Brian Yates v. Christopher Terry, 817 F.3d 877

On Dec. 27, 2008, Officer Christopher Blair Terry stopped Brian Yates during a traffic encounter in North Charleston; Yates was unarmed and a nonviolent misdemeanant.
At the gas station stop, Terry forced Yates from his car, ordered him to place his hands on the vehicle, and deployed a taser in probe mode three separate times while Yates was largely compliant.
Yates fell after the first taser use, remained on the ground when tased a second time, and was tased a third time as he reached for his phone; Yates’s related criminal charges were later nol prossed.
Yates sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging excessive force; the district court denied Terry qualified immunity as to the taser uses and allowed the excessive-force claim to proceed.
The Fourth Circuit reviewed de novo, accepting Yates’s version of disputed facts for purpose of the qualified-immunity summary-judgment denial and affirmed that Terry was not entitled to qualified immunity.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Terry’s repeated taser deployments violated the Fourth Amendment	Yates: three tasings of a compliant, unarmed, nonviolent misdemeanant were excessive and objectively unreasonable	Terry: uses were reasonable given officer safety concerns and events at the scene	Court held the totality of circumstances shows excessive force; constitutional violation established
Whether the right was clearly established in 2008	Yates: precedent put officers on notice that repeated/gratuitous tasings of compliant nonviolent suspects are unlawful	Terry: no clearly established law on facts here; ambiguity about threat justified force	Court held existing Fourth Circuit precedent clearly established the unlawfulness of gratuitous/disproportionate tasings in similar contexts
Whether denial of qualified immunity at summary judgment was immediately appealable	N/A (jurisdictional question)	N/A	Court concluded it had jurisdiction to review the denial because legal issues predominated and the denial turned on law as applied to plaintiff’s version of facts
Proper analytical scope in excessive-force review	Yates: reasonableness must be assessed by totality, not segmented acts	Terry: each taser deployment could be judged independently; some factual disputes remain	Court emphasized assessing proportionality in full context, rejected segmented analysis for immunity determination

Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 (establishes two-step qualified-immunity framework)
Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (objective-reasonableness standard for excessive force claims)
Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223 (discretion to decide qualified-immunity steps)
Meyers v. Baltimore County, 713 F.3d 723 (repeated/gratuitous tasings can be excessive force)
Jones v. Buchanan, 325 F.3d 520 (use of significant force against nonviolent, nonthreatening suspects unreasonable)
Bailey v. Kennedy, 349 F.3d 731 (denial of immunity where force was excessive against secured, nonthreatening individual)
Rowland v. Perry, 41 F.3d 167 (reasonableness evaluated by proportionality and totality; warned against segmented view)
Estate of Armstrong v. Village of Pinehurst, 810 F.3d 892 (taser is serious force; deployable only when immediate safety risk exists)