Adam Urda v. Jeffrey Sokso, in his official and individual capacities

PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
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No. 24-1804
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ADAM URDA
v.
JEFFREY SOKSO, in his official and individual capacities,
Appellant
_______________
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. No. 3:21-cv-01178)
District Judge: Hon. Karoline Mehalchick
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Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)
on July 8, 2025
Before: RESTREPO, BIBAS, and CHUNG, Circuit Judges
(Filed: July 22, 2025)

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Michael J. Scarinci
PENNSYLVANIA A TTORNEY GENERAL ’ S O FFICE
Strawberry Square 15th Floor
Harrisburg, PA 17120
Counsel for Appellant
Michael J. Ossont
THE MATTIOLI LAW FIRM
425 Biden Street
Suite 300
Scranton, PA 18503
Counsel for Appellee
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OPINION OF THE COURT
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BIBAS, Circuit Judge.
Qualified immunity protects police officers who make
wrong but reasonable judgment calls absent clearly estab-
lished law. In this case, Trooper Jeffrey Sokso filed a criminal
complaint charging Adam Urda with acting recklessly after
Urda poured fuel onto a smoldering fire, lighting himself and
two bystanders on fire. Although the charges were later dis-
missed, Sokso’s conduct was reasonable in the circumstances.
So he gets qualified immunity.

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I. A FTER A F IERY EXPLOSION ,
SOKSO F ILES C HARGES THAT GET D ISMISSED
One Saturday afternoon, LaRae Bowen had some friends
over, including her coworker Urda. The group headed down
to a lake and tried to start a bonfire. But the wood was still
wet from some rain and would not catch. Then one partygoer
had an idea: He went to his truck and got a quart of motor oil
and a jug of remote-controlled-racecar fuel. He handed the
racecar fuel to Urda, who waited as his companion dumped
the motor oil on the smoldering fire. But nothing happened.
So Urda joined in, splashing the racecar fuel onto the fire
over the motor oil. That triggered an explosion, lighting Urda,
the other partygoer, and a four-year-old girl on fire. Engulfed
in flames, the three had to jump into the lake to put out the
fires. The little girl was hospitalized for a month and needed a
ventilator and skin grafts
Trooper Sokso investigated the explosion. After inspect-
ing the scene, interviewing witnesses, and speaking with
Urda, he drafted a criminal complaint charging Urda with ag-
gravated assault and risking a catastrophe. 18 Pa. Cons. Stat.
§§ 2702(a)(8), 3302(b). He ran the complaint by an assistant
district attorney, who approved the charges and recommended
adding a third: recklessly endangering another person. 18 Pa.
Cons. Stat. § 2705. Sokso filed the complaint in state court
with all three charges. A magistrate judge dismissed the first
two charges but not the third. The Court of Common Pleas
then dismissed the third charge too, finding no probable cause
that Urda had committed the crime.

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With the charges dismissed, Urda sued Sokso in federal
court for unlawful seizure, false arrest, malicious prosecution,
abuse of process, and intentional infliction of emotional dis-
tress, all under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The District Court granted
Sokso summary judgment on the last two claims but not the
rest, rejecting his qualified-immunity defense. We have juris-
diction over this interlocutory appeal from the denial of quali-
fied immunity. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985).
We review de novo. Mack v. Yost, 63 F.4th 211, 227 n.14 (3d
Cir. 2023).
II. THE D ISTRICT C OURT D EFINED
THE R IGHT TOO A BSTRACTLY
Urda’s surviving claims (unlawful seizure, false arrest,
and malicious prosecution) share a common element that he
must plead and prove: that Sokso charged him without proba-
ble cause to believe that he had committed a crime, thus vio-
lating his Fourth Amendment rights.
Yet qualified immunity shields police from such claims
unless they (1) violated a right (2) that was clearly established
at the time. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982).
A right is clearly established if “it would be clear to a reason-
able officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he
confronted.” Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 202 (2001), over-
ruled on other grounds by Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S.
223, 236 (2009). Usually, that requires controlling precedent
or a “robust consensus of cases of persuasive authority.” Ash-
croft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 742 (2011) (internal quotation
marks omitted). But Urda has not cited a single case, either
here or below, showing that the Fourth Amendment bans

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what Sokso did in these circumstances. So his claim crashes
into a roadblock.
True, in rare circumstances, an officer’s constitutional
“violation was so obvious” that no precedent is needed. Hope
v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 734–35, 741–42 (2002) (handcuffing
shirtless prisoner to hitching post to roast in the sun for seven
hours); Taylor v. Riojas, 592 U.S. 7, 8–9 (2020) (per curiam)
(forcing prisoner to live in a cell covered in “massive
amounts of feces” and sleep naked in another, frigid cell
awash in raw sewage for six days total (internal quotation
marks omitted)).
But Sokso’s actions do not even start to rise to that level.
Urda claims that there was no probable cause to think that he
had acted recklessly, a required element of each offense that
Sokso charged him with. In other words, he insists that even
though he poured fuel on a fire near bystanders, there was not
even a “fair probability” that he had “consciously disre-
gard[ed] a substantial and unjustifiable risk.” Illinois v. Gates,
462 U.S. 213, 246 (1983); 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 302(b)(3). That
is hardly clear. Indeed, an assistant district attorney had re-
viewed the charges and not only found them justified but told
Sokso to add another one. So even if Sokso had violated Ur-
da’s right, the violation would not have been “so obvious” to
a reasonable officer that we can overlook the lack of prece-
dent clearly establishing that right. See Hope, 536 U.S. at 741.
The District Court denied qualified immunity because it
held that it is clearly established that people cannot be arrest-
ed or prosecuted without probable cause. But the Supreme
Court has repeatedly warned courts not to analyze rights so

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abstractly. Instead, existing law must clearly establish that
what this officer did in these circumstances violated the plain-
tiff’s rights. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639–41
(1987). Otherwise, plaintiffs could turn qualified immunity
“into a rule of virtually unqualified liability simply by alleg-
ing violation of extremely abstract rights.” Id. at 639. As the
Supreme Court has stressed, that framing is especially important
for Fourth Amendment claims cause because probable cause
depends heavily on each case’s facts. District of Columbia v.
Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 64 (2018).
To be sure, one of our past cases seemed to analyze quali-
fied immunity at a high level of generality, stating that it is
clearly established that people may not be arrested or prose-
cuted without probable cause. Andrews v. Scuilli, 853 F.3d
690, 705 (3d Cir. 2017). The District Court relied on that
statement to define clearly established law at the same abstract
level. But Andrews held only that the officer’s violation was
clear “on the record of th[at] case.” Id. And that record—in
which police had left material information out of an affidavit
supporting their arrest-warrant application—was so different
from this one that it cannot put the illegality of Sokso’s con-
duct “beyond debate.” Id. at 696, 703–05; al-Kidd, 563 U.S.
at 741. Plus, Andrews cannot mean that courts may define
clearly established law abstractly; that reading would conflict
with a landslide of Supreme Court precedent. Anderson, 483
U.S. at 639–41; Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 199
(2004) (per curiam); al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 742; Mullenix v.
Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 12 (2015) (per curiam); White v. Pauly, 580
U.S. 73, 79 (2017) (per curiam); Wesby, 583 U.S. at 64; City
of Escondido v. Emmons, 586 U.S. 38, 42–43 (2019) (per

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curiam); Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna, 595 U.S. 1, 5–6
(2021) (per curiam); see also United States v. Tann, 577 F.3d
533, 541 (3d Cir. 2009) (noting that Third Circuit precedent
that contradicts Supreme Court caselaw does not bind future
panels).
* * * * *
The District Court denied summary judgment because it
framed the question of law too abstractly. Framed correctly,
the question here is whether preexisting law clearly estab-
lished that a police officer lacks probable cause to believe that
a suspect acted recklessly when he poured fuel onto a smol-
dering fire with others nearby. The answer is no, so the officer
has qualified immunity. The District Court should have grant-
ed him summary judgment on the remaining claims. We will
thus reverse the order denying summary judgment on those
claims.

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