Sullivan v. City of Round Rock, No. 15-51204 (5th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseAfter Officers Zoss, Mayo, and Ballew forcibly removed William Sullivan from his pickup truck after he refused to comply with their lawful commands to exit the vehicle, Sullivan - who was heavily intoxicated, morbidly obese, and handicapped - suffered a serious injury rendering him a quadriplegic. Sullivan died a few months later. The district court denied the officers' motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. The court concluded that the district court erred because, even on plaintiffs’ version of the tragic facts, the officers did not violate Sullivan’s constitutional rights. In this case, the approximately two minutes that Zoss spent negotiating with Sullivan before deciding to resort to force was not objectively unreasonable, especially in light of, inter alia, Sullivan’s explicit and repeated refusal to comply with Zoss’s requests to exit the pickup and the possibility that Sullivan might have had access to a weapon or could have tried to drive his huge, elevated truck into the police car. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded.
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