NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 16a0102n.06

No. 15-5575

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

JAMES COITRONE,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

BOBBY D. MURRAY; RICKI L. ALLEN; BRETT 

COOMES, individually,

Defendants-Appellees.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT 

COURT FOR THE WESTERN 

DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY

BEFORE: DAUGHTREY, ROGERS, and WHITE, Circuit Judges.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge. James H. Coitrone, on a motorcycle, led Kentucky State Police 

Trooper Brett Coomes on a chase through the streets of Bowling Green, Kentucky. The chase 

ended when Coomes’s car collided with Coitrone’s motorcycle. Coitrone filed a 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1983 action in federal district court, alleging that Coomes violated Coitrone’s Fourth 

Amendment rights and alleging supplemental state-law claims for negligence and battery. The 

district court granted summary judgment to Coomes, and Coitrone appealed. The undisputed 

facts establish that Coomes’s use of force did not violate Coitrone’s Fourth Amendments rights. 

The district court therefore properly granted summary judgment on this claim to Coitrone. 

Coitrone’s state-law claims require some additional analysis, and may warrant the district court’s 

declining of supplemental jurisdiction. 
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On the morning of August 19, 2012, Coitrone planned to take his live-in girlfriend, 

Shasta McCollum, to church on Coitrone’s motorcycle. After getting ready, Coitrone and 

McCollum left their home on Barren River Road in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and proceeded to 

their church on Coitrone’s motorcycle with McCollum riding as passenger. Coitrone and 

McCollum were waiting at a stop light when Kentucky State Trooper Kevin Mayfield pulled up 

behind them. Mayfield ran Coitrone’s license plate, revealing outstanding warrants for Coitrone 

for kidnapping, rape, sodomy, and bail jumping. After Coitrone proceeded through the 

intersection, Mayfield turned on his blue lights to indicate that Coitrone should pull over. 

Coitrone testified that after Mayfield flashed his lights, Coitrone slowed down and waved to 

Mayfield to let him know that Coitrone intended to stop, but did not stop because there were 

orange cones and pedestrians along the right side of the road. Coitrone testified that because he

did not feel that there was any safe place for him to pull over, he turned right onto Russellville 

Road in order to stop. 

Coitrone testified that he intended to stop when he saw that there were no cones on the 

right side of Russellville Road but kept going because he heard screeching tires and believed that 

the state trooper was going to strike him from behind. Coitrone became frightened, and decided 

to take McCollum, who was still riding on the back of his motorcycle, to a “safe place.” After 

reaching a Wendy’s, Coitrone pulled between a parking barrier and a tree to drop off McCollum. 

Coitrone testified that he did not get off of his motorcycle and speak with the state trooper at this 

time because he was “[s]cared to take an ass whooping” and “knew for sure they were gonna 

whoop [him].”
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After Coitrone dropped off McCollum, he continued to flee down Dishman Lane. At 

some point, Dishman Lane turned into Cave Mill Road. Coitrone drove down Dishman Lane 

and onto Cave Mill Road at a speed of about 55 miles per hour in a 30-miles-per-hour zone. 

Coitrone proceeded down Cave Mill Road until he came to a light at an intersection and 

took a left onto Smallhouse Road, a two-lane road in a residential area. At the time that Coitrone 

reached this intersection, Coomes, who had joined the pursuit of Coitrone after hearing Trooper 

Mayfield run Coitrone’s license plate on the radio, was about to catch up with Coitrone. Coomes 

testified that he saw Coitrone run a red light during this left turn, although Coitrone does not 

recall doing so. As Coitrone drove down Smallhouse Road, he traveled in and out of the left lane 

in order to pass vehicles traveling in the right lane. 

Coitrone proceeded down Smallhouse Road until he encountered Coomes’s supervisor, 

Lieutenant John Clark, who had maneuvered his car onto Smallhouse Road to try to end 

Coitrone’s flight from the police. Coitrone drove around Clark’s car and continued driving on 

Smallhouse Road toward a large church called the Living Hope Church. 

After observing Coomes pursue Coitrone through the intersection between Smallhouse 

Road and Campbell Lane, Clark put his car in drive and made sure that he got through the 

intersection safely. Clark then picked up his microphone and announced on the police radio that 

“it was time to terminate the pursuit.” Clark ordered the pursuit to be terminated because he was 

concerned that there would likely be a large amount of traffic near the church. Clark testified 

that he later learned that no one, including Coomes, heard Clark’s order to terminate the pursuit 

because it was covered up by other radio traffic. 

Coomes did not observe that traffic had become heavier until he reached the top of the 

hill on Smallhouse Road where the church was located. Coomes decided to terminate the chase 
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if Coitrone had not stopped by the time Coitrone reached Highland Way, the next intersection on 

Smallhouse Road after Campbell Lane, because of the amount of vehicular and pedestrian traffic 

in the area. 

Coitrone testified that he decided to “giv[e] up” his attempt to evade the police after 

crossing the intersection at Campbell Lane because he had observed the church traffic and 

“didn’t want to hurt anybody coming from the church house [or] going to the church house.” 

Coitrone testified that he let off the throttle and let his motorcycle coast in order to slow down as 

he approached the church, but Coomes testified that although Coitrone slowed abruptly, he 

showed no sign of intending to stop before Coomes struck the rear of his motorcycle.

Coomes testified that he tried to stop his vehicle after Coitrone slowed, but was unable to 

avoid striking the rear of Coitrone’s motorcycle. In contrast, Coitrone testified that he believed 

that Coomes had tried to perform a precision immobilization technique in order to stop Coitrone. 

A precision immobilization technique is a “method of causing a [vehicle] to stop by ramming it 

not squarely from behind but instead at an angle, causing it to spin and stop.” Wourms v. Fields, 

742 F.3d 756, 758 (7th Cir. 2014) (internal citation omitted). Upon collision, Coitrone’s 

motorcycle hit a concrete culvert and spun around multiple times, ejecting him onto the culvert. 

Coitrone alleges that as a result of this collision, he was hospitalized for over a month, placed 

into an induced coma, and suffered extensive life-threatening injuries, including multiple 

fractures of numerous bones and extensive soft tissue damage. 

Coitrone subsequently filed suit in federal district court alleging that Coomes had 

violated his civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by using unwarranted and unnecessary deadly 
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force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and alleging supplemental state-law negligence and

battery claims.

1

 Coomes moved for summary judgment on all claims.

The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Coomes. Coitrone v. Murray, 

No. 1:13−CV−00132−GNS, 2015 WL 2384298 (W.D. Ky. May 19, 2015). The district court 

determined that Coitrone’s § 1983 claim failed as a matter of law to the extent this claim was 

premised upon Coomes’s allegedly negligent conduct during the chase because Coitrone 

appeared to acknowledge that he could not establish a Fourth Amendment violation based upon 

negligent action. Id. at *3 n.6. Assuming that Coomes had intentionally struck Coitrone, the 

district court then determined that Coomes’s use of force was objectively reasonable because 

1) the crimes at issue were severe; 2) Coitrone’s actions during the chase constituted an 

immediate threat to the police and to innocent bystanders; and 3) Coitrone was actively resisting 

or attempting to evade arrest by flight. Id. at *4. The district court rejected Coitrone’s attempt to 

analogize this case to Walker v. Davis, a case in which this court held that the doctrine of 

qualified immunity did not protect a deputy who had used deadly force against a motorcyclist 

who posed “no immediate threat to anyone.” Id. at *5−6 (quoting 649 F.3d 502, 503 (6th Cir. 

2011)). The district court determined that this case was instead more analogous to Abney v. Coe, 

a case in which the Fourth Circuit held that a deputy sheriff’s use of deadly force against a 

motorcyclist who posed a “substantial risk of serious harm” to others did not violate the Fourth 

Amendment. 2015 WL 2384298, at *6−7 (quoting 493 F.3d 412, 417 (4th Cir. 2007)). The 

 

1Coitrone also sued Kentucky State Police Captains Bobby D. Murray and Ricki L. Allen, but 

Coitrone did not oppose the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Allen and 

Murray. Coitrone’s complaint against Coomes also included claims of intentional infliction of 

emotional distress and negligence per se, but Coitrone similarly did not oppose the district 

court’s grant of summary judgment with respect to those claims. The claims against Murray and 

Allen and the claims of intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence per se are not 

at issue in this appeal.
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district court concluded that Coitrone, like the motorcyclist in Abney and unlike the motorcyclist 

in Walker, “posed a serious risk of harm to innocent bystanders.” 2015 WL 2384298, at *7. 

Accordingly, the district court held that Coomes’s use of force did not violate the Fourth 

Amendment. Id.

The district court held in the alternative that even if Coomes’s use of force had violated 

Coitrone’s constitutional rights, summary judgment on Coitrone’s § 1983 claim was proper 

because the doctrine of qualified immunity barred Coitrone’s claim. Id. at *7−9. The district 

court reasoned that Coomes was protected by the doctrine of qualified immunity because his

conduct did not violate Coitrone’s clearly established constitutional rights. Id.

The district court also granted summary judgment on Coitrone’s state-law negligence and 

battery claims. The district court held that Coitrone’s negligence claim failed as a matter of law 

because the negligence claim was not viable in light of Coitrone’s battery claim for the identical 

use of “more force against [Coitrone] than permitted by law.” Id. at *10. The district court 

concluded in the alternative that Coomes did not owe a duty of care to Coitrone, “who was 

evading law enforcement.” Id. The district court also held that Coitrone’s battery claim failed as 

a matter of law. Id. at *11.

The district court properly determined that Coomes’s use of force did not violate 

Coitrone’s Fourth Amendments rights. Assuming that Coomes intentionally struck Coitrone’s 

motorcycle, Coomes’s use of force was objectively reasonable because the governmental interest 

in ending the immediate and substantial risk that Coitrone’s flight posed to the public 

outweighed the substantial intrusion that Coomes’s use of force imposed upon Coitrone’s Fourth 

Amendment rights. “Determining whether the force used to effect a particular seizure is 

‘reasonable’ under the Fourth Amendment requires a careful balancing of the nature and quality 
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of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against the countervailing 

governmental interests at stake.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989) (internal 

quotation marks and citation omitted). To make this determination, we use “the objectivereasonableness standard, which depends on the facts and circumstance of each case viewed from 

the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene and not with 20/20 hindsight. . . . The 

question we must ask is whether, under the totality of the circumstances, the officer’s actions 

were objectively reasonable.” Fox v. DeSoto, 489 F.3d 227, 236−37 (6th Cir. 2007) (internal 

citations omitted).

Even though “intentionally ramming a motorcycle with a police cruiser involves the 

application of potentially deadly force,” Walker, 649 F.3d at 503−04, and the intrusion imposed 

on Coitrone’s Fourth Amendment interests was substantial, the governmental interest in ending 

Coitrone’s flight outweighed this intrusion because the undisputed facts establish that his flight 

posed a substantial and immediate danger to the public. In Scott v. Harris, the Supreme Court 

held that law enforcement’s use of force that poses “a high likelihood of serious injury or death” 

to a fleeing individual is reasonable when that force is used in an attempt to terminate a chase 

that poses “a substantial and immediate risk of serious physical injury to others.” 550 U.S. 372, 

384, 386 (2007). The Supreme Court held in Scott that a deputy’s use of potentially deadly force 

to end the plaintiff’s flight from the police was therefore reasonable because a videotape 

established that the plaintiff had led the police on a chase that placed “police officers and 

innocent bystanders alike at great risk of serious injury.” Id. at 380, 386. The Supreme Court 

explained:

[On the video] we see [the plaintiff’s] vehicle racing down narrow, 

two-lane roads in the dead of night at speeds that are shockingly 

fast. We see it swerve around more than a dozen other cars, cross 

the double-yellow line, and force cars traveling in both directions 
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to their respective shoulders to avoid being hit. We see it run 

multiple red lights and travel for considerable periods of time in 

the occasional center left-turn-only lane, chased by numerous 

police cars forced to engage in the same hazardous maneuvers just 

to keep up.

Id. at 379−80 (internal footnote omitted). The undisputed facts establish that Coitrone, similar to 

the plaintiff in Scott, drove recklessly during the pursuit by driving his motorcycle as fast as 

65 to 70 miles per hour, exceeding the speed limit by as much as 25 miles per hour, crossing the 

double-yellow line, and driving in the left lane of a two-lane road in order to pass vehicles 

traveling in the right lane. The undisputed facts also establish that Coitrone’s reckless driving, 

like the actions of the plaintiff in Scott, posed an immediate and substantial danger to the safety 

of innocent bystanders because portions of the chase occurred in areas in which other drivers and 

pedestrians were present. Accordingly, the undisputed facts establish that Coomes’s use of 

potentially deadly force against Coitrone was objectively reasonable because Coitrone, like the 

plaintiff in Scott, initiated a chase that posed a “substantial and immediate risk of serious 

physical injury to others.” 550 U.S. at 386.

In addition to the substantial and immediate danger that Coitrone posed to the public, 

other considerations relevant to the objective reasonableness analysis indicate that Coomes’s use 

of force against Coitrone was objectively reasonable. Relevant considerations to the objective 

reasonableness analysis “include the severity of the crime at issue” and whether the suspect “is 

actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Fox, 489 F.3d at 236 (internal 

quotation marks and citations omitted). The undisputed evidence establishes that Coitrone 

attempted to evade arrest by flight because he testified that he fled from the police even though 

he was aware the police wanted him to stop. Accordingly, Coomes’s use of force to terminate 

this dangerous chase was objectively reasonable under the totality of the circumstances because 
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the governmental interest in ending the substantial and immediate danger that Coitrone’s flight 

posed to the public, in addition to Coitrone’s attempt to evade arrest by flight, outweighed the 

intrusion that Coomes’s use of potentially deadly force imposed upon Coitrone’s Fourth 

Amendment interests. 

Coitrone contends that Coomes’s use of force was unreasonable because Coitrone did not 

pose an immediate danger to others at the time of the collision. To support this assertion, 

Coitrone relies on this court’s holding in Walker that when “a suspect poses no immediate threat 

to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not 

justify the use of deadly force to do so.” Walker, 649 F.3d at 503 (quoting Tennessee v. Garner, 

471 U.S. 1, 11 (1985)). In Walker, this court affirmed the district court’s denial of qualified 

immunity to a deputy who hit and killed a motorcyclist after pursuing the motorcyclist for about 

five minutes on “empty stretches of highway” and onto a muddy field because the motorcyclist 

“posed no immediate threat to anyone as he rode his motorcycle across an empty field in the 

middle of the night in rural Kentucky.” Id. at 503−04. Coitrone contends that he did not pose an 

immediate threat to others because at the time that the collision occurred “heavy traffic . . . made 

any further flight by Coitrone obviously impossible and required Coitrone to begin slowing to a 

stop.” This assertion fails because unlike the collision in Walker, which occurred in the middle 

of the night on an empty field, the collision here occurred on a Sunday morning near a church at 

which pedestrians and other drivers were present. Further, prior to the collision, Coitrone had

exhibited a willingness to endanger others by driving recklessly in order to evade the police. A 

reasonable officer in Coomes’s position would therefore be justified in believing that Coitrone 

might seriously injure these innocent bystanders by continuing to drive recklessly even though 

Coitrone had slowed down before he was struck. Accordingly, Coitrone’s reliance on Walker is 
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misplaced because Coitrone, unlike the motorcyclist in Walker, posed a substantial and 

immediate danger to innocent bystanders at the time of the collision. 

Coitrone also claims that Coomes’s alleged violations of KSP policy during the pursuit 

establish that Coomes’s use of force was objectively unreasonable. This argument fails because 

even if Coomes violated KSP policy during the pursuit, Coomes’s violations of KSP policy 

would not establish that his use of force was unconstitutional. “[T]he Supreme Court has been 

cautious to draw a distinction between behavior that violates a statutory or constitutional right 

and behavior that violates an administrative procedure of the agency for which the officials 

work.” Cass v. City of Dayton, 770 F.3d 368, 377 (6th Cir. 2014) (internal quotation marks and 

citation omitted). This court has therefore held that a detective’s alleged violations of police 

department policy were not determinative of whether the detective’s use of force was objectively 

unreasonable. Id. As we reasoned in Smith v. Freland, 954 F.2d 343, 347 (6th Cir. 1992),

“[u]nder § 1983, the issue is whether [the officer] violated the Constitution, not whether he 

should be disciplined by the local police force. A city can certainly choose to hold its officers to 

a higher standard than that required by the Constitution without being subjected to increased 

liability under § 1983.” Accordingly, Coomes’s alleged violations of KSP policy do not change 

the conclusion that he did not act objectively unreasonably under the circumstances.

Coitrone also argues that an alleged disagreement between Clark and Coomes about 

when KSP policy required the pursuit to be terminated creates a genuine issue of material fact 

about whether Coomes’s use of force was excessive. This argument is unavailing. Even if 

Coitrone is correct that Coomes violated KSP policy by pursuing Coitrone after Clark had 

determined that KSP policy required that the pursuit be terminated, Coomes’s alleged violation 

of KSP policy would not, as stated above, establish that his use of force violated the Fourth 
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Amendment. Similarly, Clark’s alleged belief that Coomes’s continued pursuit of Coitrone was 

unreasonable is not determinative of whether Coomes’s use of force violated the Fourth 

Amendment. “[A]n officer’s subjective belief that a particular use of force was unreasonable is 

no more proof of a constitutional violation than an officer’s subjective belief that a particular use 

of force was reasonable is proof of constitutionality; the test is one of objective reasonableness.”

Abney, 493 F.3d at 420 (citing Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 404 (2006); Bond v. United 

States, 529 U.S. 334, 338 n. 2 (2000)). 

Also unavailing is Coitrone’s contention that Coomes’s use of force was unreasonable 

because he was not in full flight at the time of the collision. To support this assertion, Coitrone 

contends that unlike the suspects in Scott and Abney, who were both in “full flight” when they 

were struck by the pursuing officers, Coitrone had “ceased his flight” prior to the collision.

Scott, 550 U.S. at 375; Abney, 493 F.3d at 414. However, the undisputed facts establish that 

although Coitrone was slowing down, he had not come to a complete stop at the time that 

Coomes struck him and Coomes had no way of knowing whether Coitrone would flee again, as 

he had done once after completely stopping his motorcycle.

The district court therefore properly granted summary judgment to Coomes on Coitrone’s 

§ 1983 claim.2

Dismissal of Coitrone’s state-law negligence and battery claims, however, does not 

automatically follow from the district court’s dismissal of the federal claim. First with respect to 

the negligence claim, the district court adopted the reasoning of Turner v. Hill to the effect that a 

 

2Because Coomes did not violate Coitrone’s constitutional rights, we do not reach the issue of 

whether Coomes is protected from liability by the doctrine of qualified immunity, except to note 

the Supreme Court’s recent observation that the “Court has thus never found the use of deadly 

force in connection with a dangerous car chase to violate the Fourth Amendment, let alone to be 

a basis for denying qualified immunity.” Mullenix v. Luna, 136 S. Ct. 305, 310 (2015).
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claim for negligence would not lie for the same excessive force asserted in a battery claim for 

excessive force used during a lawful arrest. 2015 WL 2384298, at *9−10. In Turner, the court 

reasoned that “[t]o permit a separate claim for negligence premised on the same conduct by the 

officer is logically and doctrinally unsupportable.” Turner v. Hill, 5:12−CV−00195−TBR, 2014 

WL 549462, at *10 (W.D. Ky. Feb. 11, 2014). The district court also relied on another Western 

District of Kentucky case that reasoned that “[t]o permit a separate claim for negligence creates 

the risk that a jury would assume that, even if no excessive force were used, the officer might 

somehow still be liable for some undefined negligence.” Ali v. City of Louisville, No. 

3:05−CV−427−R, 2006 WL 2663018, at *8 (W.D. Ky. Sept. 15, 2006). The underlying premise 

of this reasoning is thus that the injury caused by the use of unreasonable force in making an 

otherwise proper arrest is compensable under a battery cause of action, not that there can be no

compensation. Coomes has not cited Kentucky state court cases demonstrating that this 

approach is correct. 

We need not resolve whether this is an accurate statement of Kentucky tort law. For one 

thing, neither case relied upon by the district court addresses a situation where, as here, the 

officer asserts that the contact with the suspect was unintentional and the plaintiff alleges 

violations of traffic laws and the failure to adhere to reasonable police procedures, all 

circumstances that are more consistent with a negligence claim than a battery claim. 

In any event, even assuming that at least portions of Coitrone’s negligence claim are 

subsumed in the battery claim, this still leaves the issue of whether the district court properly 

dismissed Coitrone’s battery claim. This battery claim in turn depends on whether the otherwise 

privileged use of force to arrest him was reasonable.
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This reasonableness determination is not limited to an examination of whether there was 

probable cause to arrest. The district court did not hold that Coitrone’s evasion of law 

enforcement was by itself sufficient to defeat the battery claim, although one sentence of the 

district court’s opinion could possibly be so read. The district court, however, clearly stated that 

it had to consider “whether Coomes had had reasonable grounds to believe and did believe in 

good faith that Coitrone had committed an arrestable offense and whether Coomes used 

excessive force in making the arrest.” 2015 WL 2384298, at *11 (emphasis added). In the next 

sentence, the district court, based on its previous analysis under federal law, concluded that 

Coomes’s “use of force followed Coitrone’s flight from police and wanton endangerment—

felonies to which Coitrone has pled guilty.” Id. We take this to be the district court’s 

determination that Coomes did not use unreasonable force under state law. 

It is true that the district court stated that Coomes did not owe a duty to Coitrone under 

negligence law, but the language in Walker v. Davis that the court used to support this conclusion 

at most questioned whether a police officer owes to a fleeing person “such a duty” as that owed 

to an innocent bystander. Id. at *10 (citing Walker v. Davis, 643 F. Supp. 2d 921, 933 n.10 

(W.D. Ky. 2009)). This is a long way from stating that a law enforcement officer has no duty at 

all under negligence law to avoid unnecessary injury to a fleeing person. Apart from the 

technical question of whether the negligence claim is subsumed in the battery claim, there could 

be no basis for saying that under negligence principles the privilege to arrest permits any use of 

force, no matter how unreasonable.

All of this boils down to the question of whether the force applied in this case was or was 

not unreasonable under Kentucky tort standards. The state standard of course need not be 

identical to the federal standard. Indeed, the Western District of Kentucky court stated in Ali, 
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2006 WL 2663018, at *8, that “the analysis of excessive force claims under § 1983 is different 

from the analysis under state law.” The district court’s analysis of the Kentucky reasonableness 

standard in this case is very brief and relies on its analysis under federal law. The parties in their 

briefing to us do not specifically address the Kentucky standard for what is reasonable under the 

circumstances. Therefore, assuming that the district court continues to assert supplemental 

jurisdiction, the district court on remand should determine whether the force was unreasonable 

under the applicable Kentucky reasonability standard. 

In light of the need for further state-law analysis, a remand is appropriate so that the 

district court may exercise its discretion to determine whether or not to decline supplemental 

jurisdiction. “Generally, once a federal court has dismissed a plaintiff’s federal law claim, it 

should not reach state law claims. Residual jurisdiction should be exercised only in cases where 

the interests of judicial economy and the avoidance of multiplicity of litigation outweigh our 

concern over needlessly deciding state law issues.” Experimental Holdings, Inc. v. Farris, 

503 F.3d 514, 521 (6th Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). “[T]he 

Supreme Court’s general comity-related principle [is] that residual supplemental jurisdiction be 

exercised with hesitation, to avoid needless decisions of state law.” Id. at 522 (citing United 

Mine Workers of Am. v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 726 (1966)). “Such a dismissal [would be] of 

course without prejudice” to Coitrone’s ability to bring these claims in state court. Id. 

Accordingly, we remand this case to the district court so that it can consider whether to 

grant summary judgment to Coomes on Coitrone’s state-law claims under Kentucky tort law, or 

in the alternative to exercise its discretion to decline supplemental jurisdiction and dismiss those 

claims without prejudice.