Opinion ID: 6332933
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: material fact dispute

Text: “To determine whether a denial of summary judgment based on qualified immunity is immediately appealable, this Court looks at the legal argument advanced.” Reyes v. City of Richmond, 287 F.3d 346, 350 (5th Cir. 2002). “An officer challenges materiality when he contends that ‘taking all the plaintiff’s factual allegations as true no violation of a clearly established right was shown.’ ” Id. at 351 (quoting Cantu v. Rocha, 77 F.3d 795, 803 (5th Cir. 1996)). On appeal Oliver argues that the facts at the moment of the threat are undisputed and urges this court to exercise jurisdiction over the case on the issue of materiality. “[D]espite giving lip service to the correct legal standard, [Oliver’s] argument does not take the facts in a light most favorable to the [p]laintiffs. In fact, significant portions of his argument assume facts different from those assumed by the [m]agistrate [judge].” Id. For example, Oliver invites us to consider the fact that Oliver “heard the window shatter right next to Gross,” which may have “sounded like a gunshot,” making it “reasonable to think it was a gunshot.” Although the magistrate judge acknowledges the fact that the officers heard gunfire while they were in the house, nowhere in the magistrate judge’s findings, 6 Case: 21-10366 Document: 00516284939 Page: 7 Date Filed: 04/19/2022 No. 21-10366 conclusions, and recommendation does the magistrate judge credit Oliver’s factual assertion about a possible gunshot from the car’s occupants. Oliver argued in his summary judgment motion (and again on appeal) that he was “[i]nstinctively/involuntarily reacting to the perceived gunshot/violence from the Suspect Car towards [Officer] Gross.” This argument invites us to “assume facts different from those assumed by the [m]agistrate [judge].” Id. As such, it is not a challenge to the materiality of the disputed facts, but rather an attack on the magistrate judge’s factual determination. We do not have jurisdiction to consider such an argument. Id. at 350–51; Kokesh, 14 F.4th at 391. 5 Furthermore, the extent of the car’s threat to Officer Gross is the factual question at the heart of this case, and despite Oliver’s argument to the contrary, it is a genuinely disputed question. Oliver describes that the car accelerated “towards/near/by” Officer Gross, whereas plaintiffs assert that Officer Gross was never in the path of the vehicle. The magistrate judge identified this as the crux of the factual dispute warranting denial of summary judgment: “[T]he body-camera footage sufficiently raises a fact question. . . [about the car’s] threat of harm to [Officer] Gross because it was moving away” from him. 5 Oliver also attempts on appeal to expand the relevant factual scenario to include the “escalating circumstances” of a potential “active shooter” situation, and the dissenting opinion follows suit, see post, at 4, suggesting that “[i]f anything, the perceived risk might have been greater in this case” relative to Irwin v. Santiago, No. 21-10020, 2021 WL 4932988 (5th Cir. Oct. 21, 2021), pointing to the series of gun shots that the officers heard while they were in the house. This expansion of the relevant factual scenario fails not only because it is outside the magistrate judge’s findings but also because “[t]he excessive force inquiry is confined to whether the [officer] was in danger at the moment of the threat that resulted in the [officer’s] shooting.” Bazan, 246 F.3d at 493. The threat resulting in the officer’s decision to shoot was the accelerating car, not the multiple gunshots the officers heard while in the house well before they were even in the vicinity of a moving vehicle. 7 Case: 21-10366 Document: 00516284939 Page: 8 Date Filed: 04/19/2022 No. 21-10366 Importantly, the resolution of this factual dispute is material because it affects both whether Oliver’s use of force was reasonable and whether the force he used violated clearly established law. See Prim v. Stein, 6 F.4th 584, 590 (5th Cir. 2021) (“A [disputed] fact is ‘material’ if its resolution in favor of one party might affect the outcome of the lawsuit under governing law.” (quoting Hamilton v. Segue Software Inc., 232 F.3d 473, 477 (5th Cir. 2000))). Oliver argues that the force he used was not unreasonable, and even if it was unreasonable, it was not clearly established to be so on April 29, 2017. Our precedent in Lytle v. Bexar County holds that the use of deadly force against a fleeing suspect who poses insufficient harm to others violates clearly established law. 560 F.3d 404, 417-18 (5th Cir. 2009) (focusing on the extent of the “threat of harm to the officer or others” when the car was moving away from the officer). Oliver points to a recent unpublished case from our court, Irwin v. Santiago, No. 21-10020, 2021 WL 4932988, at  (5th Cir. Oct. 21, 2021), for the proposition that an officer’s position “standing ‘toward the front’ ” of a moving car precludes Lytle’s applicability for purposes of the “clearly established” prong. But to reach that conclusion, we would have to resolve the factual dispute as to whether Officer Gross was standing toward the front of, toward the back of, or behind the car at the time that Oliver fired his shots. Unlike in Irwin, viewing the facts at issue here in the plaintiffs’ favor, the district court stated Officer Gross was toward the back of the car, or behind the car, as it accelerated down Shephard Lane and before Oliver fired his shots. In fact, the parties dispute how close Officer Gross was to the car such that he could hit the back window with his gun before Oliver fired. The dissenting opinion asserts that the “central question in this case is whether” the videos in Irwin “are meaningfully distinguishable” from the videos at issue here. See post, at 1. Although it is tempting to engage in such a factual comparison, to do so would be inappropriate because, unlike the Irwin 8 Case: 21-10366 Document: 00516284939 Page: 9 Date Filed: 04/19/2022 No. 21-10366 panel (which was reviewing a final judgment of a grant of qualified immunity), we are reviewing an interlocutory appeal—that is, an appeal of a denial of qualified immunity. On an interlocutory appeal, “we review less than we otherwise would.” Kokesh v. Curlee, 14 F.4th 382, 391 (5th Cir. 2021) (quoting Joseph v. Bartlett, 981 F.3d 319, 330 (5th Cir. 2020)). Specifically, when the lower court finds “that a genuine factual dispute exists” we are prohibited from reviewing its genuineness. Id. at 390 (quoting Good v. Curtis, 601 F.3d 393, 397 (5th Cir. 2010)). Here, the lower court specifically found a factual dispute, and taking the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, found that “neither Oliver nor Gross was positioned in front of the [moving] car when Oliver opened fire.” Our dissenting colleague encourages us to conduct a direct comparison of the two cases’ videos 6 and conclude that the threat posed to Officer Gross was akin to the threat posed to Officer Santiago, who— according to the Irwin panel conducting a de novo review of a final judgment granting qualified immunity—“was standing ‘toward the front’ ” of the moving vehicle when the officers began shooting. 2021 WL 4932988, at . Conducting a comparison of the two videos would not only run counter to our court’s binding precedent regarding the scope of our role in interlocutory appeals in qualified immunity cases, but the conclusion our dissenting colleague would have us draw from that comparison would also implicitly overturn the lower court’s determination that a genuine factual dispute exists. 6 We also note that the footage in the present case, compared to the footage in Irwin, offers considerably less certainty about the position of the purportedly at-risk officer relative to the moving car at the time that deadly force was used. This added uncertainty further counsels restraint in this interlocutory appeal. 9 Case: 21-10366 Document: 00516284939 Page: 10 Date Filed: 04/19/2022 No. 21-10366 Furthermore, despite the dissenting opinion’s comparison of this case to Irwin and statement that both cases involve cars driving away from an officer, see post, at 1, 4-5, the panel in Irwin stated that “the projected path of Irwin’s vehicle was in the officer’s direction, at least generally,” and distinguished that fact from other cases where the car “was moving away from the officer,” Irwin, 2021 WL 4932988, at  (emphasis added). If we were to compare the two cases, this case is unlike Irwin in that, here, the district court determined that a resolution of the factual disputes in the plaintiffs’ favor places Officer Gross toward the back of or behind the car, not in the projected path of the car (where the front tires were facing southbound), and that the car was moving away from the Officer Gross when Oliver fired his shots. We need not say that Irwin was wrongly decided, nor do we attempt to. Rather, we say only that the factual dispute in this case is not the same as that in Irwin. Because an analysis of the clearly established prong is fact-intensive, “courts must take care not to define a case’s ‘context’ in a manner that imports genuinely disputed factual propositions.” Kokesh, 14 F.4th at 392 (quoting Tolan v. Cotton, 572 U.S. 650, 657 (2014)). As such, “[w]e find that if a jury accepts Plaintiffs’ version of the facts as true, particularly as to what occurred in the moments before [Oliver] shot [at the car], the jury could conclude that the officers violated [Plaintiffs’] clearly established right to be free from excessive force.” Amador v. Vasquez, 961 F.3d 721, 730 (5th Cir. 2020), cert. denied, 141 S. Ct. 1513 (2021); see also Flores v. City of Palacios, 381 F.3d 391, 400 (5th Cir. 2004) (stating the resolution of whether shooting into tires in “circumstances such as these” depended on the dispute of material fact and affirming the denial of summary judgment); Joseph, 981 F.3d at 342 (denying qualified immunity at the summary judgment stage because there was a dispute of material fact). Moreover, to the extent that Oliver argues that the car’s threat is immaterial to the excessive-force analysis, we disagree 10 Case: 21-10366 Document: 00516284939 Page: 11 Date Filed: 04/19/2022 No. 21-10366 and find it material to the excessive force claim. Lytle, 560 F.3d at 409, 418 (5th Cir. 2009). Because the factual dispute is material, “we lack jurisdiction to consider the propriety of the summary judgment denial.” Bazan, 246 F.3d at 493. We leave it to the jury to weigh the disputed facts.