Matthew Cartia; Autumn Adams v. Bradley Beeman, in his official

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
___________________________
No. 23-1650
___________________________
Matthew Cartia; Autumn Adams
Plaintiffs - Appellants
v.
Bradley Beeman, in his official and individual capacity; Mason McNail, in his
official and individual capacity; Kevin Gugliano, in his official and individual
capacity; Timothy Livingston, in his official and individual capacity; Rebecca A.
Carroll, in her official and individual capacity; Katie Brooks, in her official and
individual capacity; John Cottle, in his official capacity as the Sheriff of Lincoln
County, Missouri and in his individual capacity; Lincoln County, Missouri;
Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department; Lincoln County Jail
Defendants - Appellees
____________
Appeal from United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis
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Submitted: January 10, 2024
Filed: December 10, 2024
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Before LOKEN, KELLY, and STRAS, Circuit Judges.
____________
STRAS, Circuit Judge.

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Officers arrested Matthew Cartia and Autumn Adams when they tried to
interfere with a police investigation. The question is whether those officers, along
with others who worked at a local jail, are immune from suit. A magistrate judge,
acting by consent of the parties, see 28 U.S.C. § 636(c)(1), concluded that the answer
was yes. We affirm the grant of summary judgment in part, reverse it in part, and
remand for further proceedings.
I.
When Cartia learned that officers were searching his parents’ house, he and
Adams drove over to check it out. But as they started up the driveway, with a
cellphone in hand recording audio and video, Officer Timothy Livingston stopped
them to explain that they were interfering with a police investigation.
The encounter drew the attention of Officer Bradley Beeman, who ordered the
couple to stay back. To reinforce the point, he gestured as though he were drawing
a do-not-cross line over the driveway. Cartia responded by reminding them that they
were on video and demanding their names and badge numbers.
As the officers began walking back toward the house, Cartia kept pestering
them. At some point, Officer Livingston pulled out his badge, which prompted
Cartia to walk forward to get it on video, across the imaginary do-not-cross line.
Despite Livingston’s order to go “back, over there,” he would not budge.
At that moment, Officer Beeman decided to arrest Cartia, who said, “[d]o not
touch me, sir.” Undeterred, Beeman pulled Cartia’s hands behind his back and
handcuffed him. As he did so, Adams reached forward, causing Officer Livingston
to pull her back. Cartia called him a “fucker” for “touch[ing] [his] girlfriend.”
From there, the situation took a turn for the worse. Officer Beeman used a
“hip-toss” maneuver to take Cartia to the ground. He then used his knee to keep him
down. Meanwhile, Cartia hurled expletives, yelled that he could not breathe, and

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accused Beeman of “hit[ting] [him] in the face.” When Adams pleaded with Beeman
to “stop,” Officer Livingston grabbed her by the arm and held her back. Livingston,
along with Officer Kevin Gugliano, who had just arrived on the scene, decided to
arrest her too. As they ordered her to turn around, she shouted that her arrest was
“bullshit” and “not fucking fair.”
The cellphone camera captured only some of what happened. It missed the
takedown, and ended with Cartia on the ground, held down by Officer Beeman’s
knee in his back and hand on his neck. He claims that he was restrained for several
minutes more, long enough for Officer Gugliano to get involved. When Cartia called
one of the officers a “bitch,” Beeman allegedly smacked and punched him in the
head.
The next step was to get Cartia into the back of a police car. But rather than
allowing him to get in on his own, Officer Gugliano forced him into the backseat by
allegedly slamming his head into the door frame. Angry, Cartia called Gugliano a
“f’ing scumbag and a piece[-]of[-]shit cop.” Gugliano responded by opening the car
door, choking Cartia, and calling him a “piece of shit” that needed to “[s]hut the fuck
up.”
Once at the jail, Cartia found himself in yet another heated encounter, this
time with two corrections officers: Rebecca Carroll and Katie Brooks. Cartia claims
he was compliant the entire time, but he admits that he argued with the officers.
They eventually strapped him to an “isolation chair” for 10 to 15 minutes.
After the charges against Cartia and Adams were dropped, the couple decided
to sue nearly every officer they encountered. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. They also sued
Lincoln County for having an allegedly illegal policy that allowed the mistreatment
to occur. See Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 690–91 (1978). They
raise a host of constitutional and state claims.

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The defendants, for their part, moved for summary judgment. See Fed. R.
Civ. P. 56. The officers relied on qualified and official immunity, while Lincoln
County argued that it had no policy or custom making it liable for the acts of its
officers. The magistrate judge granted the summary-judgment motion in its entirety.
II.
We review the summary-judgment ruling de novo, viewing the record in the
light most favorable to Cartia and Adams and drawing all reasonable inferences in
their favor. See N.S. ex rel. Lee v. Kan. City Bd. of Police Comm’rs, 35 F.4th 1111,
1113 (8th Cir. 2022). If even the “plaintiff-friendly version of the facts” entitles the
officers to summary judgment, we will affirm. Id.
A.
The constitutional claims against the individual officers come first. Most rely
on the Fourth Amendment, including the claim that the officers used excessive force
against them before, during, and after their arrests. Cartia makes a similar claim
against the corrections officers at the county jail, except pretrial detainees must sue
under the Fourteenth Amendment, not the Fourth Amendment.
Regardless of the source, these claims are subject to “a qualified-immunity
defense . . . if: (1) the plaintiff-friendly version of the facts fails to establish a
constitutional violation; or (2) the law at the time did not clearly establish the right.”
Morgan-Tyra v. City of St. Louis, 89 F.4th 1082, 1085 (8th Cir. 2024). Although the
magistrate judge made the right call on many of the claims, a few should have
survived summary judgment.1
1 Other claims were destined to fail from the start. One is the excessive-force
claim against Officer Mason McNail, who they now concede did not use force
against either of them. Officer Beeman likewise did not touch Adams, nor did
Officer Livingston make any contact with Cartia. No contact, no force, no claim.
See Roberts v. City of Omaha, 723 F.3d 966, 974–75 (8th Cir. 2013).

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1.
One of those mixed bags is Cartia’s Fourth Amendment claim. In evaluating
whether the officers used excessive force, we look at whether their conduct was
objectively reasonable. See Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 397 (1989); see also
Morgan-Tyra, 89 F.4th at 1085–86. The analysis “requires careful attention to”
several factors, including “the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect
pose[d] an immediate [safety] threat . . . , and whether he [wa]s actively resisting
arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Graham, 490 U.S. at 396. In weighing
them, we must keep in mind that “the right to make an arrest . . . necessarily carries
with it the right to use some degree of physical coercion or threat thereof.” Id. As
the Supreme Court has put it, “‘[n]ot every push or shove, even if it may later seem
unnecessary in the peace of [our] chambers,’ violates the Fourth Amendment.” Id.
(quoting Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d 1028, 1033 (2d Cir. 1973)).
“There are multiple defendants and acts to unpack here.” Beard v. Falkenrath,
97 F.4th 1109, 1119 (8th Cir. 2024); see McReynolds v. Schmidli, 4 F.4th 648, 655
(8th Cir. 2021) (explaining that “we must review each officer’s actions separately”).
The first time the officers laid a hand on Cartia was when he crossed the imaginary
boundary on the driveway. Initially, all they wanted to do was handcuff him. But
when he became argumentative, as the video shows, Officer Beeman used a hip-toss
maneuver to bring him under control. See Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 378, 381
(2007) (instructing courts to “view[] the facts in the light depicted by [a] videotape,”
even if it “quite clearly contradicts the version of the story told by” the plaintiff).
Cartia thinks that the takedown was too aggressive under the circumstances,
but our cases largely point the other way. Consider Ehlers v. City of Rapid City, 846
F.3d 1002 (8th Cir. 2017). There, much like what happened here, an individual
approached officers to question their actions. See id. at 1007. Ignoring a command
“to step back,” he continued to move toward them while “ask[ing] more questions.”
Id. Once he refused “to put his hands behind his back,” an officer took him to the
ground by his “neck and shoulder.” Id.

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Although the individual suffered shoulder and knee injuries, we held that the
takedown “did not violate a constitutional right” because “[a] reasonable officer . . .
would interpret [the] behavior as noncompliant.” Id. at 1011. The same is true for
Cartia. See Kohorst v. Smith, 968 F.3d 871, 877 (8th Cir. 2020) (explaining that an
“arm-bar takedown and . . . pushing down of [an arrestee], who at a minimum
appeared to be resisting and was not complying with commands, d[id] not rise to the
level of force required to constitute a constitutional violation”).
Other cases establish that, at a minimum, Officer Beeman could not have
violated a clearly established right. In Blazek v. City of Iowa City, for example, we
affirmed the grant of qualified immunity after an officer “use[d] . . . a forceful throw
during handcuffing.” 761 F.3d 920, 923 (8th Cir. 2014). Kelsay v. Ernst came out
the same way based on the lack of “clearly established” law at the time ruling out “a
takedown maneuver to arrest a suspect who [had] ignored [an officer’s]
instruction . . . and continued to walk away.” 933 F.3d 975, 980 (8th Cir. 2019) (en
banc).
Cases that have come out differently share a key distinction: none involved an
individual who was noncompliant like Cartia. In Montoya v. City of Flandreau, for
example, the suspect “was not threatening anyone, was not actively resisting arrest,
and was not attempting to flee.” 669 F.3d 867, 871 (8th Cir. 2012). Likewise, in
Shannon v. Koehler, a bar owner neither “threaten[ed] anyone,” nor “resist[ed]
arrest,” so it was unreasonable for an officer “to use more than de minimis force
against him.” 616 F.3d 855, 863 (8th Cir. 2010). The lesson from these cases is that
an officer may not forcefully take down a nonviolent and nonthreatening suspect
who neither resists arrest nor attempts to flee. See Montoya, 669 F.3d at 873;
Shannon, 616 F.3d at 863.
Cartia, on the other hand, had already interfered with a police investigation
and was not cooperating. After he ignored warnings to stay back, the officers could
have concluded that “somewhat more force [was] reasonably . . . required” to stop

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him. Wertish v. Krueger, 433 F.3d 1062, 1066–67 (8th Cir. 2006). At a minimum,
given the mix of cases in this area, “existing precedent . . . ha[d] [not] placed the . . .
constitutional question beyond debate.” Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 12 (2015)
(citation omitted). The exact circumstance when qualified immunity applies.
2.
The same goes for the decision by Officers Beeman and Gugliano to hold
Cartia down by his legs, back, and neck while they subdued him. See Blazek, 761
F.3d at 925 (describing each “discrete use of force” as a separate “consideration
under the Fourth Amendment”); see also McReynolds, 4 F.4th at 655. By then,
Cartia had hurled expletives at the officers, including calling one of them a “fucker,”
and refused to follow instructions.
Neither officer violated a clearly established right. See Quraishi v. St. Charles
County, 986 F.3d 831, 835 (2021) (making clear that civil-rights plaintiffs “have the
burden to show that their right was clearly established at the time of the alleged
violation”). If anything, our cases suggest just the opposite. See, e.g., Wertish, 433
F.3d at 1065 (rejecting an excessive-force claim even though the officer “took . . .
to the ground” and “climbed on top of [a] prone [suspect]”); cf. Ryan v. Armstrong,
850 F.3d 419, 428 (8th Cir. 2017) (concluding that officers were entitled to qualified
immunity for “us[ing] the weight of their bodies to restrain [a pretrial detainee] for
approximately three minutes” (emphasis added)); Lombardo v. City of St. Louis, 38
F.4th 684, 692 (8th Cir. 2022) (holding it “was not clearly established in 2015” that
an inmate had a right “to be free from prone restraint while . . . officers applied force
to various parts of his body” for 15 minutes). For that reason, they get the benefit of
qualified immunity, at least up to that point.
3.
Officers Beeman and Gugliano did more, however, than just restrain Cartia.
According to him, Beeman struck and punched him in the face while he was down

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on the ground. Then, once he was back on his feet, Gugliano allegedly slammed his
head into the frame of a car door before choking him. By then, he claims to have
been in handcuffs and no longer resisting. The recording had also stopped, so we
must accept these plaintiff-friendly facts as true.2 See Scott, 550 U.S. at 378, 381.
We have long held “that when a person is subdued and restrained with
handcuffs, a gratuitous and completely unnecessary act of violence is unreasonable
and violates the Fourth Amendment.” Blazek, 761 F.3d at 925 (citation omitted).
Although this rule is phrased in general terms, our cases applying it to “similar facts”
placed these officers on “notice that [their] specific use[s] of force [were] unlawful.”
Kisela v. Hughes, 584 U.S. 100, 105 (2018).
One example is Krout v. Goemmer, in which officers “kicked and punched”
an arrestee “several times” while he was on the ground. 583 F.3d 557, 566 (8th Cir.
2009). A witness specifically reported seeing an “officer punch[] him in the head
area,” just like Officer Beeman allegedly did here. Id. According to Krout, “[i]t was
clearly established” by then “that this type of gratuitous force against a suspect who
is handcuffed, not resisting, and fully subdued is objectively unreasonable.” Id.
It is even more clearly established now. A suspect’s “right[] to be free from
excessive force [is] violated if officers choke, kick, or punch [him] when [he is]
restrained, not fighting, and not resisting.” Tatum v. Robinson, 858 F.3d 544, 552
(8th Cir. 2017); see Chambers v. Pennycook, 641 F.3d 898, 907 (8th Cir. 2011)
(explaining that an officer acted unreasonably by “kick[ing] [the arrestee] several
times on both sides of his body, although he was restrained on the ground and
offering no resistance”). With Tatum on the books nearly a year earlier, Officers
2 It makes no difference that these facts come from Cartia himself rather than
a neutral, third-party witness. See Argenyi v. Creighton Univ., 703 F.3d 441, 446
(8th Cir. 2013) (“A party’s own testimony is often self-serving, but the mere fact
that [his] factual testimony is favorable to his legal claim does not render it
incompetent.” (citation omitted)); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)(1)(A) (requiring a
party to “cit[e] to . . . depositions” and other “materials in the record”).

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Beeman and Gugliano would have “known for certain that the[ir] conduct was
unlawful” and that, once they crossed the line identified in that case, they would no
longer be “immune from liability” no matter how many expletives came their way.
Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. 120, 152 (2017); see Shannon, 616 F.3d at 865.
4.
Adams now gets her turn. She brought excessive-force claims against
Officers Livingston and Gugliano. According to her, they injured her shoulder by
pulling her arms and then forcing her to the ground. Or, as she describes it,
“manhandling” her.
Regardless of the label, they did not violate a clearly established right. Start
with Officer Livingston’s decision to grab her. Even crediting her testimony that
she reached out for Cartia’s cellphone, a reasonable officer could have interpreted
the act as an attempt to interfere with the arrest or as aggression posing “an
immediate threat.” Graham, 490 U.S. at 396. Either way, Officer Livingston did
not go too far by grabbing her arm and pulling it back. See McManemy v. Tierney,
970 F.3d 1034, 1039 (8th Cir. 2020) (noting that an officer may respond with force
“even if [the person] ha[s] an innocent reason” for acting out (citation omitted)).
Pulling her to the ground presents a closer call. Close calls are the calling
card of qualified immunity, when “[e]xisting precedent” does not “put the issue
beyond debate.” Molina v. City of St. Louis, 59 F.4th 334, 338 (8th Cir. 2023)
(quoting Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 664 (2012)). And here, to the extent
there is any answer, it favors the officers, not Adams.
One case on their side is Kasiah v. Crowd Systems, Inc., which involved an
off-duty police officer who grabbed a crowd-surfing concertgoer “by the shirt and
the arm” and “pull[ed] [him] up and over [a] barrier.” 915 F.3d 1179, 1182 (8th Cir.
2019). We concluded that nothing the officer did was objectively unreasonable

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because he “must be permitted to grab [an] arrestee and put him in handcuffs when
effectuating an arrest.” Id. at 1184.
Another is Kelsay, which we briefly discussed above. There, an officer “ran
up behind [a woman], grabbed her arm, and told her to ‘get back here.’” Kelsay,
933 F.3d at 978. When she kept moving away, he “placed [her] in a bear hug” and
“threw her to the ground”—a more aggressive maneuver than what happened here.
Id. We concluded that qualified immunity was available anyway. See id. at 982;
see also Blazek, 761 F.3d at 925 (explaining that “grabb[ing] [the] plaintiff’s arm”
and “twist[ing] it around [his] back” did not violate a clearly established right, even
though doing so caused a shoulder injury). If the officers in Kelsay and Kasiah were
immune, then Officers Livingston and Gugliano must be too.
Adams chiefly relies on Kukla v. Hulm in urging us to come out the other way.
310 F.3d 1046 (8th Cir. 2002). In that case, an officer forced a non-resisting arrestee
“against his truck, twisted his arm, and raised it high behind his back” before
handcuffing him so tightly “that [it] broke his wrist.” Id. at 1050. To make matters
worse, no one loosened the handcuffs “for fifteen minutes despite his repeated
complaints.” Id.
Two major differences exist here. First, unlike the suspect in Kukla, Adams
began resisting almost immediately, the moment she reached toward Cartia and
continued to shout expletives rather than “turn[ing] around” for handcuffing when
ordered to do so. Second, the injuries here were less severe than in Kukla, suggesting
that less force was used. The point is that it would not have provided “fair and clear
warning” to either officer that what they were doing violated a clearly established
right. Kisela, 584 U.S. at 105 (citation omitted); see Blazek, 761 F.3d at 924 (“The
absence of any resistance and the use of handcuffs to break the suspect’s wrist
distinguish Kukla . . . .”).

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5.
Back to Cartia. After he arrived at the Lincoln County Jail, corrections
officers Rebecca Carroll and Katie Brooks decided to strap him into an “isolation
chair” for 10 to 15 minutes. He claims that doing so clearly violated the Fourteenth
Amendment, which “protects a pretrial detainee from the use of excessive force that
amounts to punishment.” Graham, 490 U.S. at 395 n.10.
To prevail, he needs “objective evidence” that use of an isolation chair was
“not rationally related to a legitimate governmental objective” or was “excessive in
relation to that purpose.” Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389, 398 (2015)
(emphasis added). Cartia comes nowhere close to making either showing.
For one thing, he admits that his own decision to mouth off led to the use of
the isolation chair. Prisons and jails must “have substantial discretion to devise
reasonable solutions” to address behavioral issues that jeopardize the “safety and
order” of the facility. Id. at 399 (citation omitted) (noting “the legitimate interests
in managing a jail”). Also important are the type and length of the restraint. See id.
at 397 (considering “the relationship between the need for . . . force and the
amount . . . used” and whether the force was “temper[ed]” or “limit[ed]”). Here, it
was brief and did not result in any injuries. Cf. Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 737–
38 (2002) (handcuffing an inmate to an outside hitching post for hours at a time rose
to the level of cruel and unusual punishment). The Constitution does not prohibit
placing misbehaving detainees in the correctional equivalent of a timeout. Cf.
Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 674 (1977) (“There is, of course a de minimis
level of imposition with which the Constitution is not concerned.”).
B.
The municipal claims against Lincoln County end in the same place. See
Monell, 436 U.S at 690–91. According to Cartia and Adams, “unwritten custom[s]”
allowed officers to use excessive force against them. To win on a municipal-liability

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claim like this one, they had to show: (1) “the existence of a continuing, widespread,
[and] persistent pattern of unconstitutional misconduct”; (2) “deliberate indifference
to or tacit authorization of such conduct by . . . policymaking officials after
notice . . . of th[e] misconduct”; and (3) causation, meaning “that the custom was a
moving force behind the constitutional violation[s].” Meier v. City of St. Louis, 78
F.4th 1052, 1057–58 (8th Cir. 2023) (citation omitted).
Cartia and Adams have not identified a custom. They point to the sheer
number of excessive-force lawsuits brought against Lincoln County over the past 10
years, but they provide no details about any of them, including whether they were
successful. Without more, the existence of a “municipal custom of permitting or
encouraging excessive force” is just speculation. Mettler v. Whitledge, 165 F.3d
1197, 1205 (8th Cir. 1999) (explaining that “the mere existence of previous citizens’
complaints” is not enough).
Nor do they have evidence that the Lincoln County Sheriff, a “policymaking
official[],” ignored “unconstitutional misconduct.” Meier, 78 F.4th at 1058. They
claim he effectively admitted to doing so during his deposition, but all he did was
answer hypothetical questions. And each one of his responses tracked the law:
reasonableness depends on the surrounding facts, including the level of resistance
encountered. See Graham, 490 U.S. at 396. The Fourth Amendment requires
nothing more.
III.
Different analysis, but much the same story for the assortment of state claims
in the case. Among them were assault and battery, malicious prosecution, false
imprisonment, and negligence. Missouri law recognizes immunity for government
officials, but only for their “discretionary acts or omissions.” Brandy v. City of St.
Louis, 75 F.4th 908, 917 (8th Cir. 2023) (citation omitted).

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Each of the acts in this case was discretionary. See Boude v. City of Raymore,
855 F.3d 930, 934–35 (8th Cir. 2017) (reviewing the issue de novo). All along the
way, from the initial decision to use force to placing Cartia in the isolation chair,
officers “retain[ed] . . . discretion” and exercised “judgment.” State ex rel. Morales
v. Alessi, 679 S.W.3d 467, 472 (Mo. banc 2023).
Official “immunity ends,” however, “where bad faith or malice begins.” N.S.,
35 F.4th at 1115. The Missouri Supreme Court has equated bad faith to “conscious
wrongdoing,” a “dishonest purpose,” or “ill will.” State ex rel. Twiehaus v. Adolf,
706 S.W.2d 443, 447 (Mo. banc 1986). Malice is similar, except it involves
“wantonly” disregarding a duty while “intend[ing] to be prejudicial or injurious.”
Boude, 855 F.3d at 935 (quoting Twiehaus, 706 S.W.2d at 447).
Gratuitously beating Cartia after subduing him creates a reasonable inference
that the officers “actual[ly] inten[ded] to cause injury.” Green v. City of St. Louis,
52 F.4th 734, 741 (8th Cir. 2022) (quoting Blue v. Harrah’s N. Kansas City, LLC,
170 S.W.3d 466, 479 (Mo. Ct. App. 2005)). Officer Beeman slapped and then
punched Cartia in the head while he was down on the ground. Then, just a few
minutes later, Officer Gugliano allegedly choked him after slamming his head into
the frame of a car door. On the assault-and-battery and negligence claims arising
out of these actions, a jury will have to decide whether either acted in bad faith or
with malice. See Div. of Emp. Sec. v. Bd. of Police Comm’rs, 864 F.3d 974, 980 (8th
Cir. 2017) (explaining that “a jury could find that the officers acted with the
prohibited bad faith or malice” because the plaintiff “was complying with the
officers’ demands” when they “punched and shot” him). If so, official immunity
would pose no barrier to tort liability.
There is not enough in the record, on the other hand, for the remaining state
claims to survive. See Boude, 855 F.3d at 935. As we have explained before,
“conclusory allegations . . . [of] bad faith are insufficient to defeat summary
judgment.” Id. Yet for everything other than the officers’ allegedly gratuitous use
of force against Cartia, conclusory allegations are all they have. The absence of

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specifics dooms those claims. See White v. Jackson, 865 F.3d 1064, 1076 (8th Cir.
2017) (requiring “specific evidence of bad faith or malice” (citation omitted)).
IV.
We accordingly affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand for further
proceedings.
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