Alma Grandy v. Stephen Christopher Huenke ( 2023 )

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[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-12587
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
ALMA GRANDY,
as guardian of M.G.,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
STEPHEN CHRISTOPHER HUENKE,
in his individual capacity,
Defendant-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Georgia
D.C. Docket No. 1:20-cv-03292-MLB
____________________
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2 Opinion of the Court 22-12587
Before WILSON, LUCK, and LAGOA, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
This case arises from a fight between two female students at
Newton High School in Georgia. Officer Stephen Huenke, a po-
liceman, de-escalated the fight by seizing one of the participants,
Alma Grandy’s daughter M.G., and escorting her to the school’s
main office. Grandy, however, alleged that Officer Huenke was
too rough with her daughter during the incident. In her capacity
as M.G.’s guardian, Grandy sued Officer Huenke in federal court,
raising a claim for excessive force pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and
a Georgia state law claim for battery. Officer Huenke then moved
for summary judgment based on qualified immunity and official
immunity, respectively. The district court, after reviewing video
footage of the altercation and the other relevant evidence, granted
Officer Huenke’s motion. Because no reasonable jury could find
in favor of Grandy, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary
judgment.
I. BACKGROUND
In August 2019, M.G., then fifteen years old, got into a fight
with another female student in their high school’s cafeteria. Officer
Huenke and the school’s Vice Principal, Michael Chapple, ran to-
wards the scene and found the two students fighting on the ground.
Officer Huenkle dropped to his knees, grabbed M.G., and after re-
peatedly instructing her to “stop,” pinned her on her back. M.G.
struggled, lashed out, cursed at him, and knocked off his glasses.
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Specifically, video footage showed that M.G. swung her fists at Of-
ficer Huenke and struck his eyeglasses, knocking them away, while
yelling, “F*ck off, get the f*ck off me––get the f*ck off me bro.”
Officer Huenke then placed his left forearm across M.G.’s neck
while he used his right hand to put his glasses back on. This pres-
sured M.G.’s windpipe. Vice Principal Chapple picked up the other
student and carried her away.
Moments later, Officer Huenke and M.G. rose, still entan-
gled. M.G. continued to curse at Officer Huenke, continued to re-
sist him, and knocked his glasses off his face again. Officer Huenke
yelled, “you hit me,” and then placed his hand on the front of
M.G.’s neck, pushed her against the wall, and said, “you hit me in
the f*cking mouth again and I’ll charge you.” Officer Huenke re-
moved his hand from M.G.’s neck after about two seconds. M.G.
continued to curse and resist until Officer Huenke handed her over
to another officer. Officer Huenke later escorted M.G. to the
school’s main office. As he did so, Officer Huenke told M.G., “I
don’t know why you wouldn’t stop and I don’t know why you tried
to swing on me. . . . You had no reason to swing on a cop.” Officer
Huenke then asked M.G. if she was okay, and she said that she was.
After delivering M.G. to the main office, Officer Huenke told staff
that he had hurt his arm during the altercation. The school nurse
evaluated his arm and advised him to have it looked at further.
Another officer from the cafeteria confirmed M.G. “swung” at and
“hit” Officer Huenke.
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In August 2020, Grandy sued Officer Huenke in district
court for damages, asserting one claim for excessive force under 42
U.S.C. § 1983 and another claim for battery under O.C.G.A. § 16-5-
23.1. Grandy alleged that Officer Huenke twice applied pressure
on M.G.’s neck, that M.G. posed no immediate threat when Officer
Huenke grabbed and pushed her into the wall, and that M.G. suf-
fered back, neck, shoulder, and bilateral arm pain.
In turn, Officer Huenke moved for summary judgment on
both claims, asserting qualified immunity on Grandy’s excessive
force claim and official immunity on Grandy’s battery claim. The
district court granted Officer Huenke’s motion for summary judg-
ment in full, agreeing that his qualified immunity and official im-
munity barred Grandy’s claims.
As to the excessive force claim, the court explained that
Grandy could not dispute that Officer Huenke was engaged in a
discretionary function when he seized M.G., which shifted the bur-
den to Grandy to show Officer Huenke used excessive force in vi-
olation of clearly established law. The district court found that
Grandy had failed to cite “a materially similar case in her favor,
much less a binding one.” And the court found that Grandy had
failed to invoke the obvious clarity doctrine—a “narrow exception”
to the requirement for fact-specific precedent that requires a plain-
tiff to show “the official’s conduct ‘was so far beyond the hazy bor-
der between excessive and acceptable force that [the official] had to
know he was violating the Constitution even without caselaw on
point.’” See Priester v. City of Riviera Beach, 208 F.3d 919, 926
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22-12587 Opinion of the Court 5
(11th Cir. 2000) (quoting Smith v. Mattox, 127 F.3d 1416, 1419 (11th
Cir. 1997)). In doing so, the court relied upon our unpublished de-
cision in Hines v. Jefferson, 795 F. App’x 707 (11th Cir. 2019), in
which we found an officer’s conduct—placing a student involved
in a fight with another student in a chokehold and carrying her to
the office by the neck—“was not ‘so far beyond the hazy border
between excessive and acceptable force’” that the officer knew she
was violating the Constitution. Id. at 712–13 (quoting Priester, 208
F.3d at 926).
The district court found that this case’s facts presented an
even stronger case for qualified immunity than Hines because (1)
the neck contact “lasted only a few seconds (not minutes),” (2) it
involved a hold and a push (not a lift),” (3) Officer Huenke “never
put his hands or arms around M.G.’s neck (no choke hold),” (4)
“M.G. did not express discomfort at the time (no breathing com-
plaints),” (5) she told Officer Huenke she was fine, nothing suggests
she experienced any aftereffects (no pain or neck brace), (6) “M.G.’s
resistance included cursing and striking [Officer Huenke] (not just
wriggling to get away),” and (7) Officer Huenke “had to get medi-
cal attention after the encounter.” The district court also declined
to consider Grandy’s facts that Officer Huenke’s use of force vio-
lated “his employer’s written policy” and injured M.G.’s back and
neck because she failed to present them in her N.D. Ga. Local Rule
56.1 filing in the required format. But, the district court explained,
those facts would not have affected the outcome of the case, as an
officer’s failure to comply with an employer’s policies and the fact
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6 Opinion of the Court 22-12587
that a plaintiff is injured during a confrontation with police did not
necessarily equate to excessive force in violation of the Constitu-
tion. The district court noted that the other facts in the case
weighed too strongly in the other direction to change the outcome.
As to the Georgia law battery claim, the district court found
that Grandy had failed to show Officer Huenke acted with actual
malice or intent to injure, as required under Georgia law. As such,
the district court concluded that the battery claim was barred by
official immunity.
Grandy then filed this timely appeal.
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
We review “a district court’s grant of summary judgment de
novo, applying the same legal standards used by the district court.”
Krutzig v. Pulte Home Corp., 602 F.3d 1231, 1234 (11th Cir. 2010).
“Summary judgment is appropriate where, viewing the movant’s
evidence and all factual inferences arising from it in the light most
favorable to the nonmoving party, there is no genuine issue of any
material fact, and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a
matter of law.” Id. at 1234.
III. ANALYSIS
On appeal, Grandy argues that she offered more than suffi-
cient evidence to overcome Officer Huenke’s motion for summary
judgment as to her excessive force and Georgia law battery claims.
We address each claim in turn.
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A. Excessive Force Claim
Section 1983 provides that any person who, under color of
state law, deprives a person of “any rights, privileges, or immuni-
ties secured by the Constitution and laws” shall be liable to the af-
fected person. 42 U.S.C. § 1983. A claim that law enforcement
officers used excessive force during an arrest or other seizure of an
individual are evaluated under the Fourth Amendment’s “objec-
tive reasonableness” standard. Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386,
388, 395 (1989). Objective reasonableness “must be judged from
the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than
with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” Id. at 396. Further, “[t]he cal-
culus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that
police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments—in
circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving—
about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situa-
tion.” Id. at 396–97.
Additionally, an officer’s liability is limited in certain situa-
tions by the doctrine of qualified immunity, which “shields govern-
ment officials from liability for civil damages for torts committed
while performing discretionary duties unless their conduct violates
a clearly established statutory or constitutional right.” Hadley v.
Gutierrez, 526 F.3d 1324, 1329 (11th Cir. 2008). “[I]n an excessive
force case, ‘qualified immunity applies unless application of the
standard would inevitably lead every reasonable officer . . . to con-
clude the force was unlawful.’” Slicker v. Jackson, 215 F.3d 1225,
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1232 (11th Cir. 2000) (omission in original) (quoting Post v. City of
Fort Lauderdale, 7 F.3d 1552, 1559 (11th Cir. 1993)).
For qualified immunity to apply, the “public official must
first prove that he was acting within the scope of his discretionary
authority when the allegedly wrongful acts occurred.” Gilmore v.
Hodges, 738 F.3d 266, 272 (11th Cir. 2013) (quoting Terrell v.
Smith, 668 F.3d 1244, 1250 (11th Cir. 2012)). Once the official
proves that he was acting within the scope of his discretionary au-
thority, the burden then shifts to the plaintiff, who must satisfy the
following two-pronged inquiry: “(1) whether the facts that a plain-
tiff has shown make out a violation of a constitutional right; and (2)
whether the right at issue was clearly established at the time of the
defendant’s alleged misconduct.” Id. at 272. To make this show-
ing, the plaintiff must prove “the preexisting law was so clear that,
given the specific facts facing a particular officer, one must say that
‘every reasonable official would have understood that what he is
doing violates’ the Constitutional right at issue.” Gates v. Khokhar,
884 F.3d 1290, 1302 (11th Cir. 2018) (quoting Ashcroft v. al-Kidd,
563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011)). “The critical inquiry is whether the law
provided the [official] with ’fair warning’ that [his] conduct violated
the Fourth Amendment.” Coffin v. Brandau, 642 F.3d 999, 1013
(11th Cir. 2011) (quoting McClish v. Nugent, 483 F.3d 1231, 1248
(11th Cir. 2007)). “Fair warning is most commonly provided by
materially similar precedent from the Supreme Court, this Court,
or the highest state court in which the case arose.” Gates, 884 F.3d
at 1296. Only binding precedent can create clearly established law.
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See J W ex rel. Williams v. Birmingham Bd. of Educ., 904 F.3d 1248,
1260 n.1 (11th Cir. 2018).
If a plaintiff cannot point to a materially similar case, she can
establish fair warning only if the defendant’s conduct violated fed-
eral law “as a matter of obvious clarity.” Coffin, 642 F.3d at 1014.
The obvious-clarity doctrine requires a plaintiff to demonstrate
that the officer’s conduct “lies so obviously at the very core of what
the Fourth Amendment prohibits that unlawfulness of the conduct
was readily apparent to the officer, notwithstanding the lack of fact-
specific case law.” Stephens v. DeGiovanni, 852 F.3d 1298, 1315
(11th Cir. 2017) (emphasis in original) (quoting Fils v. City of Aven-
tura, 647 F.3d 1272, 1288 (11th Cir. 2011).
Grandy argues that the district court erred in granting sum-
mary judgment in favor of Officer Huenke because she “offered
more than sufficient evidence to overcome [the] [m]otion” by way
of “testimony and video evidence.” We disagree.
Grandy has never disputed that Officer Huenke was acting
within the scope of his discretionary authority as a police officer
when he de-escalated the fight between M.G. and the other female
student. Thus, Grandy must prove that Officer Huenke used ex-
cessive force in violation of clearly established law. But Grandy has
never, not below and not now on appeal, cited a binding case in
her favor—or even a materially similar one.
Accordingly, Grandy must use the obvious-clarity method
to prove her claim. But obvious-clarity cases are “rare” and
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constitute “a narrow exception” to the requirement for fact-specific
precedent. Coffin, 642 F.3d at 1015. Indeed, to invoke the doctrine,
Grandy must show that Officer Huenke’s conduct “was so far be-
yond the hazy border between excessive and acceptable force that
[he] had to know he was violating the Constitution even without
caselaw on point.” See Priester, 208 F.3d at 926 (quoting Smith,
127 F.3d at 1419). To be clear, “[u]nder this test, the law is clearly
established, and qualified immunity can be overcome, only if the
standards [of objective reasonableness] set forth in Graham and our
own case law ‘inevitably lead every reasonable officer in [the de-
fendant’s] position to conclude the force was unlawful.’” Lee v.
Ferraro, 284 F.3d 1188, 1199 (11th Cir. 2002) (second alteration in
original) (quoting Priester, 208 F.3d at 926).
For example, in Priester, a suspect, after allegedly stealing
roughly $20 of snacks, submitted immediately to police and com-
plied with all of the police’s instructions, but the officer allowed his
dog to attack the suspect for at least two minutes. 208 F.3d at 927.
We concluded that the obvious clarity doctrine applied because
“[n]o reasonable police officer could believe that this force was per-
missible given” the facts of the case. Id. Similarly, in Lee, we found
this standard was met where an officer took the arrestee to the back
of a car and slammed the arrestee’s head against the trunk after the
person was placed in handcuffs, was completely secured, and was
not resisting. 284 F.3d at 1199. In doing so, we stated we were
“applying the clear and obvious principle that once an arrest has
been fully secured and any potential danger or risk of flight vitiated,
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a police officer cannot employ the severe and unnecessary force
allegedly used” in that case. Id. at 1200.
Viewed in the light most favorable to Grandy, as we must at
the summary judgment stage, we conclude that the district court
did not err in finding Officer Huenke’s conduct does not fall within
the narrow obvious-clarity exception.1 Here, M.G. was involved
in a fistfight with another student and resisted Officer Huenke’s at-
tempts to restrain her in his attempt to break up the fight. M.G.
swung at the officer, knocked his glasses off twice, and cursed at
him repeatedly. Officer Huenke reacted by applying pressure to
M.G.’s neck on two occasions, each of which only lasted a few sec-
onds and did not involve Officer Huenke placing M.G. in a choke-
hold. M.G. also did not express discomfort at the time, e.g., did not
complain of not being able to breath. And Officer Huenke received
medical attention after the incident.
Given the particular facts of this case, 2 we conclude that Of-
ficer Huenke’s conduct was not “so far beyond the hazy border
1 We note that the district court relied on our unpublished decision in Hines—
a case with very similar facts to the instant case—to find that the obvious clar-
ity doctrine did not apply to this case. See 795 F. App’x at 710–13. While Hines
is not binding on us, we note that the facts of Hines were more egregious than
those of the instant case, yet we did not find that the obvious clarity doctrine
applied. See id. at 713.
2 Grandy also asserts that Officer Huenke’s alleged violation of his employer’s
policy against neck restraints and the alleged back and neck injuries M.G. suf-
fered creates an issue of material fact to defeat summary judgment, we disa-
gree. The district court found that Grandy did not comply with Local Rule
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between excessive and acceptable force that [he] had to know he
was violating the Constitution” and that Grandy has not shown the
obvious clarity doctrine applies. Accordingly, Officer Huenkle is
entitled to qualified immunity, and the district court did not err in
granting summary judgment on this claim.
B. State Law Battery Claim
Under Georgia law, a person commits the tort of battery
when he “intentionally causes substantial physical harm or visible
bodily harm to another.” O.C.G.A. § 16-5-23.1(a). Under Georgia’s
doctrine of official immunity, Georgia’s county police officers—
like Officer Huenke—“are subject to suit” for a claim of battery
“only when they negligently perform or fail to perform their min-
isterial functions or when they act with actual malice or intent to
cause injury in the performance of their official functions.” Peter-
son v. Baker, 504 F.3d 1331, 1339 (11th Cir. 2007) (quoting Gilbert
v. Richardson, 452 S.E.2d 476, 483 (1994)). To be clear, actual mal-
ice under Georgia law “is a demanding standard.” Black v.
Wiginton, 811 F.3d 1259, 1266 (11th Cir. 2016). Georgia courts
have explained actual malice requires “a deliberate intention to
56.1, a rule which we hold in “high esteem” and have instructed district courts
to apply at the summary judgment stage “to disregard or ignore evidence re-
lied on by the respondent—but not cited in its response to the movant's state-
ment of undisputed facts—that yields facts contrary to those listed in the mo-
vant’s statement.” Reese v. Herbert, 527 F.3d 1253, 1268 (11th Cir. 2008). But,
as the district court found, even considering these facts, they do not change
our analysis, i.e., that Grandy has failed to show that the obvious clarity doc-
trine applies to the facts of this case.
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wrong and denotes express malice or malice in fact.” Wilson v.
Cromer, 847 S.E.2d 213, 217 (Ga. Ct. App. 2020) (quoting Selvy v.
Morrison, 665 S.E.2d 401, 404–05 (Ga. Ct. App. 2008)); accord
Black, 811 F.3d at 1266. Intent to injure likewise imposes a high bar
that “contains aspects of malice, perhaps a wicked or evil motive”
and requires “an actual intent to cause harm to the plaintiff, ‘not
merely an intent to do the act purportedly resulting in the claimed
injury.’” Kidd v. Coates, 518 S.E.2d 124, 125 (Ga. 1999) (quoting
Frame v. Boatmen’s Bank, 782 S.W.2d 117, 121 (Mo. App. 1989)).
For example, in Peterson, we held a teacher had official im-
munity under Georgia law when she grabbed a student by the
neck, leaving him bruised and scratched, because her “act evince[d]
an intention to regain control of a student who not only refused to
follow her directions, but who also deliberately used force against
her to leave the classroom.” 504 F.3d 1331 at 1334–40. Pertinently,
we reasoned that because “the teacher’s response to the student’s
defiant misconduct was not entirely unreasonable” in light of the
facts, it was impossible to conclude “the teacher intended to do
something wrongful or cause the student significant injury.” Id. at
1340.
Grandy argues the evidence she provided is sufficient to de-
feat the district court’s determination that her battery claim against
Officer Huenke was barred by official immunity. We disagree, as
Grandy has failed to show that Officer Huenke acted with actual
malice or intent to do something wrongful to M.G. or cause her
significant injury based on this record. Here, similar to Peterson,
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Officer Huenke repeatedly gave M.G. instructions to stop fighting
with the other student. When M.G. ignored his instructions, Of-
ficer Huenke intervened. M.G. then cursed at Officer Huenke and
deliberately struck the officer several times, which resulted in
knocking off his glasses, while he told her to stop resisting. In other
words, M.G. was at least as defiant as the student in Peterson in a
more chaotic situation, i.e., a fight between two students. Cf. 504
F.3d at 1334–35. Further, the degree of force used by Officer
Huenke in this case—and the length of time that force was used—
was less than that used by the teacher in Peterson under less egre-
gious circumstances. Cf. id.As in Peterson, “[a]t the very least,” Officer Huenke’s actions
“evince[d] an intention to regain control of a student who not only
refused to follow [his] directions, but who also deliberately used
force against [him]” while trying to continue a fight against another
student. See id. at 1340. Therefore, Officer Huenke’s “response to
the student’s defiant misconduct was not entirely unreasonable” in
light of the facts of the case. See id. Accordingly, we conclude that
Officer Huenke is entitled to official immunity under Georgia law
as to Grandy’s battery claim.
IV. CONCLUSION
For the reasons stated, we affirm the district court’s grant of
summary judgment.
AFFIRMED.