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.
201743P.pdf 06/30/2021 Fred Watson v. Eddie Boyd, III
U.S. Court of Appeals Case No: 20-1743
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis
[PUBLISHED] [Shepherd, Author, with Erickson and Kobes, Circuit Judges]
Civil case - Civil rights. In action alleging the police defendant and the
City of Ferguson, Missouri violated plaintiff's First, Fourth, and
Fourteenth Amendment rights by seizing him, searching his car, pointing a
gun at him and issuing him tickets for nine different violations, the
district court erred in denying defendants' motion for summary judgment
based on qualified immunity, and the matter must be remanded so that the
district court may further consider the police officer's asserted
entitlement to qualified immunity; the district court failed to adequately
address whether the factual disputed were material; nor can this court
determine whether the district court thoroughly analyzed and determined
the question of whether a clearly established right was involved;
additionally, the court defined the relevant law at too high a level of
generality to conduct a proper "clearly established" analysis; finally,
the district court's excessive force analysis failed to identify a
specific right or factually analogous case; because of the district
court's incomplete analysis on both the constitutional violation and the
clearly established prongs, the court can neither affirm nor reverse the
denial of qualified immunity, and the matter must be remanded for further
consideration; the City's appeal is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction as
the decision to remand the claims against the officer does not resolved
plaintiff's Monell claim against the City.