Opinion ID: 766536
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: 15 We have jurisdiction under the collateral order doctrine to review an interlocutory appeal of the district court'sorder denying summary judgment on a qualified immunity defense. See Armendariz v. Penman, 75 F.3d 1311, 1316 (9th Cir. 1996) (citing Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 528 (1985)). The collateral order doctrine, however, does not sanction review of a district court's order denying the defendant's motion for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds when the basis for the defendant's motion is that the evidence in the pretrial record is insufficient to create a genuine issue of fact for trial. Id. at 1317 (citing Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 313-19 (1995)). Thus, on summary judgment, our review is generally limited to determining whether clearly established law existed at the time of the incident that [the defendant's] actions could have violated. Watkins v. City of Oakland, 145 F.3d 1087, 1091 (9th Cir. 1998). We also have jurisdiction, however, to review the question whether there is any genuine issue of material fact as to whether an officer's conduct met the [qualified immunity] standard of `objective legal reasonableness.'  Behrens v. Pelletier, 516 U.S. 299, 313 (1996); see also Collins v. Jordan, 110 F.3d 1363, 1370 (9th Cir. 1996) (An appellate court [also ] has jurisdiction to consider defendants' assertion that the dispute of fact is not material.). III. 16 Qualified Immunity Analysis in an Excessive Force Case 17 Saucier argues that our en banc holding in Hammer, 932 F.2d at 850, conflicts with our later cases in which we have equated the reasonableness test for the defense of qualified immunity with the reasonableness test for the merits of an excessive force claim. We disagree. 18 The doctrine of qualified immunity protects `government officials performing discretionary functions . . . from liability for civil damages insofar as their 19 conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.'  Somers v. Thurman, 109 F.3d 614, 616-17 (9th Cir.) (quoting Harlow v.Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)), cert. denied, 118 S. Ct. 143 (1997)). The qualified immunity analysis is the same for Bivens actions against federal officials as it is for claims against state officials under 42 U.S.C. S 1983. See Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818 n.30. To determine whether an official is entitled to qualified immunity, we conduct a two-part analysis: (1) We consider whether the law governing the official's conduct was clearly established. If it was not clearly established, the official is entitled to immunity from suit. (2) If the law was clearly established, we proceed to ask if under that law, a reasonable official could have believed the conduct was lawful. Somers, 109 F.3d at 617 (citing Act Up!/Portland v. Bagley, 988 F.2d 868, 871 (9th Cir. 1993)). 20 Qualified immunity is a defense. In a civil rights action in which qualified immunity is asserted, the reasonableness of an officer's conduct comes into play under the second prong of that defense. In a civil rights action founded on the use of excessive force under the Fourth Amendment, the reasonableness of the officer's conduct also comes into play, not as an element of the officer's defense, but as an element of the plaintiff's case. The Supreme Court held in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395 (1989), that all claims that law enforcement officers have used excessive force . . . in the course of an arrest . . . should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment and its `reasonableness' standard . . .. The Court explained that this  `reasonableness' inquiry in an excessive force case is an objective one: the question is whether the [officer's] actions are `objectively reasonable' in light of the facts andcircumstances confronting [him]. Id. at 397. 21 The essence of the Graham reasonableness inquiry is a balancing of the force which was applied . . . against the need for that force. Liston v. County of Riverside, 120 F.3d 965, 976 (9th Cir. 1997) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). In evaluating whether the force used to effect a particular arrest is reasonable, a court must pay careful attention to the following non-exhaustive list of factors: (1) the severity of the crime at issue; (2) whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others; and (3) whether the suspect actively resists detention or attempts to escape. Id. (citing Graham, 490 U.S. at 396). 22 Both the second prong of the qualified immunity defense (whether a reasonable officer could have believed his conduct was lawful), and the merits of an excessive force claim focus on the objective reasonableness of the officer's conduct. To determine whether an officer is entitled to the defense of qualified immunity when the use of force is in issue, the question asked is whether a hypothetical officer reasonably could have believed that the amount of force used was reasonable. To resolve the merits of an excessive force claim, the question is whether a reasonable officer could have believed that the force used was necessary under the circumstances. See Graham, 490 U.S. at 397. Because of this parity, we have repeatedly held that the inquiry as to whether officers are entitled to qualified immunity for the use of excessive force is the same as the inquiry on the merits of the excessive force claim. Alexander v. County of Los Angeles, 64 F.3d 1315, 1322 (9th Cir. 1995); accord Acosta v. City and County of San Francisco, 83 F.3d 1143, 1147-48 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 1009 (1996); Scott v. Henrich, 39 F.3d 912, 914 (9th Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 515 U.S. 1159 (1995); Alexander v. City and County of San Francisco, 29 F.3d 1355, 1367 (9th Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1083 (1995); Palmer v. Sanderson, 9 F.3d 1433, 1435-36 (9th Cir. 1993); Morgan v. Woessner, 997 F.2d 1244, 1259-60 (9th Cir.), cert. dismissed, 510 U.S. 1033 (1993); Hopkins v. Andaya, 958 F.2d 881, 885 n.3 (9th Cir. 1992); Curnow v. Ridgecrest Police, 952 F.2d 321, 325 (9th Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 972 (1992). 23 The majority of other circuits have taken similar positions. See Bass v. Robinson, 167 F.3d 1041, 1051 (6th Cir. 1999); Thomas v. Roach, 165 F.3d 137, 143 (2d Cir. 1999); Frazell v. Flanigan, 102 F.3d 877, 886-87 (7th Cir. 1996); Scott v. District of Columbia, 101 F.3d 748, 759 (D.C. Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1231 (1997); Mick v. Brewer, 76 F.3d 1127, 1135 n.5 (10th Cir. 1996); Rowland v. Perry, 41 F.3d 167, 173 (4th Cir. 1994); cf. Roy v. Inhabitants of the City of Lewiston, 42 F.3d 691, 695 (1st Cir. 1994) (In police misconduct cases, however, the Supreme Court has used the same `objectively reasonable' standard in describing both the constitutional test of liability and the Court's own standard for qualified immunity. (citations omitted)). But see, Snyder v. Trepagnier, 142 F.3d 791, 800-01 (5th Cir. 1998) (There is no inherent conflict between a finding of excessive force and a finding of qualified immunity.), cert. granted, 119 S. Ct. 863 (including [w]hether a jury finding that a constitutional violation incurred by use of excessive force in an arrest necessarily precludes a finding of qualified immunity, so as to make such dual findings irreconcilable), cert. dismissed, 119 S. Ct. 1493 (1999) (pursuant to agreement between the parties). 24 As the district court recognized, in an excessive force case, a material issue offact as to whether an officer used excessive force precludes summary judgment on a qualified immunity defense. An officer cannot have an objectively reasonable belief that the force used was necessary (entitling the officer to qualified immunity) when no reasonable officer could have believed that the force used was necessary (establishing a Fourth Amendment violation). See Street v. Parham, 929 F.2d 537, 540 (10th Cir. 1991). If genuine issues of material fact as to the amount of force used, or the circumstances that might justify the amount of force used, prevent a court from concluding as a matter of law that the force was objectively reasonable, then a material issue of fact necessarily exists as to whether an objectively reasonable officer could have believed the amount of force used was lawful. 25 We reject Saucier's assertion that our many and consistent panel opinions on this subject are in conflict with our en banc opinion in Hammer, 932 F.2d at 850. In Hammer, the plaintiff alleged that an arresting officer had used excessive force to obtain a blood sample from him after his arrest for drunken driving. See id. at 843-44. At the time of the arrest, prevailing Supreme Court authority expressly permitted the withdrawal of blood over the objection of the subject. See id. at 850 (citing Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966) and Breithaupt v. Abram, 352 U.S. 432 (1957)). The constitutionality of the use of force to extract blood was judged by the shock the conscience standard, which standard the plaintiff Hammer conceded was not met. See id. We held that, although Graham imposes a balancing test that can . . . result in force being found excessive even though it did not rise to the level that shocks the conscience[, r]easonable officers . . . cannot be required to have anticipated the ruling in Graham. Id. Thus, we concluded that the defendants were immune from personal liability in damages for their actions in applying or authorizing the use of force that was unreasonable in all the circumstances but well below the level that shocks the conscience. Id. It was in this context that we stated: 26 [The plaintiff] suggested at oral argument that an officer who has used unreasonable force cannot, by definition, have acted reasonably. A similar contention was rejected, however, in [Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635 (1987)]. Whether a search is unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment is an entirely different question from whether an officer could have believed his actions lawful under the Fourth Amendment. [See id.] at 643-44. To accept [the plaintiff's] contention would be to eliminate all possibility of immunity for violations of the Fourth Amendment, an unacceptable outcome. See id. at 643. 27 Id. 28 Saucier contends this passage contradicts and invalidates our subsequent holdings that the objective reasonableness tests for excessive force and qualified immunity are the same. It does not. Hammer involved circumstances not at issue here or in the subsequent line of cases Saucier challenges. Graham articulated a new objective reasonableness test that was different from what had been the clearly-established shock-the conscience test. The amount of force used in Hammer violated the Fourth Amendment because it was objectively unreasonable, but an objectively reasonable officer could have believed that his conduct did not shock the conscience and thus was in fact lawful under the legal test used at the time. Such an outcome is specifically contemplated by the qualified immunity test, particularly the first prong. 4 See, e.g., Chew v.Gates, 27 F.3d 1432, 1446-50 (9th Cir. 1994) (affirming qualified immunity because the training and use of police dogs did not contravene clearly established law). 29 Unlike the situation in Hammer, our subsequent line of cases which have equated the merits of the objective reasonableness inquiry in a use-of-force case with the objective reasonableness inquiry in a qualified immunity defense do not eliminate the availability of qualified immunity as a defense in excessive force cases. A defendant will always be entitled to qualified immunity when the law governing his or her conduct was not clearly established -the first prong of the qualified immunity defense. 30 As a fallback position, Saucier argues that even if the district court applied the correct legal test to his qualified immunity defense, the amount of force he used in arresting Katz was so minimal that it was per se reasonable. 5 We disagree. The facts are in dispute. According to Katz, without warning or speaking to him, Saucier and Parker approached him from behind, grabbed his banner, dragged him about fifty feet, and tossed him into the back of a van so violently that he narrowly avoided serious injury. Taking these facts as true for the purpose of summary judgment, no reasonable officer could have believed that the alleged amount of force used to arrest Katz was necessary under the circumstances. See Liston, 120 F.3d at 976 ([W]e must pay careful attention to (1) the severity of the crime at issue; (2) whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others; and (3) whether the suspect actively resists detention or attempts to escape.). Unfurling a banner at a public event does not appear to be a particularly severe crime. Katz was sixty years old and wearing a leg brace. There is no indication that he was armed or dangerous. From all that appears at this stage of the case, he did not pose an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or anyone else. Although Saucier disputes whether Katz resisted arrest, Katz says he did not. 31 In sum, taking the facts as asserted by Katz in the light most favorable to him, no reasonable officer could have believed that the amount of force used was lawful. See, e.g., Sheth v. Webster, 145 F.3d 1231, 1238 (11th Cir. 1998) (officer not entitled to qualified immunity for pushing, handcuffing, and dragging plaintiff in absence of justification); Alexis v. McDonald's Restaurants of Massachusetts, Inc., 67 F.3d 341, 353 (1st Cir. 1995) ([W]e are not persuaded that the record evidence compelled the conclusion that the force with which [the defendant officer] effected the sudden, unannounced, violent seizure and removal of Alexis's person was objectively reasonable . . . .). Saucier was not entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law.