Various police misconduct claims will proceed to trial despite qualified immunity defenses

I am sure that law enforcement defendants know that the qualified immunity principle allows them to avoid litigation if the court finds the acted reasonably in falsely arresting someone or subjecting them to excessive force. But if the trial court denies a qualified immunity motion at the outset of the case and the police wish to take up an immediate appeal (normally disallowed in federal practice), the record has to be 100% clear that the officers acted reasonably, even if we accept the plaintiff's version of events at true. Otherwise, the appeal is dismissed and the case returns to the district court.

The case is Kistner v. City of Buffalo, issued on May 24. Plaintiff was charged with criminal mischief. The charges were resolved in plaintiff's favor, and this lawsuit followed. The officers want the case to go away, but the district court denied that motion. The Court of Appeals finds there are too many factual disputes that would allow the appellate judges to award them qualified immunity.

The case started when  police vehicle collided with plaintiff, James Kistner. 

The parties clearly dispute what caused the contact between James and McDermott’s vehicle—an issue material to whether the officers had arguable probable cause to arrest and prosecute James for criminal mischief. 

Defendants-Appellants contend that they had arguable probable cause to arrest and charge James with criminal mischief for intentionally damaging the side mirror of the vehicle based on the testimony of the officers, who claim that James threw himself onto the vehicle. On the other hand, James testified that McDermott hit him with her vehicle and contends that he was arrested and charged with criminal mischief to cover up the accident. 

In discussing these competing accounts of the collision, the district court noted that “exactly what facts were available to the officers is in dispute” because although “[a] jury may find that the officers reasonably believed [that James threw himself into the car]; on the other hand, a jury may well find that the [surveillance] video [of the incident] casts doubt on the truth of what the officers say they perceived when [James] Kistner and McDermott’s vehicle collided.”

The Court of Appeals (Raggi, Chin and Perez) holds that disputes like this cannot be resolved on the papers. James' case will proceed. The same analysis applies to James' claim that he was falsely arrested for disorderly conduct. While the officers claim that James used abusive language in public, he denied doing so. That dispute means no qualified immunity for the officers. The jury will have to decide what really happened. Numerous other claims brought by this father-son plaintiff case are also not suitable for qualified immunity at this time, the Court of Appeals holds.

What will happen at trial is the parties will testify and the jury will be given written questions by the judge on specific factual issues. Once the jury answers those questions post-trial, the court will apply a qualified immunity analysis. So, the facts are for the jury, the law is for the judge. That's the process in federal court. If the jury rules for plaintiffs and the trial court gets the qualified immunity analysis wrong in affirming the verdict, the case will most likely return to the Court of Appeals for further review.