Fred Watson v. Eddie Boyd, III

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 20-1743

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Fred Watson

Plaintiff – Appellee

v.

Eddie Boyd, III; City of Ferguson, Missouri

Defendants - Appellants

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Appeal from United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis

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Submitted: March 16, 2021

Filed: June 30, 2021

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Before SHEPHERD, ERICKSON, and KOBES, Circuit Judges.

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SHEPHERD, Circuit Judge.

After he was cited at a Ferguson, Missouri park, Fred Watson brought claims

under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Officer Eddie Boyd and the City of Ferguson (the

City) for violations of Watson’s First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The district court found that Officer Boyd was not entitled to qualified immunity and

accordingly denied Officer Boyd and the City’s joint motion for summary judgment.

Officer Boyd and the City appeal. Having jurisdiction over the claims against

Officer Boyd under the collateral order doctrine, we vacate the district court’s order

denying Officer Boyd and the City’s joint motion for summary judgment and remand

so that the district court may further consider Officer Boyd’s asserted entitlement to

qualified immunity. Further, we dismiss the City’s appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

I.

This case arises out of a police interaction between Watson and Officer Boyd

at a Ferguson, Missouri park. Officer Boyd seized Watson, searched Watson’s

vehicle, pointed his gun at Watson for roughly ten seconds, and ultimately cited

Watson with the following nine violations: (1) driving without a driver’s license;

(2) driving without insurance; (3) having illegal windshield tint; (4) failing to

register his vehicle in Missouri; (5) failing to display an inspection sticker; (6) failing

to wear a seat belt; (7) possessing an expired Missouri license; (8) failing to comply;

and (9) making a false statement.1

Watson filed suit, asserting claims against Officer Boyd under 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983 for violations of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments rights to be free

from unlawful searches, seizures, and force; his First Amendment right to be free

from retaliation for requesting Officer Boyd’s name and badge number; and his

Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from malicious prosecution.

Watson also asserted Monell2 claims under § 1983 against the City for maintaining

a custom of unconstitutional conduct by police officers; failing to adequately screen

Officer Boyd during the hiring process; inadequately training Officer Boyd; and

failing to supervise or discipline Officer Boyd. Officer Boyd and the City filed a

joint motion for summary judgment and a separate joint motion to strike certain

materials not at issue on appeal. The district court found that Officer Boyd is not

entitled to qualified immunity on Watson’s claims of unlawful seizure, search, force,

1

Officer Boyd issued the first seven citations on the scene; he issued the latter

two after the fact.

2

Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978).

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and retaliation because the parties disputed the facts in their entirety and a reasonable

jury could find in favor of Watson. On Watson’s malicious prosecution claim, the

district court granted summary judgment in favor of Officer Boyd on the basis that

he was entitled to qualified immunity, finding that this Court has yet to recognize

such a claim under § 1983.3 Finally, the district court generally denied the City

summary judgment on Watson’s Monell claims because it found that Officer Boyd

was not entitled to qualified immunity for the underlying conduct. Although it

granted summary judgment to the City on Watson’s inadequate-training claim, the

district court found that a reasonable jury could find that the City had maintained a

custom of unconstitutional conduct, failed to screen Officer Boyd, and failed to

supervise or discipline Officer Boyd. Accordingly, it denied the City’s request for

summary judgment on those claims. Officer Boyd and the City appeal the district

court’s denial of qualified immunity and summary judgment.

II.

As an initial matter, Watson contends that this Court lacks jurisdiction to

review Officer Boyd’s appeal because the district court denied summary judgment

on the basis that genuine issues of material fact exist, and we lack jurisdiction to

review whether an issue is genuine. “At summary judgment, qualified immunity

shields a law enforcement officer from liability in a § 1983 action unless: ‘(1) the

facts, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, demonstrate the deprivation

of a constitutional or statutory right; and (2) the right was clearly established at the

time of the deprivation.’” Stark v. Lee Cnty., 993 F.3d 622, 625 (8th Cir. 2021)

(citation omitted). “[I]f there is a genuine dispute concerning predicate facts

material to the qualified immunity issue,” a district court must deny summary

judgment. Morris v. Zefferi, 601 F.3d 805, 808 (8th Cir. 2010) (alteration in

original) (citation omitted). A district court’s denial of a motion for summary

judgment on the basis of qualified immunity is appealable under the “collateral

order” doctrine, see Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985), but our

3

This claim is not before this Court on appeal.

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jurisdiction is limited. We lack jurisdiction to review “whether or not the pretrial

record sets forth a ‘genuine’ issue of fact for trial.” Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304,

320 (1995); see also Thurmond v. Andrews, 972 F.3d 1007, 1011 (8th Cir. 2020).

Rather, our jurisdiction allows us to review orders denying qualified immunity to

the extent “they resolve a dispute concerning an ‘abstract issu[e] of law’ relating to

qualified immunity.” Behrens v. Pelletier, 516 U.S. 299, 313 (1996) (alteration in

original) (citation omitted).

Here, Officer Boyd contends that the district court failed to conduct a proper

qualified immunity analysis on both prongs. First, Officer Boyd argues that the

genuine issues that the district court found precluded summary judgment were not

“material” to Watson’s claims, particularly Officer Boyd’s entitlement to qualified

immunity. While we lack jurisdiction under Johnson to review whether the issues

are “genuine,” whether the issues are “material”—that is, whether the facts in

contention “might affect the outcome of the suit under governing law,” Anderson v.

Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986)—is a legal question reviewable under

our limited jurisdiction. See New v. Denver, 787 F.3d 895, 899 (8th Cir. 2015).

Second, Officer Boyd contends that the district court failed to adequately consider

whether Watson’s rights, if deprived by Officer Boyd’s conduct, were clearly

established at the time of the incident. See Appellant’s Br. at 24 (“More

significantly, neither Watson, nor the District Court, identified any clearly

established case law (either in the form of controlling authority or any robust

consensus of persuasive authority) that would have placed the various constitutional

challenges raised by Watson beyond debate at the time of the stop.”). Whether the

district court upheld “its threshold duty to make ‘a thorough determination of [a law

enforcement officer’s] claim of qualified immunity’” is a legal question that we may

review even under our limited jurisdiction. See N.S. v. Kan. City Bd. of Police

Comm’rs, 933 F.3d 967, 970 (8th Cir. 2019) (reviewing the adequacy of the district

court’s qualified immunity analysis under limited jurisdiction); see also, e.g., Jones

v. McNeese, 675 F.3d 1158, 1162-63 (8th Cir. 2012) (same); O’Neil v. City of Iowa

City, 496 F.3d 915, 918 (8th Cir. 2007) (same). Because neither of these issues

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“‘require us to resolve any disputed issues of evidentiary sufficiency,’ we have

jurisdiction.” See Jones, 675 F.3d at 1161 (citation omitted).

III.

First, Officer Boyd claims that the district court erred by finding that the

genuine issues of fact were material to determining whether his conduct violated

Watson’s constitutional rights. When reviewing a law enforcement officer’s

entitlement to qualified immunity at summary judgment, a district court “must take

a careful look at the record, determine which facts are genuinely disputed, and then

view those facts in a light most favorable to the non-moving party as long as those

facts are not so ‘blatantly contradicted by the record . . . that no reasonable jury could

believe [them].’” O’Neil, 496 F.3d at 917 (alterations in original) (quoting Scott v.

Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 380 (2007)). However, a district court cannot deny summary

judgment by merely finding that genuine issues of fact exist; those issues must also

be material—that is, affecting the outcome of the suit under the applicable law. See

Anderson, 477 U.S. at 248; see also K.W.P. v. Kan. City Pub. Schs., 931 F.3d 813,

821 (8th Cir. 2019) (“The mere existence of some factual dispute is not enough to

defeat this [C]ourt’s jurisdiction over an interlocutory appeal: If the disputed facts

are not material to this legal question, ‘the denial of summary judgment is

[immediately] reviewable as a question of law.’” (second alteration in original)

(citation omitted)).

While Officer Boyd asks this Court to review the district court’s materiality

determination on the merits, we find that the district court’s order failed to address

materiality in a manner “sufficient to permit meaningful appellate review of the

qualified immunity decision.” Walton v. Dawson, 752 F.3d 1109, 1116 (8th Cir.

2014) (citation omitted). “Because qualified immunity is ‘an immunity from suit

rather than a mere defense to liability’” and “is effectively lost if a case is

erroneously permitted to go to trial,” Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009)

(quoting Mitchell, 472 U.S. at 526), law enforcement officers are at least “entitled

to a thorough determination of their claim of qualified immunity if that immunity is

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to mean anything at all.” O’Neil, 496 F.3d at 918. When, as here, the district court

stops short of addressing the materiality of the genuine issues of fact, it essentially

fails to carry out its “threshold duty,” and remand for additional explanation is most

appropriate. See N.S., 933 F.3d at 970 (remanding for a more thorough qualified

immunity analysis when the district court “did little more than summarize the

parties’ allegations and decide that the combination of a ‘general . . . right to be free

from excessive force’ and the presence of ‘genuine issues of material fact[]’

precluded summary judgment” (alterations in original)); see also Jones, 675 F.3d at

1163 (remanding when the district court’s analysis was “so scant” that this Court

was “unable to discern if the district court even applied both steps of the qualified

immunity inquiry to all of the summary judgment claims”); O’Neil, 496 F.3d at 918

(remanding when the district court provided only “a truncated analysis” that

contained “absolutely no discussion” of the clearly established prong).

When analyzing the first prong of the qualified immunity inquiry—whether

Officer Boyd’s actions violated Watson’s constitutional rights—the district court set

forth in detail the parties’ numerous factual disputes, and we are without jurisdiction

to determine whether these disputes are genuine. See Walton, 752 F.3d at 1116.

However, the district court did not test Watson’s version of the facts against the

substantive law to determine whether these disputes are material. When discussing

Watson’s Fourth Amendment seizure claim, the district court commenced its

analysis by citing case law that outlined the general legal standards for probable

cause and reasonable suspicion, but it largely failed to apply this case law, or more

analogous cases, to Watson’s version of the facts. For example, while Officer Boyd

cited Watson for excessive windshield tint and the district court found that the

existence of such tint was in dispute among the parties, the district court failed to

explain how this dispute is material to the initial stop’s probable cause or reasonable

suspicion inquiry in light of other undisputed facts, e.g., Watson’s vehicle’s side

window tint and the absence of a front license plate. The fact that Officer Boyd cited

Watson only for excessive windshield tint does not eliminate the other facts from the

probable cause and reasonable suspicion analyses, i.e., what Officer Boyd

“reasonably knew at the time” of the initial stop. See United States v. Williams, 929

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F.3d 539, 544 (8th Cir. 2019) (citation omitted). Without further explanation, we

are only able to speculate about rather than review the district court’s decision. See

Walton, 752 F.3d at 1116 (“District courts must make reasoned ‘findings of fact and

conclusions of law’ sufficient to permit meaningful appellate review of the qualified

immunity decision.” (citation omitted)).

The district court also failed to conduct the materiality inquiry by framing

legal questions as factual ones. For example, on multiple occasions the district court

held that genuine fact disputes existed as to whether Officer Boyd had probable

cause or reasonable suspicion. However, whether probable cause or reasonable

suspicion existed is a legal question that the district court must resolve, construing

the genuine fact disputes in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. See

Odom v. Kaizer, 864 F.3d 920, 923 (8th Cir. 2017) (“Whether probable cause existed

is a legal question . . . .” (citation omitted)); United States v. McLemore, 887 F.3d

861, 864 (8th Cir. 2018) (reviewing the existence of reasonable suspicion as a

question of law). Similarly, when analyzing the basis for the seat belt citation, the

district court held that a jury would have to determine whether Watson was

“operating” his vehicle—an element of the crime under Missouri law 4—when the

vehicle was merely “parked in a parking lot while idling.” But whether those

undisputed facts fit the definition of “operating” is a legal question. See generally

Cox v. Dir. of Revenue, 98 S.W.3d 548 (Mo. 2003) (en banc) (reviewing, as a

question of law, whether an individual was “operating” the vehicle when he was

sitting in a parked, idling vehicle).

As noted, the district court’s failure to properly address the materiality of the

factual disputes largely occurred in its Fourth Amendment seizure analysis, but the

error also impacted its Fourth Amendment search and First Amendment retaliation

4

“Each driver . . . of a passenger car . . . operated on a street or highway in

this state . . . shall wear a properly adjusted and fastened safety belt that meets federal

National Highway, Transportation and Safety Act requirements.” Mo. Rev. Stat.

§ 307.178 (2006) (emphasis added).

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analyses. Watson’s search claim turns in part on whether the automobile exception

applies to the warrant requirement. Whether the automobile exception applies rests

on whether a reasonable officer would have had “probable cause to believe that an

automobile contain[ed] contraband or evidence of criminal activity,” justifying the

warrantless search. United States v. Shackleford, 830 F.3d 751, 753 (8th Cir. 2016).5

Similarly, a First Amendment retaliation claim turns on “the presence or absence of

probable cause for the arrest.” Nieves v. Bartlett, 139 S. Ct. 1715, 1724 (2019).

Because the district court’s initial determination of probable cause and reasonable

suspicion was incomplete, these determinations necessarily suffer from the same

defects. Additionally, while the district court’s Fourth Amendment excessive force

analysis does not hinge on the existence of probable cause or reasonable suspicion,

it nonetheless contains errors. The district court does not discuss analogous case

law, nor does it explain how subjective facts, such as Watson’s purpose of calling

the police on his cell phone, are material to the objective qualified immunity

analysis. See Shelton v. Stevens, 964 F.3d 747, 752 (8th Cir. 2020)

(“Reasonableness must be judged from ‘the perspective of a reasonable officer on

the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” (citation omitted)).

Accordingly, we find that the district court failed to reach the materiality of the

genuine disputes and thus failed to fulfill “its threshold duty to ‘make a thorough

determination’” of Officer Boyd’s claim. N.S., 933 F.3d at 970 (citation omitted).

Second, Officer Boyd claims that even if the district court did not err in its

first-prong analysis, the district court failed to determine whether Watson’s rights

were clearly established at the time of the stop. While a district court may address

the prongs in any order, it “may not deny qualified immunity without answering both

questions in the plaintiff’s favor.” Walton, 752 F.3d at 1116 (citing Pearson, 555

U.S. at 236). As such, a district court “should [not] deny summary judgment any

time a material issue of fact remains on the [constitutional violation] claim [because

to do so] could undermine the goal of qualified immunity.” Jones, 675 F.3d at 1161

5

In addition, the district court identified but did not address Officer Boyd’s

argument that the warrantless search was permitted as a search incident to arrest.

See R. Doc. 158, at 27-29. Its failure to address this argument was also in error.

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(alterations in original) (citation omitted). Here, in analyzing the clearly established

prong, the district court stated:

Throughout this Memorandum and Order, the Court has outlined

issues of fact regarding whether Boyd violated Watson’s constitutional

rights. The Court holds that Watson has alleged constitutional

violations against Boyd and that a reasonable officer would have known

that his actions violated Watson’s constitutional rights. Thus, the Court

finds that Boyd is not entitled to qualified immunity on the remaining

claims.

R. Doc. 158, at 42. While the district court’s 43-page order cannot be described as

“truncated,” see O’Neil, 496 F.3d at 918, we find that this analysis is so “scant” that

we are unable to discern whether the district court applied the clearly established

prong at all, much less conducted a “thorough determination,” see Jones, 675 F.3d

at 1163. Our conclusion is not predicated on the analysis’s brevity alone but also on

the application of incorrect legal standards.

Although the district court may have been incorporating its earlier

constitutional violation analysis by reference, this analysis is not pertinent to the

clearly established inquiry. For example, the district court made passing references

to “arguable probable cause,” but it failed to articulate and apply the standard to the

present case. See Bell, 979 F.3d at 607 (“In a case involving an arrest without

probable cause, officers have qualified immunity if they ‘reasonably but mistakenly

conclude[d] that probable cause [wa]s present.’ ‘This circuit often refers to this

standard using the shorthand “arguable probable cause.”’” (alterations in original)

(citations omitted)). Further, the clearly established standard is absent from the

district court’s reasonable suspicion inquiry. See Waters v. Madson, 921 F.3d 725,

736 (8th Cir. 2019) (“If we determine that an officer lacked reasonable suspicion

and thus conducted an unlawful Terry stop, [she] may nonetheless be entitled to

qualified immunity if [she] had arguable reasonable suspicion . . . .”). While this

error is most significant to the search and seizure analyses, it also bears upon

Watson’s retaliation claim. See Nieves, 139 S. Ct. at 1724.

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Moreover, the district court defined the relevant law at too high a level of

generality to conduct a proper clearly established analysis. See N.S., 933 F.3d at

970 (“Yet the Supreme Court has warned courts not to ‘define clearly established

law at [such] a high level of generality.’” (alteration in original) (quoting Kisela v.

Hughes, 138 S. Ct. 1148, 1152 (2018) (per curiam))). “Although there need not be

‘a case directly on point for a right to be clearly established, existing precedent must

have placed the . . . constitutional question beyond debate[]’ . . . .” Id. (citation

omitted). The law must be sufficiently clear such that “every ‘reasonable [officer]

would understand what he is doing is unlawful.’” District of Columbia v. Wesby,

138 S. Ct. 577, 589 (2018) (emphasis added) (citation omitted); Hunter v. Bryant,

502 U.S. 224, 229 (1991) (per curiam) (“The qualified immunity standard ‘gives

ample room for mistaken judgments’ by protecting ‘all but the plainly incompetent

or those who knowingly violate the law.’” (citation omitted)). “[S]pecificity is

especially important in the Fourth Amendment context, where the Court has

recognized that it is sometimes difficult for an officer to determine how the relevant

legal doctrine . . . will apply to the factual situation the officer confronts.” Kisela,

138 S. Ct. at 1152 (first alteration in original) (citation omitted).

Finally, the district court’s excessive force analysis fails to identify a specific

right or factually analogous cases. See id. at 1153 (“Use of excessive force is an

area of the law ‘in which the result depends very much on the facts of each case,’

and thus police officers are entitled to qualified immunity unless existing precedent

‘squarely governs’ the specific facts at issue.” (citation omitted)). “‘[O]utside [of]

an obvious case,’ the [Supreme] Court has explained, it is not enough ‘to state that

an officer may not use unreasonable and excessive force, deny qualified immunity,

and then remit the case for a trial on the question of reasonableness.’” N.S., 933

F.3d at 970 (first two alterations in original) (citation omitted). Accordingly,

because of the district court’s incomplete analysis on both the constitutional

violation and clearly established prongs, we can neither affirm nor reverse the denial

of qualified immunity. See O’Neil, 496 F.3d at 918.

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IV.

The City likewise contends that the district court erred in denying its motion

for summary judgment on Watson’s Monell claims. Specifically, the City argues

that Officer Boyd’s actions did not violate clearly established law and thus Watson

cannot show the City’s fault rose to the level of deliberate indifference. See, e.g.,

Robbins v. City of Des Moines, 984 F.3d 673, 681-82 (8th Cir. 2021) (describing

the deliberate indifference necessary to establish a Monell claim). However, we do

not have jurisdiction to review the district court’s decisions on this matter. See

Birkeland v. Jorgensen, 971 F.3d 787, 791 (8th Cir. 2020) (“Ordinarily, this [C]ourt

lacks jurisdiction over a denial of summary judgment ‘because such an order is not

a final decision.’” (citation omitted)). Unlike the denial of qualified immunity, the

denial of summary judgment on a Monell claim is an interlocutory order not

immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine. See Shannon v. Koehler,

616 F.3d 855, 865 n.8 (8th Cir. 2010).

Accordingly, we may only exercise jurisdiction over such an order when it is

“‘inextricably intertwined’ with an issue we have jurisdiction to review.” Birkeland,

971 F.3d at 791. “An issue is ‘inextricably intertwined’ with properly presented

issues only ‘when the appellate resolution of the collateral appeal necessarily

resolves the pendent claims as well.’” Manning v. Cotton, 862 F.3d 663, 671 (8th

Cir. 2017). Only this Court’s reversal of a district court’s denial of qualified

immunity will resolve the pendent Monell claim. Cf. Johnson v. City of Ferguson,

926 F.3d 504, 506 (8th Cir. 2019) (en banc) (“This circuit has consistently

recognized a general rule that, in order for municipal liability to attach, individual

liability first must be found on an underlying substantive claim.” (citation omitted)).

Any other resolution of the appeal will not resolve the question of the municipality’s

liability, and we will accordingly lack jurisdiction. See Manning, 862 F.3d at 671

(“Deciding to uphold the district court’s denial of qualified immunity for the

[o]fficers does not resolve whether the City is entitled to summary judgment on the

municipal liability claims.”). Here, we recognize that the district court’s

determination of Watson’s claims against Officer Boyd on remand may impact

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Watson’s Monell claim; nonetheless, our decision to remand the claims against

Officer Boyd does not resolve Watson’s Monell claim against the City on appeal.

Accordingly, we lack jurisdiction over the City’s appeal.

V.

We pass no judgment on whether Officer Boyd is entitled to qualified

immunity because the district court failed to undertake the necessary analysis.

Accordingly, we vacate the district court’s order and remand the case for a more

detailed consideration and explanation of the validity, or not, of Officer Boyd’s

claim to qualified immunity in a manner consistent with this opinion, and we dismiss

the City’s appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

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