Opinion ID: 4543682
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Unreasonable Seizure/False Arrest (Count I)

Text: Ordinarily, an assessment of whether an officer is entitled to qualified immunity after a plaintiff has alleged an illegal arrest requires determining whether there was probable cause for the arrest. Probable cause exists if the “facts and circumstances within [an officer’s] knowledge and of which [he] had reasonably trustworthy information were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the [arrestee] had committed or was committing an offense.” Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964). At the summary-judgment stage, all reasonable inferences are to be made in favor of the arrestee, but “an arresting agent is entitled to qualified immunity if he or she could reasonably (even if erroneously) have believed that the arrest was lawful, in light of clearly established law and the information possessed at the time.” Harris v. Bornhorst, 513 F.3d 503, 511 (6th Cir. 2008). But at the present stage of this case—the interlocutory appeal from the denial of the officer’s claim of qualified immunity—the question for us is not the broad question of whether Berent had probable cause to seize Richards, but rather the narrow question of whether Richards has produced evidence upon which a reasonable juror could find that Berent’s (even mistaken) seizure of him was necessarily unreasonable under the those facts. We conclude that it was not unreasonable for Berent to believe that Richards “had committed or was committing an offense” at the time of the arrest. See Beck, 379 U.S. at 91. By Richards’s own account, when the officers came to the medical area, they immediately witnessed 6 Case No. 18-2432, Richards v. Cty. of Washtenaw, et al. some form of physical altercation between Richards and Paramedic Johnson. Even though it was Johnson who was restraining Richards, Berent still witnessed a uniformed medical professional struggling with or attempting to restrain a man who was pulling away. Michigan law permits an officer to arrest an individual for misdemeanor assault, which can be “either an attempt to commit a battery or an unlawful act which places another in reasonable apprehension of receiving an immediate battery.” Michigan v. Johnson, 284 N.W.2d 718, 718 (Mich. 1979). Given the scene that Berent encountered—even as described by Richards—it was not unreasonable for him to have concluded that Richards, and not the uniformed paramedic, was the perpetrator of an alleged assault. The district court’s denial of summary judgment hinged on the fact that the source of the original request for police assistance was unknown. However, this is irrelevant to the probablecause analysis. Regardless of how the officers were alerted, what they encountered upon their arrival in the medical area—a man in a physical struggle with a uniformed paramedic—is undisputed. That is enough to excuse any mistake by Berent, as being reasonable or at least not wholly unreasonable. We reverse the district court’s denial of summary judgment for this count.