Colbruno v. Kessler

928 F.3d 1155
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
DecidedJuly 2, 2019
Docket18-1056
StatusPublished
Cited by108 cases

This text of 928 F.3d 1155 (Colbruno v. Kessler) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Colbruno v. Kessler, 928 F.3d 1155 (10th Cir. 2019).

Opinions

HARTZ, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff Christopher Colbruno was in jail awaiting trial when he needed to be taken to the hospital for an urgent medical condition. Six deputies in the Denver Sheriff's Department (Defendants) walked him through the public areas of the hospital completely unclothed except for an orange pair of mittens. Complaining that the deputies violated his constitutional rights, he sued them, among others, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.1 Defendants moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim on the ground that they were entitled to qualified immunity. The district court disagreed, and Defendants appealed to this court. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm. Plaintiff's complaint alleges facts supporting the inference that the public exposure of his naked body was wholly unjustifiable and therefore suffices to state a claim under the Fourteenth Amendment. Whether the evidence supports those allegations is a question for further proceedings.

I. BACKGROUND

Although the district court characterized its decision (which addressed a variety of issues in addition to qualified immunity)

*1160as resolving motions for summary judgment, it is apparent from the record that the court resolved Defendants' qualified-immunity motion solely on the basis of allegations made in Plaintiff's complaint. We therefore consider this to be an appeal from the denial of a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). On review we accept the factual allegations of the complaint as true and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. See Doe v. Woodard , 912 F.3d 1278, 1285 (10th Cir. 2019).

Plaintiff's complaint alleges the following: On May 4, 2015, he was a pretrial detainee in the custody of the Denver Sheriff's Department at the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center. During an apparent psychotic episode, he swallowed metal components of an emergency call box in his jail cell. After jail officials learned of this at about 10:00 p.m., they contacted a physician at the Denver Health Medical Center and were told that he should be brought to the hospital for x rays and treatment within one hour. At 12:20 a.m., three of the Defendants removed him from his cell and placed him in a van to go to the hospital. On the way there, Plaintiff urinated and defecated on the smock he was wearing. The three transporting Defendants were met at the hospital by the other three Defendants. Defendants removed the smock and walked Plaintiff into the hospital without any clothes on except a pair of orange mittens, passing through the ambulance bay, entrance, atrium, and hallways before chaining him to a bed. Hospital staff witnessed this conduct and reported it to the hospital risk manager because they found it disturbing.

II. DISCUSSION

Defendants2 have asserted the defense of qualified immunity, which "protects government officials from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Callahan v. Unified Gov't of Wyandotte Cty. , 806 F.3d 1022, 1026 (10th Cir. 2015) (internal quotation marks omitted). "Because qualified immunity establishes immunity from suit rather than a mere defense to liability, a district court's denial of a claim of qualified immunity is immediately appealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1291." Id. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). But our jurisdiction in such an interlocutory appeal is limited to the legal question of whether the alleged facts state a violation of clearly established law. See id.

"In resolving a motion to dismiss based on qualified immunity, the court considers (1) whether the facts that [Plaintiff] has alleged make out a violation of a constitutional right, and (2) whether the right at issue was clearly established at the time of [Defendants'] alleged misconduct." Keith v. Koerner , 707 F.3d 1185, 1188 (10th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). The law was "clearly established" if it "was sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would understand that what he is doing is unlawful."

*1161District of Columbia v. Wesby , --- U.S. ----, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589, 199 L.Ed.2d 453 (2018) (internal quotation marks omitted); see id. at 590 ("The rule's contours must be so well defined that it is clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted." (internal quotation marks omitted)). Generally, "[t]he plaintiff must show there is a Supreme Court or Tenth Circuit decision on point, or the clearly established weight of authority from other courts must have found the law to be as the plaintiff maintains." Woodard , 912 F.3d at 1289 (internal quotation marks omitted). "Ultimately, we consider whether our precedents render the [il]legality of the conduct undebatable." Lowe v. Raemisch , 864 F.3d 1205, 1211 (10th Cir. 2017). Our review is de novo. See Keith , 707 F.3d at 1187.

A. Mistreatment of Detainees

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
928 F.3d 1155, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/colbruno-v-kessler-ca10-2019.