Opinion ID: 3064879
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: What I can recall? We were coming out the

Text: doors and I heard shots being fired. Q. What do you mean you heard shots being fired? A. I heard the mace bullet of hitting of the win- dows and I — . . . . Q. At the moment something impacted your eye what was the position of your body? Were you standing straight up? Were you making — were you in the process of making some kind of motion? A. I was just walking out. That’s all I remember is walking out and when I saw that, then I got hit. 8362 NELSON v. CITY OF DAVIS Q. So you didn’t make a motion to dive into the bushes before that? A. No, it was instantaneous of the sound. The sounds and the feeling was instantaneous. It wasn’t like five minutes had passed. It was, boom, right then. Nelson also presented the deposition testimony of Bridget Collins and Alicia Vittitoe. Collins testified that she was standing outside in front of the breezeway door with a group of friends, “[i]ncluding Tim,” when the police opened fire. Alicia Vittitoe testified that Nelson was standing “[w]ith the group” in front of the door in the breezeway when the police started shooting. Thus, while Nelson seemed to indicate that he was not in the breezeway before the police fired, two supporting witnesses testified that he was included in the group upon which the police fired the pepperballs, making him an intended target of the shooting. Nelson filed his lawsuit in the Eastern District of California and made eleven separate claims for relief. He brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging violations of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, and he brought eight claims for relief based on California state law grounds. Nelson claims that he lost his football scholarship after the injury, suffered temporary blindness and permanent disfigurement, and has undergone a number of corrective surgeries. After the conclusion of discovery, all defendants moved for summary judgment or partial summary judgment. The district court granted the defendants’ motions for summary judgment and dismissed Nelson’s claims without hearing oral argument. The district court decided that Nelson was not an intended target of the pepperball unit because “[a]ny inference in that regard that may be drawn from the equivocal testimony of others, however, is nullified by Plaintiff’s own clear version of what transpired during the period immediNELSON v. CITY OF DAVIS 8363 ately surrounding his injury.” The district court relied on Prosser v. Ross, 70 F.3d 1005 (8th Cir. 1995), and Kennedy v. Allied Mutual Insurance Co., 952 F.2d 262 (9th Cir. 1991), and found that Nelson could not “avoid summary judgment by citing testimony allegedly inconsistent with his own testimony.” We review summary judgment de novo. Blankenhorn v. City of Orange, 485 F.3d 463, 470 (9th Cir. 2007). We “may not affirm a grant of summary judgment if there is any genuine issue of material fact . . . , [b]ecause ‘[c]redibility determinations, the weighing of the evidence, and the drawing of legitimate inferences from the facts are jury functions, not those of a judge.’ ” Id. (quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255 (1986)). All justifiable inferences must be drawn in Nelson’s favor, and we must deny summary judgment if any rational trier of fact could resolve an issue in his favor. Id.