Opinion ID: 67630
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Claims Against Dorough

Text: As we have indicated, the summary judgments favoring Dorough rest on official immunity. “Qualified immunity protects government officials performing discretionary functions ‘from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.’” Priester v. City of Riviera Beach, 208 F.3d. 919, 925 (11th Cir. 2000) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S. Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L. Ed. 2d 396 (1982)). It “balances two important interests – the need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably.” Pearson v. Callahan, 129 S. Ct. 808, 815 (2009). We apply a two-part test to determine whether a defendant, acting within the scope of his discretionary authority, is entitled to official immunity at the summary 5 The District Court held in the alternative that, since Officer Dorough was entitled to official immunity on the claims against him, the City could not be liable on the related claims against it. We agree with Trammell that this is not the case. While a constitutional violation on the part of a municipal agent is a predicate to municipal liability under § 1983, see City of Los Angeles v. Heller, 475 U.S. 786, 799 (1986), the availability of official immunity to the agent is irrelevant to municipal liability. See Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence Coordination Unit, 507 U.S. 163, 166 (1993). 10 judgment stage: we determine whether the plaintiff has tendered a prima facie case of a deprivation of a constitutional right and, if so, whether that right was “clearly established” at the time of the violation. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001); Cottone v. Jenne, 326 F.3d 1352, 1358 (11th Cir. 2003).
Trammell insists that there is a material dispute of fact as to whether Dorough gave any warning and, further, that even a simultaneous warning leaving no time for identification or surrender would not have rendered the seizure reasonable. We agree with Trammell that there is a material dispute of fact with respect to whether and when any warning was given.6 That evidentiary conflict is not, however, important to our analysis because we may assume for present purposes, without deciding, that a constitutional violation occurred when Yacco seized Trammell. Appellees’ brief, while insisting that the District Court properly found official immunity with respect to this claim, does not take issue with its conclusion 6 Trammell testified that while in the small residential backyard he heard no warning and that under the circumstances he would have heard one if it had been given. We conclude that a jury could find that none was given. See Vathekan v. Prince George’s County, 154 F.3d 173, 180 (4th Cir. 1998) (“If a warning is not given, then a witness will not hear one. A juror could reasonably conclude that if certain witnesses did not hear a warning, then no warning was given, even if other witnesses testify to a warning.”) (emphasis in original). We also agree with Trammell that he did not waive this contention. 11 that a jury could find a violation of Trammell’s right to be free from unreasonable seizure. Given this circumstance and our conclusion that the right found by the District Court to have been violated was not “clearly established” at the time, we exercise our discretion not to review the District Court’s determination that a constitutional violation occurred. Pearson, 129 S. Ct. at 813. Accordingly, we now turn to whether Dorough violated a clearly established constitutional right. A city employee is entitled to official immunity for a § 1983 violation unless the plaintiff can demonstrate that the official’s actions violated clearly established constitutional law “of which a reasonable person would have known.” Priester, 208 F.3d at 926; Storck v. City of Coral Springs, 354 F.3d 1307, 1313 (11th Cir. 2003). In determining whether a constitutional right is clearly established, the salient question is whether the state of the law at the time of the incident gave officials fair warning that their behavior was unlawful. Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002). For a constitutional right to be clearly established, its contours ‘must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, see Mitchell [v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511,] 535, n.12, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411; but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be 12 apparent.’ Id. at 739 (quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S. Ct. 3034, 97 L. Ed. 2d 523 (1987)). Official immunity protects “all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” Long v. Slaton, 508 F. 3d 576, 584 (11th Cir. 2007) (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 106 S. Ct. 1092, 1096, 89 L. Ed. 2d 271 (1986)). An official is entitled to official immunity “unless their ‘supposedly wrongful act was already established to such a high degree that every objectively reasonable official standing in the defendant’s place would be on notice that what the defendant official was doing would be clearly unlawful given the circumstances.’” Id. (quoting Pace v. Capobianco, 283 F.3d 1275, 1282 (11th Cir. 2002)). “[I]n this Circuit, the law can be ‘clearly established’ for [official] immunity purposes only by decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, or the highest court of the state where the case arose.” Wilson v. Strong, 156 F. 3d 1131, 1135 (11th Cir. 1998) (quoting Jenkins v. Talladega City Bd. of Educ., 115 F.3d 821, 826 n.4 (11th Cir. 1997). Thus, in order to show that Dorough is not entitled to official immunity, Trammell must be able to point to earlier case law from the Eleventh Circuit, the Florida Supreme Court, or from the 13 United States Supreme Court that is “materially similar . . . and therefore provided clear notice of the violation” or to “general rules of law from a federal constitutional or statutory provision or earlier case law that applied with ‘obvious clarity’ to the circumstances” and established clearly the unlawfulness of Dorough’s conduct. Long, 508 F.3d at 584. Trammell has been unable to point us to such a case or law and, accordingly, we must conclude that Dorough is entitled to immunity.7 While there was case law in July of 2003 from the Fourth Circuit finding a constitutional violation where a police dog similarly trained was released without an adequate warning,8 we have found no case from our Court, the Supreme Court of the United States, or the Supreme Court of Florida which so holds. While Trammell insists that Kerr v. City of West Palm Beach, 875 F.2d 1546, 1553 (11th Cir. 1989), gave Dorough fair notice that a warning was required, it does not clearly establish the relevant right. 7 Trammell argues that he is not required to point to “materially similar” case law from this circuit after the Supreme Court’s decision in Hope, 536 U.S. at 739. We cannot agree. Hope states that a plaintiff need not point to a prior case holding that the exact conduct in question was impermissible. It is silent in regard to the issue of whether case law from another circuit alone may be sufficient to put an officer on notice of the impermissibility of his conduct. Accordingly, we remain bound by our circuit law on this issue. 8 See Vathekan, 154 F.3d at 180; Kopf v. Wing, 942 F.2d 265 (4th Cir. 1991). 14 Kerr considered whether a police department’s K-9 policy was unconstitutional in light of allegations that the dogs were improperly trained and supervised. As the factual basis for the claim, the plaintiffs introduced evidence that the dogs had an impermissibly high bite-to-apprehension ratio, were used on an unnecessarily wide range of crimes, and had been deployed without warning on individuals who did not resist arrest or who had already surrendered. On appeal, the Kerr Court determined that the city had failed to establish a adequate standards for the K-9 unit. The Court further determined that the unconstitutional character of the K-9 unit’s apprehensions was plainly obvious to city officials, who were deliberately indifferent to the need to take corrective action. Kerr’s holding does not establish that a canine warning is required before the release of a police dog. While some of the plaintiffs in Kerr alleged that they had been bitten without a warning, the opinion focused on the city’s training program and the high number of bites in the unit. It contained no legal analysis or discussion of the warning issue and thus cannot be interpreted as putting Dorough on notice that his conduct was constitutionally impermissible. In the alternative, Trammell asserts that Dorough is not entitled to qualified immunity because the unlawfulness of his actions was readily apparent, even in the absence of case law discussing his behavior. A “narrow exception” to the 15 requirement of particularized case law exists in excessive force cases where “the official's conduct lies so obviously at the very core of what the Fourth Amendment prohibits that the unlawfulness of the conduct was readily apparent to the official, notwithstanding the lack of caselaw.” Priester, 208 F.3d. at 926 (quoting Smith v. Mattox, 127 F.3d 1416, 1419 (11th Cir.1997)). To come within the narrow exception, a plaintiff must show that the official’s conduct “was so far beyond the hazy border between excessive and acceptable force that [the official] had to know he was violating the Constitution even without caselaw on point.” See Smith, 127 F.3d at 1419. This test entails determining whether “application of the [excessive force] standard would inevitably lead every reasonable officer in [the Defendants’] position to conclude the force was unlawful.” See Post v. City of Fort Lauderdale, 7 F.3d 1552, 1559 (11th Cir.1993), as amended, 14 F.3d 583 (11th Cir.1994); see also Jones v. City of Dothan, 121 F.3d 1456, 1460 (11th Cir.1997). Id. We are unpersuaded that Dorough’s conduct lies so far beyond the border of permissive and excessive conduct that every reasonable officer in Dorough’s position would have concluded that his behavior was unlawful. Accordingly, we will affirm the District Court’s determination that Dorough is entitled to qualified immunity for his conduct in allegedly releasing Yacco without a warning.
With respect to Trammell’s second claim against Dorough, we agree with 16 the District Court’s description of the record viewed in the light most favorable to Trammell and with its conclusion based on the record so viewed that a seizure with excessive force occurred. Given that version of the events, we find our prior decision in Priester helpful on both the issue of whether a violation occurred and the issue of whether official immunity is available to Dorough. In Priester, officers used a K-9 dog to track the scent of a robber leading away from the scene of the robbery. The plaintiff hid from the officers in a canal but voluntarily stood up and put his hands in the air when the officers shined a light into the canal. The officers told the plaintiff to lie down or else they would release the dog. The plaintiff complied, but the handler released the dog anyway. The plaintiff testified that, although he begged the officers to call the dog off, the defendants stood and watched “for an eternity” while the dog continued to attack and bite the plaintiff. Id. at 924. This Court held not only that the officer who deliberately sicced the dog on the victim engaged in a violation of clearly established constitutional law, but also that an accompanying officer acted objectively unreasonably in failing to intervene to stop the use of force. We further held that official immunity was not available to the officers: Nor do we think particularized case law is necessary to overcome 17 Defendant Cushing's claim of qualified immunity. That a police officer had a duty to intervene when he witnessed the use of excessive force and had the ability to intervene was clearly established in February 1994. See Byrd v. Clark, 783 F.2d 1002, 1007 (11th Cir.1986) (“If a police officer, whether supervisory or not, fails or refuses to intervene when a constitutional violation such as an unprovoked beating takes place in his presence, the officer is directly liable under Section 1983.”); see also Post, 7 F.3d at 1560 (“A police officer has the duty to intervene when another officer uses excessive force.”); Fundiller v. City of Cooper City, 777 F.2d 1436, 1441-42 (11th Cir.1985); Harris v. Chanclor, 537 F.2d 203, 206 (5th Cir.1976). When we defer to the jury's implicit fact finding, the excessive force in this case was obvious and was such that every reasonable officer would have known that it was clearly in violation of Priester's constitutional rights. Cushing observed the entire attack and had the time and ability to intervene, but he did nothing. No particularized case law was necessary for a reasonable police officer to know that, on the facts of this case and given that the duty to intervene was clearly established, he should have intervened. Id. Priester establishes that, under certain circumstances, failure to intervene in a dog attack is an obvious use of excessive force. As in Priester, Trammell insists that Officer Dorough permitted his dog to engage in an attack after it became apparent that he was not the suspect and posed no apparent danger to the officers. This fact alone is sufficient to establish that Dorough allegedly violated a clearly established constitutional norm, even if Dorough did not deliberately “sic” Yacco on Trammell. We further note that, viewing the record in the light most favorable to 18 Trammell, the attack lasted for a significant period of time. While Dorough testified that he immediately called Yacco off once he realized his mistake, the record evidences a number of things that transpired between the commencement of the attack and its conclusion which could lead a factfinder to conclude that the officers’ reactions were not instantaneous. Cooper testified, for example, that the attack continued long enough for him to realize that there were flashlights in his backyard and to go to the back porch to investigate the source of the lights. When he arrived at his back screen door, he could see that Trammell’s shirt had already been torn off of his back and shredded to his waist. He had time to observe the officers standing and staring at Trammell, to threaten to kill the dog, and to start to move across the yard toward Trammell before Yacco was removed by the officers. Despite the fact that Trammell has been unable to put a precise time frame on the attack, his testimony and that of Cooper is sufficient to raise the factual possibility that the attack continued for some significant length of time. If a jury concludes that the officers failed to stop the attack promptly after they became aware that Trammell was not the suspect, Priester compels the conclusion that Officer Dorough engaged in an obvious violation of Trammell’s rights by failing to stop Yacco’s attack. Accordingly, the District Court erred in awarding summary judgment to Dorough on this issue. We will reverse. 19