LaChance v. Town of Charlton ( 2021 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 20-1103
MICHAEL E. LACHANCE,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
TOWN OF CHARLTON; OFFICER JASON F. WHITE; OFFICER TIMOTHY A.
SMITH; SGT. KEITH R. CLOUTIER,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Timothy S. Hillman, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Howard, Chief Judge,
Thompson, Circuit Judge,
and Katzmann, Judge.*
Héctor E. Piñeiro, with whom Robert A. Scott, Lizabel M.
Negrón-Vargas, and Law Office of Héctor Piñeiro were on brief, for
appellant.
Bradford N. Louison, with whom Douglas I. Louison and Louison,
Costello, Condon & Pfaff, LLP were on brief, for appellees.
March 3, 2021
* Of the United States Court of International Trade, sitting
by designation.
HOWARD, Chief Judge. Michael Lachance ("Lachance") woke
up at night gasping for air. His wife called 911, and three police
officers responded. Lachance did not appear to be of sound mind.
While attempting to restrain him, two officers ended up pushing
Lachance onto a sofa-recliner (the "push"), which toppled over,
then one of the officers kneeled on his back (the "kneel").
Lachance sued the officers, Sgt. Keith Cloutier, Officer Timothy
Smith, and Officer Jason White, and their employer, the Town of
Charlton, Massachusetts ("defendants"). The district court found
at summary judgment that the push and the kneel constituted two
discrete uses of force and granted summary judgment to the
defendants as to the push on the basis of qualified immunity.
After a jury trial, the court entered a directed verdict for the
defendants on the remaining counts on the ground that Lachance
failed to prove that any injury he suffered was caused by the
kneel. We affirm in part and vacate in part.
I.
A.
In the middle of the night on January 4, 2014, Kimberley
Lachance awoke to her bed shaking and a gurgling sound.1 She
noticed her husband, Lachance, convulsing, gasping for air, and
1 We take the facts in this section from the submissions at
summary judgment and present them in the light most favorable to
Lachance as the non-moving party. See Zabala-De Jesus v. Sanofi-
Aventis P.R., Inc., 959 F.3d 423, 427-28 (1st Cir. 2020).
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foaming at the mouth beside her. Mrs. Lachance attempted to supply
him with his inhaler, but he rolled off the bed, landing face-down
onto the floor. Somewhere along the way, Lachance bit his tongue
and started bleeding from his mouth. When Mrs. Lachance noticed
that he had urinated on himself and his complexion was turning
blue, she called 911.
Officer Smith responded to the call and attempted to
assess Lachance and supply him with oxygen, but Lachance got up
and started stumbling down the hallway, pressing his hands against
the walls for support and wearing only his underpants. By this
time, Sgt. Cloutier and Officer White as well as two EMTs had
arrived. All three police officers were aware that Lachance was
experiencing some sort of medical emergency, but no one present at
that time had deduced what was causing his symptoms. Lachance
pushed past the EMTs who were in his way, ignoring their questions
about his condition and their requests that he stop moving and
repeatedly asking, "What did I do?"
Officers Smith and White officers flanked Lachance, each
holding one of his arms, and repeatedly told him to stop walking.
But Lachance continued walking, attempting to pull away from the
officers and repeatedly asking what he did. He began to "wobbl[e]"
and "stumble[]" his way toward the open kitchen door leading to a
steep, icy stairway outside the second-story apartment, but the
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officers redirected him toward a cloth La-Z-Boy recliner in the
adjacent living room.
According to Mrs. Lachance, the two officers then pushed
Lachance onto the sofa-recliner "with a lot of force"; he landed
in a seated position; the recliner tumbled over backward along
with Lachance and the officers, one of whom landed on top of
Lachance; and Lachance landed with his back on the recliner, still
in a seated position. Lachance's son Amahd, who witnessed the
encounter from his bedroom doorway, described the force used as "a
push, grab, follow through." He described his father's fall onto
the recliner as a "hard landing," "not the way that you would want
to sit in it" but rather "more like he fell on the top of it."
Amahd further described Lachance's subsequent fall onto the floor
as another "hard landing" on his "back side-ish" and "shoulder
blade" area, his body "laying on the ground" with the upper half
on the kitchen's tile floor and the lower half on the living room's
hardwood floor.
"Immediately" after his fall, the officers "swarmed"
Lachance. Officers Smith and White got up, grabbed one of
Lachance's arms each, and dragged him off the recliner and onto
the kitchen floor behind it. Lachance began flailing his arms and
kicking his legs, screaming for his mother, and asking what he did
wrong. The three officers forcibly rolled Lachance onto his
stomach. Sgt. Cloutier and Officer White moved next to his upper
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body, and Officer Smith straddled his legs. Lachance kept trying
to get up, so one of the officers kneeled down with one knee on
the center of his back to keep him down. Officer White placed a
pillow under Lachance's head to stop him from banging it on the
floor, Officer Smith put his legs in a figure-four leglock, and
some combination of the officers pulled his arms behind his back
and attempted to place handcuffs on him. While Lachance was on
the floor, Mrs. Lachance noticed bruising on his back, and Amahd
heard someone yell that he was seizing.
The on-the-floor scuffle between Lachance and the
officers was over in a matter of seconds. Sgt. Cloutier and
Officer Smith ended up placing one set of handcuffs on one of
Lachance's hands and one on the other and then connecting the two.
EMTs brought a stretcher into the room, rolled Lachance onto it,
then strapped him in. Lachance was transported to the University
of Massachusetts Medical Center. Throughout the twenty-minute
ambulance ride, he was kicking and thrashing about, so much so
that he cut his wrists open. When Amahd arrived at the hospital
to visit his father, he noticed deep cuts on his father's wrists
and bruising all over his back, ribs, and shoulders. Lachance was
diagnosed with cluster seizures and a T4-T5 compression fracture.
He suffered back pain for over a year after the incident.
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B.
At trial, Amahd testified that the kneel was to the
center of Lachance's back, and Mrs. Lachance specified that the
kneel was to the center of Lachance's upper back.2 Mrs. Lachance
further testified that the kneel lasted no more than thirty
seconds.
Lachance's medical expert, Alexander Chirkov, MD, opined
to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that Lachance's T4-T5
compression fracture was caused by him being pushed onto the
recliner and not from any subsequent kneeling. In a transparent
but confusing effort to illustrate why he reached that conclusion,
he testified about a photograph of a bruise on the left side of
Lachance's back and indicated that when one considers the
"direction" "[o]f the force when the person lay[s] down on the
ground," it would have been "impossible to generate . . . [enough]
compression to smash the vertebrae." Dr. Chirkov did, however,
note that while any kneeling on the T4-T5 discs was "not . . .
going to accelerate the fracture," it "can make the problem worse"
by causing "more compression of the nerves" and therefore "more
pain."
2 We take the facts in this section from the evidence offered
at the jury trial and again present them in the light most
favorable to Lachance. See Hernandez-Cuevas v. Taylor, 836 F.3d
116, 119 (1st Cir. 2016).
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Dr. Chirkov testified about a number of other
photographs documenting Lachance's injuries. In relevant part,
Dr. Chirkov testified about a photograph of Lachance's upper back,
indicating two bruises and attributing them to "pressure on his
back, physical compression" of the sort "usually . . . see[n] . . .
on restrained people." He further testified about a photograph
showing a brown bruise on Lachance's midline, which was "consistent
with a compression mark" and "[a] restrained position." In the
end, he clarified that he found no injuries that Lachance suffered
other than the T4-T5 compression fracture to be "of significance."
C.
Lachance filed a complaint in the District Court for the
District of Massachusetts, alleging excessive force pursuant to 42
U.S.C. § 1983 (Count I), assault and battery (Count II), a claim
under Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs. of City of New York, 436 U.S.
658 (1978), against the Town of Charlton (Count III), negligence
(Count IV), and violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act
("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. § 12131 (Count V).
The defendants moved for summary judgment pursuant to
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56. The district court granted
the defendants' motion as to the excessive force claim insofar as
it was premised on the push, as well as the ADA claim, but it
denied summary judgment on the remaining counts and expressed its
intention to bifurcate trial of the Monell claim from trial of the
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other claims. The case proceeded to trial by jury on what remained
of the excessive force claim as well as the state law assault and
battery and negligence claims. At the close of trial, the
defendants moved for judgment as a matter of law pursuant to
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(a) on those three claims. The
court granted the motion as to all remaining claims, including the
Monell claim for which the defendants had not moved for judgment
as a matter of law, and entered a directed verdict for the
defendants.
This timely appeal followed. We have jurisdiction under
28 U.S.C. § 1291.
II.
On appeal, Lachance challenges the district court's
orders: (1) granting the defendants' motion for summary judgment
on the excessive force claim as to the push; and (2) granting the
defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law on the remaining
four counts.3 We address each challenge in turn.
A.
We review a district court's grant of summary judgment
de novo, reading the facts in the light most favorable to the non-
3 Lachance does not challenge the district court's order
granting the defendants' motion for summary judgment on the ADA
claim. Therefore, we do not address it.
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moving party and granting all reasonable inferences in his favor.
See Irish v. Fowler, 979 F.3d 65, 73 (1st Cir. 2020).
Qualified immunity is a doctrine that shields government
officials from individual-capacity suits for damages under § 1983
"when [they] ma[de] a decision that, even if constitutionally
deficient, reasonably misapprehend[ed] the law governing the
circumstances [they] confronted." Taylor v. Riojas, 141 S. Ct.
52, 53 (2020) (quoting Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 198 (2004)
(per curiam)). Thus, police officers are immune from such suits
unless "(1) they violated a federal statutory or constitutional
right, and (2) the unlawfulness of their conduct was 'clearly
established at the time.'" Irish, 979 F.3d at 76 (quoting District
of Columbia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589 (2018)).
Because "[e]xcessive force claims are founded on the
Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures of
the person," such claims are "governed by the Fourth Amendment's
reasonableness standard." O'Brien v. Town of Bellingham, 943 F.3d
514, 530 (1st Cir. 2019) (internal quotation marks and citations
omitted). "Determining whether a particular use of force is
reasonable requires consideration of the totality of the
circumstances," including (1) "the severity of the crime at issue,"
(2) "whether the suspect pose[d] an immediate threat to the safety
of the officers or others," and (3) "whether [the suspect was]
actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight"
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(the "Graham factors"). Gray v. Cummings, 917 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir.
2019) (alterations in original) (second quoting Graham v. Connor,
490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989)). This assessment of reasonableness "must
be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the
scene." Graham, 490 U.S. at 396.
"The plaintiff bears the burden of demonstrating that
the law was clearly established at the time of the alleged
violation, and it is a heavy burden indeed." Mitchell v. Miller,
790 F.3d 73, 77 (1st Cir. 2015). In determining whether the
unlawfulness of officers' conduct was clearly established, "the
salient question . . . is whether the state of the law [at the
time of the officers' conduct] gave [them] fair warning that their
alleged treatment of [the plaintiff] was unconstitutional."
Irish, 979 F.3d at 76 (alterations and omission in original)
(quoting Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002)). The answer to
that question is "yes" when: (1) the law was "clear enough that
every reasonable official would [have] interpret[ed] it to
establish the particular rule the plaintiff seeks to apply"; and
(2) "[t]he rule's contours [were] so well defined that it [would
have been] clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was
unlawful in the situation he confronted." Id. (third and fourth
alterations in original) (quoting Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 590). The
rule establishing the conduct's illegality must be "dictated by
[either] 'controlling authority' or 'a robust consensus of cases
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of persuasive authority,'" the latter of which "does not require
the express agreement of every circuit" but rather some sister
circuit law can suffice. Id. (first quoting Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at
589-90).
In the Fourth Amendment context, the "[s]pecificity" of
the rule set forth in such precedent "is especially important,"
because it can be "difficult for an officer to determine how the
relevant legal doctrine," such as excessive force, "will apply to
the factual situation the officer confronts." City of Escondido
v. Emmons, 139 S. Ct. 500, 503 (2019) (quoting Kisela v. Hughes,
138 S. Ct. 1148, 1152 (2018)). Of course, prior cases with
materially similar facts are not necessary to clearly establish
conduct's illegality; a "general constitutional rule" located in
prior authority can suffice to defeat qualified immunity even in
"novel factual circumstances." Hope, 536 U.S. at 741 (internal
quotation marks and citations omitted). But that is true only in
an "obvious case," Brosseau, 543 U.S. at 199, where "any reasonable
officer should have realized that [the conduct at issue] offended
the Constitution," Riojas, 141 S. Ct. at 54. As such, "relevant
case law," where "an officer acting under similar circumstances
. . . was held to have violated the Fourth Amendment," is "usually
necessary" to overcome officers' qualified immunity. Wesby, 138
S. Ct. at 590 (first and second internal quotation marks and
citations omitted).
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With these principles in mind, we turn to the district
court's summary judgment opinion. The court granted summary
judgment in favor of the defendants on Lachance's excessive force
claim insofar as it was premised on the push, on the basis of
qualified immunity. It applied the two-part test for qualified
immunity as articulated above, considering first whether the
officers' conduct violated Lachance's constitutional rights and
next whether those rights were clearly established at the time.
In doing so, the court severed its analysis of the push from the
kneel. The court noted that in Jennings v. Jones, 499 F.3d 2 (1st
Cir. 2007), and Rush v. City of Lansing, 644 Fed. App'x 415 (6th
Cir. 2016), both this Court and the Sixth Circuit applied a
similarly "segmented" approach in considering whether qualified
immunity applied to certain uses of force but not others in an
encounter. The court reconciled our seemingly contradictory
approach in Alexis v. McDonald's Restaurants of Massachusetts,
Inc., 67 F.3d 341 (1st Cir. 1995), on the ground that each discrete
use of force in that case was arguably independently excessive.
The district court next considered the factors relevant
to whether a use of force was unreasonable in violation of the
Fourth Amendment, as set forth in Graham. It found that "[a]
reasonable juror could conclude that throwing a person -- who is
not suspected of committing a crime or a threat to officers --
over a sofa with enough force to break his back, and then using
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the dangerous restraint technique of kneeling on his back, is an
excessive use of force." Although it is not apparent from the
court's wording here, the court proceeded on the understanding
that the push and the kneel were two independent excessive uses of
force, as opposed to one combined excessive use of force. Indeed,
the court clearly assumed without deciding that the push was
unreasonable by taking it as a given that the officers "used a lot
of force," notwithstanding its dicta that even on that assumption,
the push "may have been a reasonable use of force."4 It separately
concluded that "kneeling on the back of a restrained person is
unreasonable," and that the kneel, under Lachance's version of
events, "was excessive."5
The district court then found that "it was clearly
established that [Lachance] had a constitutional right to be free
from an officer kneeling on his back after he had been restrained,"
4 In explaining why the push may have been reasonable despite
its conclusion that the kneel was not, the district court
distinguished its approach from that of Rasmussen v. City of New
York, 766 F. Supp. 2d 399 (E.D.N.Y. 2011). In that case, the court
noted, the initial use of force was deemed to be excessive under
Rasmussen's version of the facts and therefore informed the
assessment of whether the subsequent use of force was excessive,
id. at 405-06, whereas here the court held only that the subsequent
use of force -- the kneel -- was undoubtedly excessive in
Lachance's telling of events.
5 Although these findings came in the context of the district
court's analysis of whether Lachance's rights were clearly
established, they plainly concern whether there was even a
constitutional violation in the first instance. See O'Brien v.
Town of Bellingham, 943 F.3d 514, 530-31 (1st Cir. 2019).
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but that there were fact issues that bore on whether a reasonable
officer would have understood that his conduct violated that right,
namely whether an officer kneeled on Lachance's back at all and,
if so, for how long. However, the court found that it was not
clearly established that the push, even assuming it was carried
out with a lot of force, violated the Constitution under the
circumstances. The court noted that Lachance failed to point to
any controlling or persuasive case law to show that his right to
be free from such force was clearly established, although the court
identified one out-of-circuit case that might support his position
(citing Smith v. City of Troy, 874 F.3d 938 (6th Cir. 2017)). In
fact, the court added, in-circuit case law "suggests that
forcefully pushing a resistant plaintiff to the ground is not
excessive" (comparing Therrien v. Town of Jay, 483 F. Supp. 2d 19,
26-27 (D. Me. 2007), with Ciolino v. Gikas, 861 F.3d 296, 303-06
(1st Cir. 2017); Jacobson v. City of Nashua, 2002 WL 1349515, at
*4 (D.N.H. June 19, 2002)).
Lachance argues that the district court erred by
segmenting its analysis of the push and the kneel. Then, assuming
arguendo that the push could be severed from the kneel, Lachance
cites the general rule in Graham and a series of purportedly
factually analogous cases to show that it was clearly established
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at the time that the push was a violation of his Fourth Amendment
right to be free from the use of excessive force against him.6
The defendants respond that the district court properly
segmented its analysis of the push and the kneel, largely restating
the court's reasoning. They argue that the push did not violate
Lachance's clearly established rights, asserting that we held for
the first time in 2019, years after the incident, that "a jury
could supportably find that the use of a Taser to quell a non-
violent, mentally ill person who is resisting arrest to be
excessive force."7 Gray, 917 F.3d at 20.
6 Additionally, Lachance confusingly asserts that the district
court "deprived [him] of the facts of his case at summary judgment"
and cursorily asserts that the court "picked and chose arbitrarily
which scenario it found more persuasive, including issues of
causation, proximate cause and damages." Whatever arguments can
be gleaned from these statements, they fail for lack of development
and we do not address them. See United States v. Zannino, 895
F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990) ("[I]ssues adverted to in a perfunctory
manner, unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation,
are deemed waived.").
7 The defendants also argue that we should adopt the Sixth
Circuit's excessive-force framework in cases of medical
emergencies as set forth in Estate of Hill by Hill v. Miracle, 853
F.3d 306, 314 (6th Cir. 2017), and that under that framework, the
push was not excessive because it was reasonably necessary to
protect Lachance and the EMTs. We need not reach this alternative
ground for affirming the district court's decision because even if
the push was excessive, it was not clearly established that it
was.
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1.
There may be some tension in our cases about how to
analyze multiple-force scenarios.8 In Jennings, we noted that an
officer who used an "ankle turn control technique" to subdue an
initially resistant suspect would arguably reasonably have
"believe[d] that it was lawful to maintain the level of force he
used even after [the suspect] ceased resisting," but that "an
objectively reasonable officer in [the officer's] circumstances
would not have believed that it was lawful to increase the amount
of force that he used after [the suspect] ceased resisting and
stated that [the officer] was hurting him." 499 F.3d at 4, 19.
Our reasoning in Jennings was thus indicative of a segmented
approach, namely between a decision -- at the moment that Jennings
stopped resisting -- to maintain the level of force applied in
utilizing the ankle turn control technique or to increase the
amount of force applied in utilizing that technique.
8 We use "multiple-force scenarios" for simplicity's sake,
but we acknowledge that it is something of a misnomer. Certainly,
a change in the type or degree of force used, or a pause in which
no force is used, are each indicative of distinct uses of force
that might best be analyzed separately. But one could imagine
scenarios in which the same type and degree of force is used
continuously such that it manifests as a singular use of force,
yet a segmented approach is still warranted because that force at
some point may have crossed the threshold from the reasonable to
the unreasonable. Consider, for example, the use of a chokehold
to restrain a violent suspect, but then continuing to use the
chokehold long after the suspect appeared to lose consciousness.
Nevertheless, because Lachance has conceded that the push and the
kneel were separate uses of force, we need not dwell on this point.
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Whereas previously in Alexis, we considered the
following set of facts in relation to an excessive force claim:
Alexis was told by [an officer] that she was being placed
under arrest. Then, without asking or directing Alexis
to get up from the table, [that officer] suddenly and
violently grabbed and pulled her bodily from the booth
and across the table, handcuffed her hands tightly
behind her back, and, with the help of [another officer],
dragged her from the booth, bruising her legs in the
process. Insisting that she was "not resisting arrest,"
Alexis asked the officers to allow her to walk out.
Instead, they hoisted her by her elbows and carried her
from the restaurant to the police car, where [the first
officer] pushed her into the car with the instruction,
"Get your ass in there."
67 F.3d at 346. Applying the three factors enumerated in Graham,
we reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment on the
basis that the record compelled the conclusion that the force used
was reasonable under the circumstances, holding that a reasonable
jury could find that "the force with which [the first officer]
effected the sudden, unannounced, violent seizure and removal of
[the plaintiff]'s person" was unreasonable, "especially since
there [was] no evidence or suggestion that she posed a risk of
flight, attempted to resist or evade arrest, or threatened the
peace, property or safety of anyone." Id. at 353.
One might look at our reasoning in Alexis and conclude,
from our use of the word "force" in its singular form and the
manner in which we adjudged the officers' actions, that we
considered them as one all-encompassing use of force. But looks
can be deceiving. In that same opinion, we noted that "all the
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surrounding circumstances, individually and in combination,
plainly counseled minimal force in effecting any arrest," and we
strongly implied that such minimal force was not used at any step
of the way toward effecting the seizure, when Alexis "was abruptly
pulled from the booth, and across the table, with sufficient force
to bruise her legs, then handcuffed with her hands behind her back
and dragged and carried to a police cruiser and pushed inside."
Id. Thus, as the district court astutely observed and as Lachance
has conceded, our decision in Alexis is at least as consistent
with a segmented approach as it is with a holistic one, in that
each use of force was arguably unreasonable.
We have found no circuit that is completely averse to
applying a segmented approach where it makes sense. See, e.g.,
Wright v. City of Euclid, 962 F.3d 852, 865 (6th Cir. 2020)
("[W]hen . . . a plaintiff claims that excessive force was used
multiple times, 'the court must segment the incident into its
constituent parts and consider the officer's entitlement to
qualified immunity at each step along the way.'") (quoting Smith
v. City of Troy, 874 F.3d 938, 944 (6th Cir. 2017) (per curiam));
Estate of Smart by Smart v. City of Wichita, 951 F.3d 1161, 1172-
74, 1175-77 (10th Cir. 2020) (finding no clearly established law
that shooting the decedent while he fled was unreasonable, but
finding such law with respect to subsequently shooting him on the
ground); Jackson v. Stair, 944 F.3d 704, 712, 714 (8th Cir. 2019)
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(holding that the district court erred by ruling that the officer's
conduct "as a whole" was reasonable without considering whether
each of the three tasings "could be a constitutional violation on
its own") (citing Blazek v. City of Iowa City, 761 F.3d 920, 925
(8th Cir. 2014)); Harris v. Pittman, 927 F.3d 266, 268-69 (4th
Cir. 2019) ("[E]ven where an initial use of deadly force is
reasonable, the repeated use of force may be constitutionally
excessive if circumstances change in a material way.") (citing
Waterman v. Batton, 393 F.3d 471, 481 (4th Cir. 2005)), cert.
denied, 140 S. Ct. 1550 (2020); Horton v. Pobjecky, 883 F.3d 941,
950 (7th Cir. 2018) ("Even though an officer may in one moment
confront circumstances in which he could constitutionally use
deadly force, that does not necessarily mean he may still
constitutionally use deadly force the next moment.") (citing Ellis
v. Wynalda, 999 F.2d 243, 247 (7th Cir. 1993)); Mills v. Fenger,
216 F. App'x 7, 8-10 (2d Cir. 2006) (considering plaintiff's claim
that "officers used excessive force at three separate points during
his arrest," id. at 8, and holding that there were fact issues
whether the first and second uses were reasonable, but not so the
third).9
9 There are some cases in the Fourth Circuit that might appear
to reject segmentation. See, e.g., Livingston v. Kehagias, 803 F.
App'x 673, 686 (4th Cir. 2020) (rejecting the defendant officers'
"element by element or moment by moment" view of the facts for
purposes of qualified immunity and instead considering whether
"the force used as a whole," or "the cumulative force deployed,"
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It seems to us that the segmented approach is also
consistent with Supreme Court precedent. In Graham, the Court
made clear that the reasonableness of a use of force is to be
determined "at the moment" that the force was applied. 490 U.S.
at 396. It explicated that the reasonableness inquiry depends on
"the facts and circumstances confronting" the officer in "a
was reasonable) (citing Rowland v. Perry, 41 F.3d 167, 173 (4th
Cir. 1994)); Yates v. Terry, 817 F.3d 877, 883 (4th Cir. 2016)
(faulting the district court's individualized consideration of
three tasings of the plaintiff and adding that it had "cautioned
courts against using 'a segmented view of the sequence of events'
where 'each distinct act of force becomes reasonable given what
[the officer] knew at each point in th[e] progression'"
(alterations in original) (quoting Rowland, 41 F.3d at 173)). But
each of these cases hinged on Rowland for their rejection of the
segmented approach, and that case rejected not "the notion that
the reasonableness of force employed can turn on a change of
circumstances during an encounter lasting only a few seconds," but
rather "the idea that any of the events should be reviewed outside
the context of the conduct that precipitated the seizure."
Waterman, 393 F.3d at 481; see also Smith v. Ray, 781 F.3d 95, 102
n.4 (4th Cir. 2015) (noting that Waterman "explained" where
segmentation is appropriate and where it is not).
Thus, those few Fourth Circuit cases that have declined
to apply segmentation were typically such that whether segmented
or not, each use of force was arguably unreasonable because the
Graham factors remained relatively constant throughout the
encounter and weighed heavily against the officer(s). See, e.g.,
Livingston, 803 F. App'x at 684 (noting that "the officers were
faced with an individual who had committed, at most, minor
offenses; did not attempt to attack the officers; was not and did
not appear to be armed; and offered no resistance until after he
was suddenly brought to the ground, and only passive resistance
after that"); Yates, 817 F.3d at 885-86 (noting that the plaintiff
at most committed "minor traffic infractions," was not a danger to
the officer "at any time during their encounter," and "was not
attempting to flee or resist"). In many ways, then, these cases
resemble our decision in Alexis.
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particular situation," which facts and circumstances are "often
. . . tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving." Id. at 397. Put
differently, "[e]xcessive force claims . . . are evaluated for
objective reasonableness based upon the information the officers
had when the conduct occurred." Cnty. of Los Angeles v. Mendez,
137 S. Ct. 1539, 1546-47 (2017) (omission in original) (quoting
Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 207 (2001)). Such language seems
to favor a segmented approach, at least when circumstances relevant
to the reasonableness inquiry changed between one use of force and
another.10 After all, if the reasonableness of an officer's use
of force depends on the information available to that officer under
a particular set of circumstances, which appear to have
10This does not mean that a segmented approach could not be
deployed even if all relevant circumstances are held constant
throughout. It would simply be a waste of ink and time. For
example, if an officer reasonably would have believed that a
suspect was completely incapacitated and yet proceeded to beat,
then tase, then shoot him anyway, then a court need not proceed
seriatim through each of the three uses of force and explain why
they were unreasonable and why such was clearly established; the
uses of force were individually and collectively unlawful. This
is consistent with our approach in Alexis and with the Fourth
Circuit's cases discussed supra note 9.
Nor does this mean that after segmenting the uses of force
and assessing each as reasonable, a court could not thereafter
look at the totality of the uses of force, see Graham, 490 U.S. at
396; Alexis, 67 F.3d at 353 (looking at "combination" of segments),
and determine that there was a constitutional violation, see, e.g.,
Yates, 817 F.3d at 883.
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meaningfully changed between one use of force and another, then it
only makes sense to consider those uses separately.11
Here, there was clearly a change in circumstances
between the push and the kneel that was relevant to the
reasonableness inquiry. Before the push, Lachance was still
standing and actively attempting to make his way outside, and he
had been resisting the officers' efforts to stop him by issuing
instructions, grabbing his arms, and redirecting him. After the
push, Lachance was on the floor with visible bruising on his back
and, although he was flailing his arms and legs, may have been
attempting simply to stand up (as opposed to going outside) when
an officer kneeled on his back to keep him down. On these facts,
it made sense for the district court to segment its analysis.
11This does not mean that the officers' actions or inactions
leading up to the moment in question cannot be considered, and in
fact they should be considered as part of the "totality of the
circumstances" in determining reasonableness. See Young v. City
of Providence ex rel. Napolitano, 404 F.3d 4, 22 (1st Cir. 2005)
(quoting Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 8–9 (1985)); but see
Mendez, 137 S. Ct. at 1547 n.* (declining to consider whether as
part of the "totality of the circumstances" inquiry it is
appropriate to account for "unreasonable police conduct prior to
the use of force that foreseeably created the need to use it"
(quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 396)). Nor does it mean that a
plaintiff could not recover for injury immediately caused by a
reasonable use of force, which in turn was proximately caused by
events set in motion by a prior unreasonable use of force. Cf.
Mendez, 137 S. Ct. at 1548. These considerations do not factor in
here, however, because Lachance is effectively arguing that a
subsequent use of force -- the kneel -- should retroactively taint
a prior use of force -- the push.
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Lachance himself conceded at oral argument that there
are times when a segmented approach makes the most sense, and he
conceded in his opening brief that the push and the kneel were two
distinct "uses of force" and that our rulings in Jennings and
Alexis are consistent with a segmented approach. His only real
arguments against a segmented approach are that the push and the
kneel occurred during the course of a "single transaction occurring
in a brief period" and that we did not use the word "segmented" in
Jennings and Alexis. Lachance otherwise summarizes without
exegesis the Sixth Circuit's ruling in Rush and conclusorily
asserts that "neither the fact pattern, First Circuit case law,
cases cited by the District Court, nor the interests of justice
required the District Court to apply the fractured or segmented
qualified immunity analysis that it did." If there were grounds
to find error with the district court's segmented approach, we
have found none and Lachance has not pointed to any.
2.
Proceeding to analyze the push separately from the
kneel, we conclude that the push was not a clearly established
violation of Lachance's right to be free of unreasonable seizures.
Lachance argues that the Graham factors are lopsided in his favor
and that this is sufficient to show that his right was clearly
established. But it is well-established that the Graham factors,
while instructive, are not exhaustive of the totality of the
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circumstances that must be considered in each excessive force case.
See Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389, 397 (2015). Moreover,
the Graham test is geared toward criminal suspects as opposed to
persons who are suspected only of experiencing a medical emergency
for which they require aid. See Estate of Hill by Hill v. Miracle,
853 F.3d 306, 313 (6th Cir. 2017). Still, we briefly consider how
the Graham factors apply to the facts of this case.
Here, it was undisputed that Lachance was struggling to
walk; that he seemed intent on making his way outside the kitchen
door of his second-story apartment, where a steep, icy staircase
awaited him; and that the officers' actions were geared toward
preventing him from doing so. On these facts, we cannot say that
Graham was instructive enough on its own to have provided "fair
warning" to the defendant officers in this case that the push was
unreasonable. Hope, 536 U.S. at 741; see also Graham, 490 U.S. at
396 ("Not every push or shove, even if it may later seem
unnecessary in the peace of a judge's chambers, violates the Fourth
Amendment." (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)).
Certainly, this was not an "obvious case" where the officers so
blatantly violated the Fourth Amendment that recourse to factually
analogous case law is unnecessary. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 590
(quoting Brosseau, 543 U.S. at 199).
To that end, Lachance cites a number of purportedly
factually analogous cases, but none are materially similar enough
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to have provided reasonable officers under the circumstances with
fair warning that they would violate Lachance's rights by pushing
him in the manner that the defendant officers did. He cites as
controlling authority our decision in Ciolino, 861 F.3d 296, but
that decision could not have clearly established his right as of
the date of the push in January 2014. See Kisela, 138 S. Ct. at
1154 ("[A] reasonable officer is not required to foresee judicial
decisions that do not yet exist in instances where the requirements
of the Fourth Amendment are far from obvious."). The same is true
of most of the decisions that Lachance relies on. See Smith, 874
F.3d 938; Taylor v. Moore, 383 F. Supp. 3d 91 (D. Mass. 2019);
Guthrie v. Guthrie, 216 F. Supp. 3d 590 (W.D. Pa. 2016); Barcomb
v. Kraeger, 2016 WL 2644885 (D. Conn. May 5, 2016); Lynn v. City
of Indianapolis, 2014 WL 3535554 (S.D. Ind. July 16, 2014).
Although a plaintiff may rely on cases published after the date of
his incident where the cases reiterate or summarize clearly
established law at the time of the plaintiff's incident, see
Brosseau, 543 U.S. at 200 (assessing whether "at the time of
[defendant's] actions," there was clearly established law), none
of these cases Lachance cites address clearly established law in
January 2014 related to the push.
Lachance cites just four decisions that predate the
police officers' conduct in this case: Raiche v. Pietroski, 623
F.3d 30 (1st Cir. 2010); Morelli v. Webster, 552 F.3d 12 (1st Cir.
- 25 -
2009); Alexis, 67 F.3d 341; and Fera v. City of Albany, 568 F.
Supp. 2d 248 (N.D.N.Y. 2008). We briefly summarize the facts of
each case, which were depicted in the light most favorable to the
plaintiffs. Raiche was driving a motorcycle without a helmet, so
two police officers signaled him to pull over; he did not
immediately stop; and when he did, one of the officers immediately
ran over and tackled him, causing his head to hit the pavement and
the motorcycle to fall on his leg. 623 F.3d at 33-34. In affirming
the denial of qualified immunity to the officer, we noted that
Raiche displayed no inclination to resist or flee, id. at 37, and
"present[ed] no indications of dangerousness," id. at 39.
Similarly, Morelli was suspected only of the theft of $20 and had
shown no "evidence of either dangerousness or attempted flight"
when a police officer yanked her arm and pinned her against a wall
for three to four minutes with sufficient force to tear her rotator
cuff. 552 F.3d at 24. We therefore upheld the denial of qualified
immunity to the officer. Id. at 25.
We have already discussed in detail Alexis's experience,
but we recount that she was suspected only of criminal trespass,
did not "pose[] a threat to . . . anyone," and never "attempted to
evade or resist arrest." 67 F.3d at 353. Finally, Fera suffered
a seizure in a government building, and officers arrested her when
she refused orders to leave; the officers ignored numerous signs
that she was epileptic and her express warning that she was about
- 26 -
to suffer another seizure; they placed her in the back of a police
van alone and handcuffed, where a seizure immobilized her; and
then they pulled her unresponsive body from the van by the ankles
in such a way that her face repeatedly bounced off its floor. 568
F. Supp. 2d at 251-52. On those facts, the District Court for the
Northern District of New York denied qualified immunity. Id. at
253-57.
All four cases are readily distinguishable from the
instant one. Most notably, in each of those cases, the plaintiff
did not pose a discernable risk to anyone. Here, Lachance posed
a risk of serious physical harm to himself were he permitted to
stumble outside to a steep, icy stairway. Moreover, whereas in
those cases the plaintiffs at no point resisted the officers, here
Lachance clearly did by continuing toward the door even after they
grabbed his arms and repeatedly told him to stop walking. Cf.
Gray, 917 F.3d at 12 (finding prior case "inapposite" for purposes
of clearly established inquiry because there, the plaintiff
"present[ed] no significant 'active resistance' or threat"
(alteration in original) (quoting Parker, 547 F.3d at 10)).12
Because of these material differences with all four cases,
12
we need not address whether Fera, an out-of-circuit district court
decision, could have put a reasonable officer in Massachusetts on
notice of its holding. See Camreta v. Greene, 563 U.S. 692, 709
n.7 (2011) ("[D]istrict court decisions -- unlike those from the
courts of appeals -- do not necessarily settle constitutional
standards or prevent repeated claims of qualified immunity," and
therefore "[m]any Courts of Appeals . . . decline to consider
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Therefore, Lachance has failed to meet his burden of showing that
the defendants violated his clearly established rights.
Accordingly, we affirm the district court's grant of
summary judgment in favor of the defendants as to the push.
B.
We review de novo a district court's grant of a Rule
50(a) motion for judgment as a matter of law. See Hernandez-
Cuevas v. Taylor, 836 F.3d 116, 124 (1st Cir. 2016). We must
affirm if, after taking the evidence in the light most favorable
to the nonmovant, "a reasonable jury would not have a legally
sufficient evidentiary basis to find for the party on that issue."
Id. (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(a)(1)).
1.
Both parties accept the principle that in order to
recover on a Fourth Amendment excessive force claim under § 1983,
a plaintiff must show that he suffered damages caused by a
defendant's use of such force. Cf. Mendez, 137 S. Ct. at 1548
(citing Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 483 (1994); Memphis Cmty.
Sch. Dist. v. Stachura, 477 U.S. 299, 306 (1986)); see also
Drumgold v. Callahan, 707 F.3d 28, 48 (1st Cir. 2013) ("As a
general rule, '[w]e employ common law tort principles when
conducting inquiries into causation under § 1983.'" (alteration in
district court precedent when determining if constitutional rights
are clearly established for purposes of qualified immunity.").
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original) (quoting Sanchez v. Pereira–Castillo, 590 F.3d 31, 50
(1st Cir. 2009))). That showing must be made by a preponderance
of the evidence. See Vélez-Rivera v. Agosto-Alicea, 437 F.3d 145,
151 (1st Cir. 2006).
The district court granted the defendants' motion for
judgment as a matter of law on what remained of Lachance's
excessive force claim on grounds that he was only permitted to
proceed to trial on claims relating to injuries caused by the
kneel, that he failed to present any evidence that any injury that
he suffered was caused by the kneel as opposed to the push, and
that therefore no reasonable jury could find in his favor.
Lachance argues that the district court erred in finding
that there was insufficient evidence of a causal link between the
kneel and any of his injuries.13 The defendants defend the district
court's ruling that the evidence failed to show that any of
Lachance's injuries were caused the kneel.
13 Lachance also suggests an alternative argument that he
could otherwise have been entitled to nominal damages.
Specifically, he quotes from the district court's summary judgment
opinion that "even if [Lachance] cannot prove an injury, he may be
entitled to nominal damages if he can demonstrate that he was
deprived of a constitutional right" (citing Stachura, 477 U.S. at308 n.11 ("[N]ominal damages, and not damages based on some
undefinable 'value' of infringed rights, are the appropriate means
of 'vindicating' rights whose deprivation has not caused actual,
provable injury.")). But he goes no further than this scant
reference and has therefore waived the argument. See Zannino, 895
F.2d at 17. We add that the issue here was with respect to evidence
of causation, not of injury.
- 29 -
We conclude that there is just enough evidence from which
a reasonable jury could have found it was more likely than not
that the kneel caused Lachance some injury additional to the
compression fracture. Certainly, much of the evidence in this
regard was weak. For example, Dr. Chirkov opined that the kneel
could have caused Lachance more pain, but there is little in the
trial record to show that Lachance actually suffered any pain from
the kneel as distinct from the fracture. Lachance could not
remember the incident, and although he testified that he woke up
in the hospital with pain in the center of his back, he also
testified that the pain he felt at the time of the trial was in
the same part of his "middle back where it was broke."
Dr. Chirkov also testified that a bruise on Lachance's
midline was "consistent with" a compression mark typically seen on
a person who was restrained, but it is not clear from the trial
record why the bruise was any less consistent with a bruise that
a reasonable jury would know could have resulted from the hard
shove onto the recliner that broke Lachance's back, his subsequent
fall to the hard floor on his back with an officer landing on top
of him, or his being dragged across that floor on his back --
evidence of which was also presented at the trial. That is not
enough to prove causation in this case. Cf. Norwood v. Ghosh, 723
F. App'x 357, 366 (7th Cir. 2018) (finding in the Eighth Amendment
context that expert testimony that delays in treatment "could have"
- 30 -
resulted in the plaintiff's condition "falls short of verifying
medical evidence that would allow a reasonable jury to find by a
preponderance of the evidence that such causation actually
occurred"), as amended (Feb. 16, 2018).
Still, Dr. Chirkov also opined to a reasonable degree of
medical certainty, which is consistent with the preponderance of
the evidence standard, see O'Brien, 943 F.3d at 522 n.4, that two
bruises on Lachance's upper back were "caused" by "pressure on his
back, physical compression" of the sort "usually . . . see[n] . . .
on restrained people."14 A reasonable jury could have attributed
great weight to this unrebutted expert testimony and found that
the bruises were caused by restraining as opposed to the push. Of
course, Lachance experienced numerous forms of restraint apart
from the kneel, including the police officers holding onto his
arms, dragging him by the wrists, flipping him over, pulling his
arms back to place him in handcuffs, and locking his legs. But
the only restraint recounted at trial that linked at all to
Lachance's back was the kneel. Therefore, a reasonable jury could
have found that it was more likely than not that at least some of
the bruising on Lachance's upper back was caused by the kneel.
14The defendants moved to strike this portion of Dr. Chirkov's
testimony, among others, on grounds that it was not part of his
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 disclosure and inconsistent
with his deposition testimony. The court did not grant the motion;
rather, it permitted the defendants to cross-examine Dr. Chirkov
again, which they did.
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That Dr. Chirkov testified that any injuries apart from
the compression fracture were insignificant is of no matter. What
is significant injury from a clinical perspective is something
entirely different from what is sufficient to support a finding of
liability on a Fourth Amendment excessive force claim. See Wilkins
v. Gaddy, 559 U.S. 34, 37 (2010) (noting in the Eighth Amendment
context that the Court has "rejected the notion that 'significant
injury' is a threshold requirement for stating an excessive force
claim"); Alexis, 67 F.3d at 353 n.11 (noting in the Fourth
Amendment context that minor injuries can support an excessive
force claim and citing bruises as an example of such injuries).
2.
Unlike public officials, municipalities do not enjoy
qualified immunity, so the fact that officers may be entitled to
such immunity for some action does not automatically absolve their
municipal employer from being liable for that same action. See
Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 248 n.9 (2011); Walden v.
City of Providence, 596 F.3d 38, 55 n.23 (1st Cir. 2010).
Moreover, we have observed that "Massachusetts law is unsettled
regarding the existence of a state-law concept analogous to federal
qualified immunity." Raiche, 623 F.3d at 40 (citing Foster v.
McGrail, 844 F. Supp. 16, 29 (D. Mass. 1994)). We have found, and
the parties have given us, no reason to disturb that observation.
- 32 -
Notwithstanding this precedent, the district court
granted the defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law on
Lachance's remaining counts -- the Monell claim, which the
defendants did not seek judgment on, as well as the assault and
battery and negligence claims -- for the same reason that it
granted the motion as to his excessive force claim, that is, his
failure to produce sufficient evidence that the kneel caused him
any injury.
Lachance argues that the district court erred because he
was in fact subjected to constitutionally excessive force and
because even if no injury was caused by the kneel, he could have
recovered on his state law claims for injuries caused by the push
notwithstanding the court's summary judgment ruling because the
defendants failed to raise as a defense a Massachusetts law
analogue to federal qualified immunity. These arguments are not
new; Lachance raised them before the district court, and they were
largely the basis for the court's denial of summary judgment on
those counts.
The defendants respond that the assault and battery and
negligence claims fail because there was no evidence that the
officers intentionally used unjustified force or acted negligently
and because assault and battery claims "rise and fall" with § 1983
claims, and that the Monell claim fails because there was no
underlying constitutional violation.
- 33 -
The district court's order was based on the premise that,
because the defendant officers enjoyed federal qualified immunity
on the excessive force claim as to the push, the town could not be
liable under Monell and the individual officers could not be liable
under state tort law for injuries that might have resulted from
the push. This was error.
For example, the defendants cite Gray, 917 F.3d 1, for
the proposition that "assault and battery . . . claims 'rise and
fall with . . . [her] § 1983 claim.'" Id. at 14 (alteration in
original). They did the same in their motion before the district
court. In Gray, we merely restated a "concession" offered by the
plaintiff in her briefing, which we accepted for purposes of that
case only. Id. We have in the past held that "[w]here a plaintiff
alleges both a § 1983 excessive force claim and common law claims
for assault and battery, our determination of the reasonableness
of the force used under § 1983 controls our determination of the
reasonableness of the force used under the common law assault and
battery claims." Raiche, 623 F.3d at 40. That rule is inapposite
here where the district court did not assess the reasonableness of
the officers' actions in granting the defendants' motion.
Similarly, it is true that "Monell can impose municipal
liability only for underlying, identifiable constitutional
violations . . . ." Kennedy v. Town of Billerica, 617 F.3d 520,
531 (1st Cir. 2010). But the district court ruled only that no
- 34 -
reasonable jury could find a constitutional violation as to the
kneel due to the lack of evidence of causation; it did not rule at
summary judgment or after the trial that no reasonable jury could
find that the push was not a constitutional violation.
The defendants offer numerous alternative bases for
affirmance. We decline to exercise our discretion to affirm on
any of those bases, finding it "appropriate to leave such a matter
for the district court to address in the first instance on remand,
especially when the grounds are not fully developed or fairly
contested on appeal," as is the case here. Yan v. ReWalk Robotics
Ltd., 973 F.3d 22, 39 (1st Cir. 2020).
Accordingly, we vacate the district court's order
granting the defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law.
III.
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm in part and vacate
in part. We vacate and remand the district court's order granting
the defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion. Costs to appellant.
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