SWAT raids.

The point, to be clear, is not to take issue here with the 

Officers’ decision to execute a search warrant based on 

marijuana traces by way of a military-style nighttime raid. All 

that matters for this case is that Cornish could have had no 

reason to expect such a raid, and that the jury understood as 

much. As a Cambridge police officer testified, the department 

typically does not execute narcotics warrants at 4:30 a.m., and 
31

in cases involving marijuana use, typically does not seek 

warrants at all. J.A. 812–13. Add to that the fact on which 

the jury verdict rests — that the Officers failed to knock and 

announce their presence before breaking down Cornish’s door, as 

they were required to do by law — and the jury very reasonably 

could have concluded that Cornish would have presumed that the 

intruders in his home were not the police.

Second, the events in question unfolded so quickly, and 

under conditions so conducive to confusion and mistake, that a 

jury readily could find that Cornish never had a chance to 

reassess the situation and properly identify the Officers. This 

was no drawn-out encounter between police and suspect, giving 

each the opportunity fully to appraise the situation, as in many 

of the cases cited by the majority.4

 According to Officer 

testimony, this encounter lasted for all of one minute — one 

minute, possibly less, between the first bang on Cornish’s door 

and the final shots. J.A. 884. Cornish, who was in his bedroom 

and presumably asleep, had one minute to wake up, register and 

 4 See, e.g., James v. Chavez, 511 F. App’x 742, 743–45 (10th 

Cir. 2013) (resident who responded to officer approaching his 

home by waving a knife and forcing his daughter to stay inside 

the house is ultimately killed in standoff with SWAT team); 

Estate of Sowards v. City of Trenton, 125 F. App’x 31, 33–34 

(6th Cir. 2005) (officers chased resident to the door of his 

apartment, interacted with resident at door; resident stated 

that he had a “surprise” for the officers and pointed a gun at 

them when they entered).
32

assess the commotion, decide how to respond, and then, as the 

majority describes, find a sheathed knife and cross the 

approximately 16 feet between his bedroom and the area near the 

front door, where he was shot. Even under the best of 

circumstances, that does not leave a lot of time to discern and 

comprehend all of the details. 

And these were decidedly not the best of circumstances. It 

was, for one thing, the middle of the night. The jury certainly 

could have inferred that Cornish, likely awakened from sleep, 

would have been startled, confused, and frightened. Though the 

Officers testified that the living room through which Cornish 

traveled was “illuminated,” to use the majority’s word, by a 

small tube-style television left on when Cornish retired, it was 

dark enough that at least one of the Officers took the 

opportunity to turn on a flashlight after the shooting, and 

another testified that he may have been using the light attached 

to his gun. And the Officers, by their own testimony, were 

moving rapidly and shouting loudly, making the situation 

volatile as well as confusing.

Those are precisely the circumstances — “tense, uncertain, 

and rapidly evolving” — under which we give police officers the 

benefit of the doubt when it comes to their perceptions. 

Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396–97 (1989). In evaluating 

the use of force by officers, we make allowances for the fact 
33

that such situations can be exceptionally confusing and fastmoving, with officers required to make split-second judgments 

under suboptimal conditions. See id.; Waterman v. Batton, 393 

F.3d 471, 478 (4th Cir. 2005); Anderson v. Russell, 247 F.3d 

125, 130–31 (4th Cir. 2001); Elliott v. Leavitt, 99 F.3d 640, 

642 (4th Cir. 1996). In the context of a rapid-deployment and 

high-pressure nighttime raid, police officers cannot be held to 

“the 20/20 vision of hindsight,” Graham, 490 U.S. at 396, and 

must instead be judged under a more forgiving standard.

Indeed, the Officers here argued as much to the jury, in 

defending against Kane’s claim for excessive force. According 

to the Officers, for instance, events in the apartment were so 

fast-moving and conditions for observation so poor that they 

could not discern — nor be expected to discern — that what 

Cornish held in his hand was a knife in a sheath and not, as 

they thought at the time, an unsheathed knife, or perhaps a 

machete or a pipe. The jury apparently credited that account, 

and decided the excessive force claim against Kane. There is no 

reason I can think of that the same jury could not apply the 

same standard to Cornish — who, unlike the Officers, had the 

benefit of neither training nor advance warning when he found 

himself caught up in the tumult of a military-style nighttime 

raid — and assume that Cornish, too, would be unable to exercise 
34

the powers of careful discernment that could be expected under 

less fraught circumstances.

Against all of this, the majority posits that the Officers’ 

SWAT apparel necessarily would have alerted Cornish to their 

identity.5 But we are not talking, of course, about the 

traditional and easily recognizable blue police uniform. These 

Officers were clad all in black, for stealth rather than ease of 

identification. The Officer who confronted and shot Cornish —

of the four, the Officer whose appearance is most crucial here —

was not in fact dressed in SWAT gear, J.A. 893, but rather a 

black sweatshirt or t-shirt, and his badge was the only police 

marking he testified to wearing, J.A. 593. One of the other 

Officers testified that he, too, was without a helmet, and 

instead wore a baseball cap, as well as a black sweatshirt with 

a police “emblem” on the left breast and a vest with a “police 

patch” on the right. J.A. 554. Another testified that in 

addition to a military-style helmet and goggles, he wore a vest 

that somewhere displayed the word “police,” J.A. 893, from which 

 5 The majority also points out that the first district court 

to consider this case on the pleadings concluded that Cornish 

“must have known that the men in his apartment were police 

officers.” But surely it is at least as significant that the 

second district court — the one that presided over the four-day 

trial in this case and heard all of the evidence and testimony —

came to the opposite conclusion. See Kane v. Lewis, 989 F. 

Supp. 2d 468, 469–70 (D. Md. 2013).
35

the jury could infer that he had in mind the same “police 

patch.” And the single Officer who testified that he was 

wearing a vest with the word “police” in “bright white letters” 

was, by his own account, out of Cornish’s sight during the 

entire encounter. J.A. 646. From this evidence, a reasonable 

jury could have concluded that the Officers had not met their 

burden of proving that, in the heat of the moment and by the 

light of a television, their patches or badges or any other 

identifying features would have been visible and recognizable to

Cornish.

Nor, it bears noting, should it be at all surprising that 

police officers might find it difficult to convey their identity 

in the confusion that inevitably follows an unannounced home 

entry. That is precisely the point of the knock-and-announce 

rule, which recognizes that “an unannounced entry may provoke 

violence in supposed self-defense by the surprised resident.” 

Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 594 (2006). There is a reason 

we have a knock-and-announce rule and not, say, a wear-a-badge 

rule: Once officers breach the door unannounced, as the tragic 

facts of this case make clear, it is too late to count on badges 

or other forms of notice to prevent the surprised and violent 

conflict with which the rule is concerned.

Third and finally, there is the credibility of the 

Officers’ trial account, in which Cornish knowingly advanced on 
36

the Officers. It is the province of the jury, of course, to 

weigh the credibility of trial witnesses. See United States v. 

Dinkins, 691 F.3d 358, 387 (4th Cir. 2012). And here, that 

credibility was very much at issue during the trial, given that 

the Officers never conceded the knock-and-announce violation 

found by the jury. For instance, the Officers testified that 

they gave Cornish a form of notice by forcing open the exterior 

door to his building with a 25-pound battering ram, generating 

noise he would have heard from his upstairs apartment. On the 

other hand, the exterior door showed no visible signs of any 

damage, and Cornish’s downstairs neighbors testified that they 

never heard any noise at that door. The district court 

specifically instructed the jury that it could consider this 

evidence for purposes of “judging [] the credibility” of the 

Officers, J.A. 1062, and we should assume, drawing all 

inferences in Kane’s favor, that it did exactly that.

A reasonable jury also could have considered the inherent 

plausibility of an account that had Cornish knowingly advancing 

on a heavily armed SWAT team while carrying a knife still in its 

sheath. This, too, was a major focus of the trial, with Kane 

arguing throughout that imputing awareness of the Officers’ 

identity to Cornish simply “defies common sense.” J.A. 972. 

The jury knew that Cornish had a cooperative and friendly 

relationship with the police, that he suffered from no mental 
37

infirmity, and that he was not under the influence of drugs or 

alcohol on the night he died, and it was free to infer that he 

would have had no reason to take on the Officers had he known 

their identity.

To be fair, the jury also had the benefit of the Officers’ 

response to Kane’s argument from common sense: “[P]eople do [] 

irrational things.” J.A. 996. But it was not incumbent on the 

jury to find that explanation compelling. Viewed in the light 

most favorable to Kane, the evidence at trial allowed for a 

different conclusion, which a reasonable jury might find more 

plausible: that because the Officers failed to knock and 

announce before entering Cornish’s apartment at 4:30 a.m., as 

required by law, Cornish died before he could identify the 

intruders he was confronting as police officers. 

That precise sequence of events — a surprised and defensive 

reaction by a resident, to which the police respond with force —

is exactly what the knock-and-announce rule is intended to 

prevent. Hudson, 547 U.S. at 594; see also McDonald v. United 

States, 335 U.S. 451, 458–61 (1948) (Jackson, J., concurring). 

To my mind, the jury’s verdict in this case represents a 

substantially supported and eminently reasonable effort to hold 

police officers accountable for an unnecessary death — one that 

could have been avoided had the Officers complied with their 

Fourth Amendment obligation to announce themselves before 
38

breaking into Cornish’s apartment in the middle of the night. I 

would not disturb the jury’s verdict in this case, and would 

affirm the district court’s judgment in full.