Cavanaugh v. Woods Cross City, 718 F.3d 1244

Cavanaugh suffered a serious head injury after a taser deployment by Officer Davis in Woods Cross City, Utah.
She pursued a §1983 excessive force claim against the City and Davis.
The district court denied summary-judgment on qualified immunity; on appeal we found fact questions remained.
A jury trial resulted in a verdict for the Defendants, and judgment was entered in their favor.
Cavanaugh challenged pretrial and trial rulings, including evidentiary matter, a new-trial motion, jury instructions, and the excessive-force question.
The panel held there was no reversible error and affirmed the judgment.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the district court erred in denying the pretrial motion to exclude Davis’s subjective mind state evidence	Cavanaugh argues Graham is objective; subjective beliefs should be excluded	Davis’s beliefs relevant to what a reasonable officer would do	Harmless error; no reversible abuse of discretion
Whether there was sufficient evidence to support an immediate-threat finding to justify force	There was no objective immediate threat evidence	Evidence of knife report and conduct supported threat assessment	Not an abuse of discretion; sufficient evidence supported threat finding
Whether the court erred in refusing Cavanaugh’s instruction on resisting arrest under Utah law	Utah’s active-resistance definition should have been used	Graham factors and broader resisting-arrest concept apply; not required to adopt Utah definition	District court properly instructed under Graham; no error
Whether the district court properly allowed the jury to decide the excessive-force question rather than deciding it itself	Court should resolve legal questions; jury should not decide violation	Excessive-force is a mixed question; jury may decide under disputed facts	Proper to submit to the jury where material facts were disputed; not error

Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (U.S. 1989) (objective reasonableness factors guide excessive-force inquiry)
Tanberg v. Sholtis, 401 F.3d 1151 (10th Cir. 2005) (subjective mind state irrelevant to reasonableness; admissibility limits)
United States v. Trujillo, 136 F.3d 1388 (10th Cir. 1998) (review of jury instructions and Graham framework relevance)
Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690 (U.S. 1996) (mixed question of law and fact in reasonable-suspicion/probable-cause determinations)
Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372 (U.S. 2007) (summary-judgment video backdrop; high-speed-chase context; lawfulness of action)
Gonzales v. Duran, 590 F.3d 855 (10th Cir. 2009) (how to submit qualified-immunity questions to jury; special interrogatories preferred)
Keylon v. City of Albuquerque, 535 F.3d 1210 (10th Cir. 2008) (no-summary-judgment ruling where material facts disputed; determines immunity path)
Kelley v. LaForce, 288 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2002) (factual issues resolved by jury; immunity questions later)
Will hming v. Crooke, 412 F.3d 553 (4th Cir. 2005) (separate handling of facts and immunity where disputed)
Sherouse v. Ratchner, 573 F.3d 1055 (10th Cir. 2009) (probable-cause/summary-judgment standards in Fourth Amendment context)
Fisher v. City of Las Cruces, 584 F.3d 888 (10th Cir. 2009) (two-step analysis for excessive-force review; Graham factors)