Meadows v. City of Walker

46 F.4th 416

Joseph MEADOWS, Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.CITY OF WALKER, Michigan, Defendant,Steve Dumond and Chris Wietfeldt, in their individual and official capacities, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 21-1548

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: January 13, 2022

Decided and Filed: August 18, 2022

ARGUED: Jeffrey C. Gerish, PLUNKETT COONEY, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, for Appellants. Shawn C. Cabot, CHRISTOPHER TRAINOR & ASSOCIATES, White Lake, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Jeffrey C. Gerish, Robert A. Callahan, PLUNKETT COONEY, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, for Appellants. Amy J. DeRouin, CHRISTOPHER TRAINOR & ASSOCIATES, White Lake, Michigan, for Appellee.

Before: GIBBONS, ROGERS, and NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judges.

ROGERS, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which GIBBONS, J., joined. NALBANDIAN, J. (pp. 424-31), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge.

Joseph Meadows claims that officers used excessive force to detain him one night during a traffic stop. Officer Steve Dumond began pursuing Meadows after he passed Dumond on the highway while traveling nearly ninety miles per hour. During the subsequent traffic stop, which was captured on dash-camera footage, Dumond instructed Meadows to keep his hands out of his vehicle and to open the door to his vehicle. Dumond and Meadows shouted back and forth as Meadows attempted to open his door. Once Meadows exited the vehicle, Dumond grabbed Meadows and slammed him to the ground. On the ground, Dumond kneed Meadows to try and roll him over, and Officer Chris Wietfeldt punched Meadows multiple times. Wietfeldt also fractured Meadows's wrist while handcuffing him. Meadows sued the officers and the City of Walker under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The officers contend that they are entitled to qualified immunity and appeal the district court's denial of summary judgment in their favor. Their arguments reject any conclusion that the officers could see that Meadows's actions were compliant and that he was not resisting arrest. The officers are not entitled to summary judgment because, on interlocutory appeal, we may not review their arguments challenging the factual disputes identified by the district court.

On August 29, 2017, Joseph Meadows passed Officer Steve Dumond on I-96 at night while traveling nearly ninety miles per hour. Almost immediately after Meadows passed him, Dumond changed lanes to follow Meadows. About eleven seconds later, Dumond activated his police lights; at this point, Meadows had gained several car lengths of separation between him and Dumond, and there was at least one other vehicle on the road in front of Meadows. Over the next thirty seconds, Meadows drifted between lanes on the highway, and Dumond closed the distance between him and Meadows to a few car lengths. Meadows then took the first exit off the interstate after Dumond activated his police lights. Meadows drove to the end of the exit ramp and pulled to the side of the road in the right-turn lane.

After leaving and returning to his vehicle once, Dumond approached Meadows's vehicle with a flashlight in his left hand and his firearm in his right hand pointed at the ground. Dumond yelled, "turn off your truck; put your hands out the window." Meadows complied and placed both of his hands out the driver-side window of his vehicle. It is not clear from the video whether Meadows turned his vehicle off. Dumond, however, never asked Meadows to turn his vehicle off again and does not allege that Meadows refused to comply with that command. Dumond then told Meadows to "undo [his] door." Meadows said "yes sir" and then pulled his left arm back into the vehicle. Meadows later testified that he put his left hand in his vehicle "to hit the door handle to open the door to get out of the truck." Dumond yelled, "don't reach back inside your f****** vehicle," and Meadows immediately complied and put his left hand back outside the driver-side window. While still in his vehicle, Meadows explained that Dumond had told him to open the door, and Dumond instructed him to open the door from the outside. Dumond then told Meadows "do what you're told cause I'm not f****** around today."

Dumond instructed Meadows to unlock his door, and Meadows stated that the door was unlocked. Dumond then repeatedly told Meadows to open the door; Meadows explained that he was trying to open the door, and an audible thump on the dash-camera footage is consistent with Meadows's pulling on the door handle outside his car. Having watched Meadows fail to open the door, Dumond asked Meadows again if the door was locked. Meadows then asked for Dumond to give him a second, and Dumond told Meadows to stop reaching his hand inside the vehicle, while Dumond simultaneously raised his firearm and pointed it at Meadows for the first time. Meadows explained to Dumond that he was not trying to reach into his vehicle, he was just trying to unlock his door. Officer Chris Wietfeldt then approached the passenger side of the vehicle aiming his firearm at Meadows. Meadows finally managed to unlock and open his door, and Dumond instructed Meadows to step out of the vehicle.

As the door opened, Dumond holstered his firearm. Meadows stepped out of the vehicle within five seconds of getting his door open and within ten seconds of Dumond's first command to get out of the vehicle. The moment Meadows stepped out of the vehicle, Dumond immediately grabbed Meadows and threw him to the ground. Officer Wietfeldt ran over to help subdue Meadows. After the initial takedown, Meadows was on his right side with his right arm between his body and the ground, and Dumond was using Meadows's left arm to keep him pinned to the ground. Dumond then shifted his body to where he was standing over top of Meadows and told him to roll over. Immediately after Dumond told Meadows to roll over, Dumond kneed Meadows in his lower back. Wietfeldt then struck Meadows in either the shoulder or the head before striking him twice more in the side. At that point, the officers had turned Meadows so that his stomach was on the ground, and a second police vehicle arrived.

The dash-camera footage becomes less clear at this stage because the lights from the second police vehicle obscured what was happening between Meadows and the officers on the ground. A third officer came from the second vehicle and grabbed Meadows's legs to secure them while Dumond and Wietfeldt attempted to handcuff Meadows. The dash-camera footage does not clearly depict how the officers managed to handcuff Meadows, but the footage does show Wietfeldt holding Meadows's right arm perpendicular to Meadows's back while Meadows was facedown on the asphalt. Meadows alleges that he felt someone with one hand on his elbow and then one hand on his wrist before he felt a pop and sharp pain in his wrist. Meadows subsequently discovered that his wrist was fractured during the arrest.

Meadows was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated (third offense), resisting and obstructing police in the performance of their duties, operating a motor vehicle on a suspended/revoked license, and having an open container in his vehicle. He pleaded guilty to operating his vehicle while intoxicated, and the other charges were dropped.

Meadows subsequently filed suit against the City of Walker, Officer Steve Dumond, and Officer Chris Wietfeldt. Meadows brought excessive-force claims against the officers and a municipal-liability claim against the City of Walker. The defendants moved for summary judgment, with the officers arguing that they were entitled to qualified immunity.

The district court held argument on the defendants’ motion and issued an oral ruling on the motion. Excessive force claims are analyzed under Graham v. Connor , which requires consideration of the "severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest." 490 U.S. 386, 396, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989). Applying Graham , the district court first concluded that Meadows's initial crime of speeding was a moderately severe crime. Turning to the second factor, the court recognized that "not knowing what's inside the cab is certainly a concern," but the court also found that the officers had no objective evidence to believe Meadows posed any direct threat to the officers. In reaching this conclusion about the second factor, the court noted that the footage showed "from the very first engagement between the two of them the citizen is compliant, polite, respectful, and it's the officer who initially escalates both verbally and with the firearm."

The court focused most of its analysis on whether Meadows was actively resisting arrest. Here, the court found several factual disputes that a jury could resolve in Meadows's favor. First, the court noted that the footage of the traffic stop showed "a citizen who is trying to be respectful, trying to comply, and is confused about how to do it because he's got his hands out, and then he is told to open the door." The court also recognized that it was inconsistent for Dumond to instruct Meadows to put his hands out the window and then to open his door, and the court even posited, "What's the citizen to do?" Next, with respect to the struggle on the ground, the court concluded that a reasonable jury could conclude that the struggle was "not because of anything the citizen is doing." The court stated that Meadows was explaining that he was trying to comply and he was not resisting, and the court determined that a reasonable jury could agree with this factual assessment. Based on these factual disputes, the court determined that "a reasonable jury can certainly conclude that to an objective officer—an objectively reasonable officer, the only thing [the officer is] seeing from this citizen is at most some kind of passive resistance, and I would say barely that." Further, the court went on to conclude that a...