Court Opinion

ID: 9496386
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:25:16.925234+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:32.778459
License: Public Domain

MESKILL, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the majority’s conclusion that Erath is not entitled to summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity on Bybee’s excessive force claim. However, I believe that Erath is entitled to summary judgment on Bybee’s unlawful detention claim in its entirety. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority’s opinion that holds the detention of Bybee in uncomfortably tight handcuffs for thirty minutes to be an unlawful detention.
As the majority notes, in Franklin v. Foxworth, 31 F.3d 873, 876 (9th Cir.1994), this Court held that “[a] detention conducted in connection with a search may be unreasonable if it is unnecessarily painful, degrading, or prolonged, or if it involves an undue invasion of privacy.” In Franklin, the Court held that the plaintiffs rights were violated by a detention during which the defendants acted unreasonably “by removing a gravely ill and semi-naked man [the plaintiff] from his sickbed without providing any clothing or covering, and then by forcing him to remain sitting handcuffed in his living room for two hours rather than returning him to his bed within a reasonable time after the search of his room was completed.” Franklin, 31 F.3d at 876-77. Thirty minutes of discomfort arising solely out of handcuffs that are' too tight is a far cry from the actions that this Court found unreasonable in Franklin, and I do not agree that the handcuffing alleged by Bybee was unlawful under this precedent.
Furthermore, even if Bybee’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the overly tight handcuffing, Erath would be entitled to qualified immunity. While Franklin establishes that a detention may be unlawful if carried out in an unreasonable manner, “the right the official is alleged to have violated must have been ‘clearly established’ in a more particularized, and hence more relevant, sense: The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right.” Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001) (internal citations omitted). Here, a reasonable officer in Erath’s position would not have known that detaining Bybee — a healthy adult woman, who was fully *1065clothed and seated on a couch — in tight handcuffs for thirty minutes was unlawful. Interestingly, Bybee concedes that the handcuffs were loosened after she complained that they were uncomfortable.
The majority cites three other cases in support of its denial of qualified immunity on this portion of Bybee’s detention claim: Palmer v. Sanderson, 9 F.3d 1433, 1436(9th Cir.1993); Alexander v. County of Los Angeles, 64 F.3d 1315, 1323 (9th Cir.1995); and Heitschmidt v. City of Houston, 161 F.3d 834, 839 (5th Cir.1998). It is true that in each of these cases the presiding court denied qualified immunity to the defendant on a claim that involved handcuffing the plaintiff too tightly, causing pain. However, in each of these cases, the issue of uncomfortable handcuffing arose in the context of an excessive force claim, not an unlawful detention claim. In Heitschmidt, the handcuffing claim is not discussed as part of the analysis of the plaintiffs unlawful detention claim, but only in section IV of the Fifth Circuit’s opinion, which begins: “Heitschmidt also claims that the defendants subjected him to excessive force.” Heitschmidt, 161 F.3d at 839-40. Likewise, in Palmer, the Court considered the plaintiffs allegations regarding painful handcuffing only in the context of the plaintiffs excessive force claim, and not in connection with the plaintiffs unlawful arrest claim. See Palmer, 9 F.3d at 1436. Most relevant to the case at hand is Alexander, in which this Court held that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity on the plaintiffs unlawful arrest claim, see Alexander, 64 F.3d at 1318-22, but that they were not entitled to qualified immunity on the plaintiffs excessive force claim based in part on the defendant’s improper use of handcuffs, see id. at 1322-23.
I conclude that while it might be clearly established that handcuffing a person in a manner that causes him unnecessary pain may constitute an excessive use of force prohibited by the Fourth Amendment, it is not clearly established that overly tight handcuffing constitutes a violation of a person’s right to be free from unlawful detention. Accordingly, I would find that Erath was entitled to qualified immunity as to all aspects of Bybee’s unlawful detention claim. I therefore respectfully dissent.