Tight handcuffing claim does not survive qualified immunity defense

The Court of Appeals has granted qualified immunity to a police officer who allegedly overly-tightened handcuffs upon an arrestee who suffered permanent nerve damage after unsuccessfully signaling to the officer that the cuffs were too tight.

The case is Cugini v. City of New York, decided on October 25. Plaintiff was arrested on a domestic stalking and harassment charge. She claims the officer cuffed her "very tight," causing her to say "ouch" while her body shuddered. The officer responded, "Don't make me hurt you" and tightened the cuffs further, causing plaintiff to further react, "ow" or uttering a "cry." For the next 40 minutes, plaintiff kept her mouth shut, claiming she was "too scared" to complain any further about the handcuffs.

Here's the question: how does this scenario entitled the officer to summary judgment in this excessive force case? The answer is qualified immunity. Police officers are entitled to immunity if they did not violate clearly-established constitutional rights, as determined by Supreme Court and Second Circuit authority. A right is clearly-established if the facts giving rise to the claim make it clear to any reasonable police officer that the plaintiff's constitutional rights were violated. So a generalized right to be free from excessive force is not enough. You have to show that existing precedent makes it clear the plaintiff's rights were violated in light of the facts known to the police officer at the time of the incident.

The Court of Appeals (Sack, Hall and Droney) does two things here. First, it decides that plaintiff's right to be free from excessive force was in fact violated. Under settled Supreme Court authority (Graham v. Connor [1989]), "a government officer may not intrude upon a person's Fourth Amendment rights by employing a degree of force beyond which is warranted by the objective circumstances of an arrest." Relevant factors include whether the plaintiff was actively resisting arrest, whether she was trying to flee, and the severity of the crime at issue. Second, the Court finds the officer is immune from suit because the law was not sufficiently clear that he was violating her rights.

On the first issue, the Second Circuit states that "A reasonable on the scene should have known that the force used was excessive. A reasonable jury could find that the degree of force employed by Palazzola was, objectively considered, disproportionate and unwarranted under the circumstances," particularly since plaintiff communicated her distress to the police "through her pained utterances and bodily shudders" and the officer threatened her with further harm if she did not stop complaining." The officer then tightened the handcuffs. This ruling helps other excessive force plaintiffs who claim the police applied too-tight handcuffs, as this ruling is now "clearly-established" constitutional law, at least from October 25, 2019 forward.

But this ruling on excessive force does not help plaintiff, because no court had engaged in this precise analysis on the day she was arrested in June 2014. In other words, as to plaintiff's case, the law was not clearly-established in 2014. The Court of Appeals phrases the question this way: "whether, at the time of Cugini's arrest, clearly established law required an officer to respond to a complaint by a person under arrest where, as here, that person exhibited only non-verbal aural and physical manifestations of her discomfort." Well, if you frame the issue that way ...

Prior to this decision, no case had quite held that any plaintiff on these facts suffered a constitutional violation. Yes, plaintiff did make some non-verbal noises as a means to complain about the handcuffs. But, at the time of her arrest, "It remained an open question in this Circuit whether a plaintiff asserting an excessive force claim was required to show evidence that an officer was made reasonably aware of her pain by means of an explicit verbal complaint." Also, "there was no such consensus in federal circuits outside ours whether a verbal complaint was necessary, so we need not -- we cannot -- come to a conclusion as to the consequences of any such consensus had there been one."

Plaintiff wins the battle but loses the war. You may think the Second Circuit sliced the baloney too thin in holding that a reasonable police officer might think he was not violating plaintiff's rights in tightening the handcuffs. But the Supreme Court has been making it more difficult for plaintiffs to survive qualified immunity motions. But, while plaintiff loses the war, the next such plaintiff will get around this particular qualified immunity equation.