Excessive force claim will proceed to trial

The Court of Appeals holds that police officers who took the plaintiff into custody under the Mental Hygiene Law may be found liable for excessive force. This ruling reverses the district court's contrary finding on summary judgment.

The case is Mercedes v. City of New York, a summary order issued on December 12. The officers arrived at plaintiff’s address "in response to a radio dispatch reporting that there was an emotionally disturbed male at that address who had a psychiatric history, was off his medication, and could become violent. After arriving at Mercedes’s address, the officers stopped him as he attempted to leave the building
because, according to Mercedes, they recognized him from an earlier encounter." Plaintiff did not submit to the officers' authority, so the officers placed him in handcuffs. The excessive force claim derives from the following allegations:

Mercedes’s mother Lisette Wigintton witnessed her son’s takedown and described that the arresting officers “slammed [Mercedes] on the floor” and then the “big officer” (whom Mercedes identified as Officer Evans), stepped on his stomach. Wigintton then told Officer Evans that Mercedes has liver problems and a hernia, and in response, Officer Evans allegedly “picked up his foot and stomped his foot harder.” The parties dispute when exactly Mercedes stopped resisting and whether Officer Evans stomped on Mercedes at all.

The district court dismissed the excessive force claim, holding that the officers had qualified immunity, which allows the officers to avoid suit if they acted reasonably in light of prior case law. But the Court of Appeals (Cabranes, Lynch, Perez) says this is an issue for the jury because the record permits the inference that the officer used gratuitous and significant force in his second stomp of plaintiff, assuming plaintiff was no longer resisting. For this reason, the state law assault and battery claims are also revived and will proceed to trial, as well.