Tight handcuff case will proceed to discovery

The first thing a civil defense lawyer does when their client is served with a lawsuit is to find a way to have the case dismissed prior to discovery. We call that a Rule 12 motion to dismiss. If that motion fails, since the federal system disallows appeals prior to final judgment, the parties proceed to depositions, document review, interrogatories, electronically-stored information, etc. Except that in Section 1983 cases, an unsuccessful motion to dismiss on qualified immunity grounds may be appealed immediately.

The case is Pal v. Canepari, a summary order issued on September 30. This is a police misconduct case in which plaintiff alleges the officer applied the handcuffs too tightly, causing physical pain. Such a tactic can constitute excessive force under the Fourth Amendment. The officer sought qualified immunity on the basis that he did not violate any clearly-established rights, as determined by prior Second Circuit or Supreme Court case law.

Defendant claims the law was not clearly-established in 2018, when the incident happened, and that the district court in denying qualified immunity relied on a Second Circuit case from 2019, Cugini v. City of New York, 941 F.3d 604 (2d Cir. 2019). Nice try, says the Court of Appeals  (Parker, Robinson and Oliver [D.J.]), but this argument will not cut it because Cugini recognized that, prior to 2019, it violated the Fourth Amendment to apply the cuffs too tightly when the plaintiff makes an explicit verbal complaint about the tightness. 

In Cugini, the events took place in 2014. The Second Circuit said in that case that "the consensus . . . among our sister circuits that unduly tight handcuffing can constitute excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.” While Cugini said it was not clearly established in 2014 whether this general rule applies when the arrestee "exhibited only non-verbal aural and physical manifestations of her discomfort," the Court "expressly distinguished that scenario from the then-established caselaw that recognized an excessive force claim based on overly tight handcuffs in circumstances in which the individual made “an explicit verbal complaint.” In other words, Cugini clearly established for future cases that when the cuffs are too tight and the arrestee verbally complains about the pain, the officer has violated the Constitution. This is how the Court of Appeals wraps things up:

Accordingly, the law was clearly established at the time of the events at issue in this case that failing to loosen excessively tight handcuffs when an individual complains of pain can give rise to a Fourth Amendment excessive force claim. And for purposes of this appeal, in which we are required to accept the plaintiff’s version of the facts as true, we accept Pal’s assertions that the handcuffs were too tight and do not credit Officer Harris’s claim that he double-locked the handcuffs such that they could not tighten.

The case will now proceed to discovery and, unless the case settles or is dismissed on a later motion for summary judgment, the case will go to trial.