Adam Urda v. Jeffrey Sokso

PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

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No. 24-1804

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ADAM URDA

v.

JEFFREY SOKSO, in his official and individual capacities,

Appellant

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On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

(D.C. No. 3:21-cv-01178)

District Judge: Hon. Karoline Mehalchick

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Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)

on July 8, 2025

Before: RESTREPO, BIBAS, and CHUNG, Circuit Judges

(Filed: July 22, 2025)

Michael J. Scarinci

PENNSYLVANIA ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE

Strawberry Square 15th Floor

Harrisburg, PA 17120

Counsel for Appellant

Michael J. Ossont

THE MATTIOLI LAW FIRM

425 Biden Street

Suite 300

Scranton, PA 18503

Counsel for Appellee

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OPINION OF THE COURT

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BIBAS, Circuit Judge.

Qualified immunity protects police officers who make

wrong but reasonable judgment calls absent clearly estab-

lished law. In this case, Trooper Jeffrey Sokso filed a criminal

complaint charging Adam Urda with acting recklessly after

Urda poured fuel onto a smoldering fire, lighting himself and

two bystanders on fire. Although the charges were later dis-

missed, Sokso’s conduct was reasonable in the circumstances.

So he gets qualified immunity.

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I. AFTER A FIERY EXPLOSION,

SOKSO FILES CHARGES THAT GET DISMISSED

One Saturday afternoon, LaRae Bowen had some friends

over, including her coworker Urda. The group headed down

to a lake and tried to start a bonfire. But the wood was still

wet from some rain and would not catch. Then one partygoer

had an idea: He went to his truck and got a quart of motor oil

and a jug of remote-controlled-racecar fuel. He handed the

racecar fuel to Urda, who waited as his companion dumped

the motor oil on the smoldering fire. But nothing happened.

So Urda joined in, splashing the racecar fuel onto the fire

over the motor oil. That triggered an explosion, lighting Urda,

the other partygoer, and a four-year-old girl on fire. Engulfed

in flames, the three had to jump into the lake to put out the

fires. The little girl was hospitalized for a month and needed a

ventilator and skin grafts

Trooper Sokso investigated the explosion. After inspect-

ing the scene, interviewing witnesses, and speaking with

Urda, he drafted a criminal complaint charging Urda with ag-

gravated assault and risking a catastrophe. 18 Pa. Cons. Stat.

§§ 2702(a)(8), 3302(b). He ran the complaint by an assistant

district attorney, who approved the charges and recommended

adding a third: recklessly endangering another person. 18 Pa.

Cons. Stat. § 2705. Sokso filed the complaint in state court

with all three charges. A magistrate judge dismissed the first

two charges but not the third. The Court of Common Pleas

then dismissed the third charge too, finding no probable cause

that Urda had committed the crime.

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With the charges dismissed, Urda sued Sokso in federal

court for unlawful seizure, false arrest, malicious prosecution,

abuse of process, and intentional infliction of emotional dis-

tress, all under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The District Court granted

Sokso summary judgment on the last two claims but not the

rest, rejecting his qualified-immunity defense. We have juris-

diction over this interlocutory appeal from the denial of quali-

fied immunity. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985).

We review de novo. Mack v. Yost, 63 F.4th 211, 227 n.14 (3d

Cir. 2023).

II. THE DISTRICT COURT DEFINED

THE RIGHT TOO ABSTRACTLY

Urda’s surviving claims (unlawful seizure, false arrest,

and malicious prosecution) share a common element that he

must plead and prove: that Sokso charged him without proba-

ble cause to believe that he had committed a crime, thus vio-

lating his Fourth Amendment rights.

Yet qualified immunity shields police from such claims

unless they (1) violated a right (2) that was clearly established

at the time. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982).

A right is clearly established if “it would be clear to a reason-

able officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he

confronted.” Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 202 (2001), over-

ruled on other grounds by Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S.

223, 236 (2009). Usually, that requires controlling precedent

or a “robust consensus of cases of persuasive authority.” Ash-

croft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 742 (2011) (internal quotation

marks omitted). But Urda has not cited a single case, either

here or below, showing that the Fourth Amendment bans

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what Sokso did in these circumstances. So his claim crashes

into a roadblock.

True, in rare circumstances, an officer’s constitutional

“violation was so obvious” that no precedent is needed. Hope

v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 734–35, 741–42 (2002) (handcuffing

shirtless prisoner to hitching post to roast in the sun for seven

hours); Taylor v. Riojas, 592 U.S. 7, 8–9 (2020) (per curiam)

(forcing prisoner to live in a cell covered in “massive

amounts of feces” and sleep naked in another, frigid cell

awash in raw sewage for six days total (internal quotation

marks omitted)).

But Sokso’s actions do not even start to rise to that level.

Urda claims that there was no probable cause to think that he

had acted recklessly, a required element of each offense that

Sokso charged him with. In other words, he insists that even

though he poured fuel on a fire near bystanders, there was not

even a “fair probability” that he had “consciously disre-

gard[ed] a substantial and unjustifiable risk.” Illinois v. Gates,

462 U.S. 213, 246 (1983); 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 302(b)(3). That

is hardly clear. Indeed, an assistant district attorney had re-

viewed the charges and not only found them justified but told

Sokso to add another one. So even if Sokso had violated Ur-

da’s right, the violation would not have been “so obvious” to

a reasonable officer that we can overlook the lack of prece-

dent clearly establishing that right. See Hope, 536 U.S. at 741.

The District Court denied qualified immunity because it

held that it is clearly established that people cannot be arrest-

ed or prosecuted without probable cause. But the Supreme

Court has repeatedly warned courts not to analyze rights so

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abstractly. Instead, existing law must clearly establish that

what this officer did in these circumstances violated the plain-

tiff’s rights. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639–41

(1987). Otherwise, plaintiffs could turn qualified immunity

“into a rule of virtually unqualified liability simply by alleg-

ing violation of extremely abstract rights.” Id. at 639. As the

Supreme Court has stressed, that framing is especially important

for Fourth Amendment claims cause because probable cause

depends heavily on each case’s facts. District of Columbia v.

Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 64 (2018).

To be sure, one of our past cases seemed to analyze quali-

fied immunity at a high level of generality, stating that it is

clearly established that people may not be arrested or prose-

cuted without probable cause. Andrews v. Scuilli, 853 F.3d

690, 705 (3d Cir. 2017). The District Court relied on that

statement to define clearly established law at the same abstract

level. But Andrews held only that the officer’s violation was

clear “on the record of th[at] case.” Id. And that record—in

which police had left material information out of an affidavit

supporting their arrest-warrant application—was so different

from this one that it cannot put the illegality of Sokso’s con-

duct “beyond debate.” Id. at 696, 703–05; al-Kidd, 563 U.S.

at 741. Plus, Andrews cannot mean that courts may define

clearly established law abstractly; that reading would conflict

with a landslide of Supreme Court precedent. Anderson, 483

U.S. at 639–41; Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 199

(2004) (per curiam); al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 742; Mullenix v.

Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 12 (2015) (per curiam); White v. Pauly, 580

U.S. 73, 79 (2017) (per curiam); Wesby, 583 U.S. at 64; City

of Escondido v. Emmons, 586 U.S. 38, 42–43 (2019) (per

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curiam); Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna, 595 U.S. 1, 5–6

(2021) (per curiam); see also United States v. Tann, 577 F.3d

533, 541 (3d Cir. 2009) (noting that Third Circuit precedent

that contradicts Supreme Court caselaw does not bind future

panels).

*****

The District Court denied summary judgment because it

framed the question of law too abstractly. Framed correctly,

the question here is whether preexisting law clearly estab-

lished that a police officer lacks probable cause to believe that

a suspect acted recklessly when he poured fuel onto a smol-

dering fire with others nearby. The answer is no, so the officer

has qualified immunity. The District Court should have grant-

ed him summary judgment on the remaining claims. We will

thus reverse the order denying summary judgment on those

claims.

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