Opinion ID: 4375914
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: January 2016 Incident

Text: Unlike the August 2015 incident, there were no medical reports in the record from the post-incident examination Thomas asserted that Sears received. Further, Sears stated that no such examination occurred and he was taken directly to confinement, after which he was denied medical care for at least 12 days, directly contradicting Thomas’s sworn statements. The magistrate judge also erred by stating that it was “equally plausible” that the injuries Sears alleged he was diagnosed with following the incident-bruised ribs and sprained shoulder rotary cups-may have been the result of some other event. That conclusion requires an impermissible inference in the prison officials’ favor, insofar as there is no 14 Case: 18-13423 Date Filed: 03/11/2019 Page: 15 of 19 evidence to suggest that Sears received those injuries from an unrelated event. Kingsland, 382 F.3d at 1226. Sears’s alleged diagnosis of bruised ribs and sprained shoulder rotary cuffs also contradicted Dr. Maier’s sworn statement that there was no objective medical evidence supporting Sears’s claims, which created a genuine dispute about whether Sears sustained his alleged injuries. Stein, 881 F.3d at 858-59. The court also appears to have made impermissible credibility determinations, insofar as it stated that Sears’s account of events was implausible “[g]iven the credible, uncontroverted evidence submitted by the [prison officials].” The court similarly gave weight to the fact that Sears’s sworn statements were not corroborated, while those of the prison officials were, but corroboration alone is insufficient to warrant summary judgment because a party’s statements may be self-serving so long as they give rise to a genuine dispute. Id.; Kingsland, 382 F.3d at 1225-26. Assuming Sears’s sworn statements are true, as the district court was required to do, Thomas and Quinones dragged Sears for approximately 65 meters over a period of 23 minutes using a modified take-down technique, thereby causing Sears extreme pain and exposing his genitals and buttocks in the process. Kingsland, 382 F.3d at 1226. Further, Brown tightened Sears’s handcuffs after he complained that they were too tight to make the handcuffs cut into his skin. Based on those sworn statements, a reasonable fact-finder could find that Thomas, 15 Case: 18-13423 Date Filed: 03/11/2019 Page: 16 of 19 Quinones, and Brown maliciously and sadistically applied force to Sears to harm him and cause him pain, rather than to maintain control, because Sears was restrained at the time. Skrtich, 280 F.3d at 1300; Kernel Records Oy, 694 F.3d at 1300. Further, that alleged conduct could amount to a constitutional violation even if Sears did not suffer significant injury as a result, though the absence of significant injury may weigh against a finding that the prison officials acted with the requisite malice. Wilkins, 559 U.S. at 37. Therefore, the district court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of Thomas, Quinones, and Brown on the excessive force claims stemming from the January 2016 incident because Sears’s sworn statements were not contradicted by objective evidence that rendered his account implausible, the court was required to accept those statements as true, and the absence of serious injury did not preclude a determination that the prison officials maliciously applied force to him. See Wilkins, 559 U.S. at 37; Kingsland, 382 F.3d at 1226; Cuesta, 285 F.3d at 970; Campbell, 169 F.3d at 1375.