Excessive Use of Force Claim Against a Police Officer by a Psychiatric Inpatient

Facts of the Case

In January 2021, Miles Guptill presented voluntarily to Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, seeking psychiatric treatment for symptoms of acute psychosis. He was previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and depression. Mr. Guptill described himself as “very manic” and “doing crazy things,” such as chasing his wife because of a delusional belief she was unfaithful. He was placed in a room designated for emergency detention and told he could not leave. The admitting physician prescribed a ziprasidone injection, and Mr. Guptill pleaded with nurses not to administer the antipsychotic medication. From the doorway, an off-duty Chattanooga police officer, Joel Gunn, observed two staff members restraining Mr. Guptill as he continued to refuse the injection. Although he was moonlighting as a hospital security guard at the time, Officer Gunn was wearing his police uniform and body camera. Seeing Mr. Guptill “lightly” restrained and passively resisting the injection, Officer Gunn intervened to restrain Mr. Guptill by twisting his arm behind his back, causing Mr. Guptill to step forward to relieve shoulder pain from the officer’s maneuver. Believing he was physically resisting restraint efforts, Officer Gunn delivered one punch to Mr. Guptill’s head, causing it to strike a cinderblock wall. Mr. Guptill then stopped moving and agreed to comply.

Mr. Guptill filed suit against Officer Gunn and the city of Chattanooga on six counts in January 2022, with both the officer and the municipality moving for summary judgment. Count one alleged Officer Gunn was liable for damages under §1983 for violating Mr. Guptill’s Fourth Amendment constitutional rights through an excessive use of force. Counts two through four claimed the municipality was liable for failing to train and supervise Officer Gunn, in addition to ratifying policies causing the alleged constitutional violation. Count five was a state-law claim against the officer and the municipality for malicious harassment. The district court granted Officer Gunn qualified immunity on the §1983 claim but denied summary judgment on count six of a common-law assault and battery claim, with the court finding a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether the officer used excessive force. The court granted the municipality summary judgment in full, also dismissing without prejudice the malicious harassment state-law claim. Mr. Guptill’s motion to alter or amend was denied by the district court, and he then appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ruling and Reasoning

The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court decisions through a de novo review, examining the facts of the case in the most favorable light to Mr. Guptill as the nonmoving party.

Qualified immunity offers government officials protection from civil liability while performing their discretionary duties “insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known” (Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982), p 818). If a defendant asserts qualified immunity for an excessive use of force claim, the burden then shifts to the plaintiff to show both that the plaintiff’s constitutional rights were violated under the Fourth Amendment and the right in question was already clearly established.

The Supreme Court offered the “analytical guideposts” for Fourth Amendment excessive force cases in criminal contexts in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), through a three-factor test considering the objective reasonableness of the crime’s severity, the immediacy of a perceived threat, and resisting arrest. In Estate of Hill v. Miracle, 853 F.3d 306 (6th Cir. 2017), the Sixth Circuit addressed the “imperfect fit” of the Graham factors when the incident does not involve the commission of a crime, resisting arrest, or attempting to flee. The court’s decision in Estate of Hill instructed that cases involving medical or mental health emergencies should instead consider whether the person’s condition rendered the person unable to make rational decisions in circumstances posing an “immediate threat of serious harm to himself or others,” whether “some degree of force [was] reasonably necessary” to resolve the threat of harm, and whether the use of force was “more than reasonably necessary under the circumstances” (Estate of Hill, p 314).

The Sixth Circuit considered the three Estate of Hill factors under the first prong of the qualified immunity analysis. The court noted it was not objectively unreasonable for Officer Gunn to believe that Mr. Guptill was experiencing a mental health emergency affecting his rationality, as he was under an emergency detention while physically resisting medication that would improve his mental state. The court then addressed whether some force was reasonably necessary to resolve an immediate threat. Although Mr. Guptill was “substantially smaller” than the men surrounding him and despite his nonviolent resistance posing “little danger to” staff and security, a “reasonable officer” in those circumstances could have believed a degree of force was necessary to assist staff in restraining Mr. Guptill to administer medication that would mitigate any immediate threat. The court found that Officer Gunn’s forceful punch to Mr. Guptill’s head was “more than reasonably necessary” and that “less violent means” could have been used to restrain him, emphasizing that multiple people were holding his body and clothing during his “largely polite and respectful” interaction with staff. Therefore, Mr. Guptill adequately showed a violation of a constitutional right, thus satisfying the first prong of qualified immunity.

The second prong of the qualified immunity analysis required Mr. Guptill to show through a “sufficiently analogous case” that a clearly established right was violated. The Sixth Circuit noted that Supreme Court precedent instructs that a right is not clearly established if an officer’s actions lie within the “hazy border between excessive and acceptable force” (Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194 (2004), p 201). Mr. Guptill was unable to identify binding case law determining that an officer violates a clearly established right by using a single punch against a partially restrained patient who is physically resisting treatment in a nonviolent manner during a mental health emergency. Mr. Guptill did not satisfy the second prong of the qualified immunity analysis, and the Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision granting qualified immunity to Officer Gunn on the § 1983 claim. The Sixth Circuit also affirmed the district court’s denial of summary judgment for Mr. Guptill’s common-law assault and battery tort, finding there was a genuine question of material fact as to whether Officer Gunn used excessive force. The court affirmed summary judgment in full for the city of Chattanooga.