Valentine Underwood v. Patrick Barrett

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 16-1725
VALENTINE UNDERWOOD,
Plaintiff, Appellee,
v.
PATRICK BARRETT; ANTHONY CATALANO; JEFFREY CLEMENT; BRIAN
DEVLIN; MICHAEL MCDONALD; ANTHONY FALCIANO; LEO MARCHAND; STUART
MCCULLOCH; WILLIAM SHUGRUE,
Defendants, Appellants,
DOUGLAS BOWER; CORRECTIONAL OFFICER SWEETS, f/k/a John Doe
(Sweets); DONALD DENOMME; JEFFREY FISHER; MICHAEL GRANT; JACK
HAUGHEY; JASON LANPHER; ABBY NELLIGAN; JAMES NELSON; DINARTE
REGO; JAMES J. SABA; SEAN SMITH; LUIS S. SPENCER,
Defendants.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella, Thompson, and Kayatta,
Circuit Judges.
Nancy Ankers White, Special Assistant Attorney General, and
Charles W. Anderson Jr., Sentencing Counsel, Department of
Correction, on brief for appellants.
Valentine Underwood on brief pro se.

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May 17, 2019

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Per curiam. When plaintiff refused to exit a prison
recreation cage to be brought to a new cell, prison officials used
oleoresin capsicum ("pepper spray"), physical force, and handcuffs
to secure his compliance with the officials' orders. Plaintiff
subsequently brought this lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging
the use of excessive force in violation of the Eighth Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution.
The prison officials eventually moved for summary
judgment, contending that, at the very least, they were entitled
to qualified immunity. See Gray v. Cummings, 917 F.3d 1, 10 (1st
Cir. 2019) ("[G]overnment official[s] may invoke the defense of
qualified immunity when [their] actions, though causing injury,
did 'not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional
rights of which a reasonable person would have known.'") (quoting
Conlogue v. Hamilton, 906 F.3d 150, 154 (1st Cir. 2018)). After
the district court denied the motion, the prison officials
appealed.
The record contains two versions of the relevant
interaction between plaintiff and prison officials as they
attempted to move him from the recreation cage. One version is
the plaintiff's description of what happened. The other version
is a videotape of the interaction taken by prison officials. No
one disputes the authenticity of the video evidence. Nor is there

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any claim that it was doctored in any way. The two versions
conflict in several apparently crucial respects. Under plainly
controlling law, the district court's job was to decide whether
the video evidence "blatantly contradicted" the plaintiff's
version of events, in which case the court's next job was to
determine if, viewing the facts in the light depicted by the video
evidence, the prison official violated plaintiff's constitutional
rights. See Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 377 (2007) (quoting
Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001)); id. at 380-81 ("When
opposing parties tell two different stories, one of which is
blatantly contradicted by the record, so that no reasonable jury
could believe it, a court should not adopt that version of the
facts for purposes of ruling on a motion for summary judgment.").
The district court conceded that the video evidence was
"compelling," but opted to reject the teaching of Scott, explaining
that it preferred the contrary view expressed in both Justice
Stevens's Scott dissent, see id. at 395 (Stevens, J., dissenting)
(opining that the Court improperly "usurped the jury's factfinding
function"), and in what the district court described as an
"academic consensus" favoring the dissent.
In so proceeding, the district court failed to fulfill
its obligation to follow the law as set forth in controlling
precedent. Id. at 380 (majority opinion); Agostini v. Felton, 521

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U.S. 203, 238 (1997) (noting that the district courts are bound by
Supreme Court decisions "unless and until this Court reinterpreted
the binding precedent"). Because the denial of the qualified
immunity defense was predicated on this error of law, it is
appealable. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 672 (2009)
(holding that an order denying a dispositive motion that "turned
on an issue of law and rejected the defense of qualified immunity"
was a final decision for purposes of 28 U.S.C. § 1291). We
therefore vacate the district court's denial of the motion for
summary judgment, and remand the case to another district court
judge for further proceedings consistent with the law. See United
States v. Hernández-Rodríguez, 443 F.3d 138, 148 (1st Cir. 2006)
(remanding for proceedings before a different district court judge
in order to allay "the possible appearance of injustice").

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