DISCLAIMER: Any unofficial case summaries below are prepared by the clerk's office
as a courtesy to the reader. They are not part of the opinion of the court.
172527P.pdf 10/15/2018 Brittany A. Karels v. Gabriel A. Storz
U.S. Court of Appeals Case No: 17-2527
U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota - Minneapolis
[PUBLISHED] [Wollman, Author, with Arnold and Stras, Circuit Judges]
Civil case - Civil rights. Under the circumstances presented, the court is
not convinced that the defendant police officer's use of force was
objectively reasonable as a matter of law; viewing the evidence in the
light most favorable to the plaintiff, the court rejects the officer's
argument that his use of force was justified because a reasonable officer
in his position would have viewed plaintiff's behavior as resisting
arrest; a jury could find that a reasonable officer in defendant's
position would not have interpreted plaintiff's actions as noncompliance
and would have known she posed neither an immediate threat to anyone's
safety nor a flight risk, and the district court did not err in concluding
that genuine issues of material fact regarding defendant's use of a
takedown maneuver precluded the grant of summary judgment based on
qualified immunity; several Eighth Circuit cases establish that every
reasonable officer would have understood that he could not forcefully take
down plaintiff - a nonviolent, nonthreatening misdemeanant who was not
actively resisting arrest or attempting to flee - in the allegedly violent
and uncontrolled manner defendant used.