Qualified Immunity After a Jury Finds Excessive Force: No Clearly Established Bar Where a Resisting Arrestee Is Reasonably (Though Mistakenly) Perceived as a Safety Threat

Case: Matusak v. Daminski (2d Cir. Jan. 29, 2026)  |  Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

1. Introduction

Matusak v. Daminski arises from a late-night arrest in Scottsville, New York (February 1, 2018), after Plaintiff Christopher Matusak fled from Deputy Matthew Daminski into a dark wooded area. During the arrest, Daminski, Deputy Stephen Murphy, and Sergeant Brian Unterborn used a combination of physical strikes, pepper spray, and a taser before Matusak was handcuffed.

Matusak brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging excessive force in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. A jury found that Daminski did not use excessive force, but found that Murphy and Unterborn did and awarded compensatory damages. Critically, in special interrogatories, the jury also found that Matusak was resisting officers’ attempts to pull out his arms for handcuffing and that Murphy and Unterborn reasonably believed Matusak posed a threat to officer safety, even though he did not actually pose such a threat.

The central appellate issue was not whether the jury could find excessive force; rather, it was whether Murphy and Unterborn were nonetheless entitled to qualified immunity as a matter of law in light of the jury’s factual findings about resistance and the officers’ reasonable (but mistaken) perception of danger.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s Rule 50 judgment as a matter of law granting qualified immunity to Murphy and Unterborn. The panel accepted that the jury found a constitutional violation (excessive force) but held that step two of qualified immunity controlled: on February 1, 2018, there was no clearly established law prohibiting the force used (fist strikes, knee strikes, taser) where (i) the arrestee was resisting arrest, and (ii) the officers reasonably—but mistakenly—believed the arrestee posed a threat to officer safety.

3. Analysis

3.1 Precedents Cited

The opinion is notably precedent-driven, using Supreme Court qualified-immunity doctrine, Second Circuit procedural guidance on special interrogatories, and fact-specific excessive-force caselaw to define what was (and was not) “clearly established” by 2018.

A. The qualified immunity framework and “clearly established” specificity

• Pearson v. Callahan, Harlow v. Fitzgerald, and Ashcroft v. al-Kidd supply the classic immunity formulation: officials are shielded unless they violate clearly established rights; the doctrine protects “all but the plainly incompetent” or knowing lawbreakers.
• Saucier v. Katz provides the two-step structure (constitutional violation; clearly established right), while Pearson v. Callahan confirms courts may focus on either prong as appropriate.
• Anderson v. Creighton, Hope v. Pelzer, and White v. Pauly frame the “clearly established” inquiry: unlawfulness must be apparent in light of pre-existing law, and the right must be particularized so precedent places the issue “beyond debate.”
• Kisela v. Hughes and City of Escondido v. Emmons underscore that excessive-force cases demand close factual matching; general principles like Graham v. Connor rarely suffice outside an “obvious case.”
• Cugini v. City of New York states the sources for “clearly established” law: Supreme Court, Second Circuit, and other circuits.

B. Trial posture: jury fact-finding + court’s legal immunity decision

• Zellner v. Summerlin controls Rule 50 posture: on JMOL the court views evidence favorably to the non-movant but cannot adopt facts contrary to the jury’s findings.
• Stephenson v. Doe and Kerman v. City of New York (both 374 F.3d 93 and 261 F.3d 229) are central: at trial, the jury resolves disputed historical facts (often via special interrogatories), while the judge decides qualified immunity as a legal matter based on those facts.
• Eaton v. Estabrook is used to emphasize overlap between “excessive force” and “objective reasonableness under clearly established law,” explaining why special interrogatories can be decisive.
• Jones v. Treubig provides the opinion’s template for using interrogatories to capture officer perceptions (including reasonable mistakes of fact) relevant to immunity.

C. Substantive excessive-force baselines (what was clearly established)

• Graham v. Connor supplies the objective-reasonableness factors (severity, immediate threat, resistance/flight) but is treated as too general to resolve “clearly established” on its own.
• Tracy v. Freshwater, Rogoz v. City of Hartford, and Soto v. Gaudett are used to state a stable rule by 2018: significant force is unlawful against an arrestee who is not resisting and poses no safety threat (e.g., pepper spray on a restrained, unresisting person; force on a compliant prone suspect; tasing when incapacitated/compliant).
• Muschette ex rel. A.M. v. Gionfriddo and Jones v. Treubig (post-dating the incident) are cited not to newly create rights, but to confirm what earlier cases already clearly established: officers may not use tasers/significant force against compliant or non-threatening suspects.
• Terebesi v. Torreso supplies an important doctrinal move: “novel method” is not an escape hatch; clearly established principles can apply across weapon types. The court uses this to treat fist and knee strikes as “significant force” alongside pepper spray and tasers.

D. Resistance during handcuffing and the absence of a “passive vs active” bright line

• Amnesty Am. v. Town of W. Hartford is discussed as a “passive resistance” case, but the court stresses it did not clearly establish a categorical rule about force and passive resistance. Instead, it concerned potentially gratuitous, severe force against peaceful protestors in a very different setting.
• Crowell v. Kirkpatrick (summary order) is used to show Second Circuit terminology has been inconsistent: protestors refusing to free themselves were characterized as “actively resisting.”
• McKinney v. City of Middletown and Linton v. Zorn are noted (both post-incident) to illustrate continued doctrinal development; they do not supply the 2018 clearly established rule, and the opinion stresses that the Circuit had not clearly defined “passive resistance” at the time of Matusak’s arrest.
• Sullivan v. Gagnier is cited for proportionality in the abstract—force must relate to resistance and actual/threatened force—but the court treats it as too general to “squarely govern” the specific facts here.
• Brown v. City of New York plays a pivotal comparative role: officers received qualified immunity where a suspect refused to produce an arm for handcuffing and was pepper-sprayed “in furtherance of” completing cuffing. The panel treats Brown v. City of New York as strongly analogous support for immunity when resistance prevents cuffing.

E. Warnings/time-to-comply arguments and limits of authority

• The appellant relied in part on Benny v. City of Long Beach (summary order, post-incident). The court rejects it as a source of clearly established law for 2018 and reads it narrowly in any event.
• United States v. Omotayo is cited on waiver discretion—illustrating the court’s willingness to address the “active vs passive resistance” framing even though trial counsel ultimately accepted “resistance” interrogatory wording.
• Outlaw v. City of Hartford reinforces an alternative route to immunity: even where law is clearly established, an objectively reasonable (but mistaken) view of facts can preserve immunity.

3.2 Legal Reasoning

The opinion’s reasoning turns on the interaction between (i) the jury’s special interrogatory findings and (ii) the Supreme Court’s insistence on high factual specificity in the “clearly established” inquiry.

A. The court treats the jury’s interrogatory answers as the controlling factual universe

The panel repeatedly emphasizes that it cannot revisit facts the jury settled. The determinative findings were: (1) Matusak was resisting attempts to pull out his arms for handcuffing when force was used; and (2) although Matusak did not actually threaten officer safety, Murphy and Unterborn reasonably believed that he did at the relevant moments. Under Zellner v. Summerlin and Kerman v. City of New York, those findings constrain the legal immunity analysis.

B. The “reasonable but mistaken belief” of threat is legally consequential

The court leans on Pearson v. Callahan and Jones v. Treubig for the proposition that qualified immunity can rest on reasonable mistakes of fact. The jury’s “reasonable belief” findings therefore operate as a shield: the analysis asks what a reasonable officer could believe lawful given that perceived threat environment, not what hindsight reveals.

C. Existing “no force on compliant/non-threatening suspects” precedents do not squarely govern

The panel agrees that, by 2018, it was clearly established that significant force (pepper spray/tasers and, by extension, punches/knee strikes) cannot be used gratuitously against a compliant, non-resisting, non-threatening arrestee (e.g., Tracy v. Freshwater; Rogoz v. City of Hartford; Soto v. Gaudett; later-confirmed by Muschette ex rel. A.M. v. Gionfriddo and Jones v. Treubig).

But those cases do not resolve a scenario where the suspect is still resisting handcuffing and officers reasonably perceive a threat. Under Kisela v. Hughes and White v. Pauly, the absence of a closely analogous precedent means immunity applies.

D. The court refuses to constitutionalize an “active vs passive resistance” taxonomy (for 2018)

Appellant attempted to characterize his conduct as “passive” resistance (hands under body, clasped). The panel declines to adopt that label as dispositive, emphasizing that Second Circuit law did not clearly define or consistently apply “passive resistance” terminology by 2018, and Jones v. Treubig did not require interrogatories to differentiate “active” from “passive” resistance.

E. Brown v. City of New York is the practical analogue

The opinion’s most concrete analog is Brown v. City of New York, where qualified immunity was granted for force used to obtain an arm for cuffing. By invoking Brown v. City of New York, the panel situates Matusak’s case within an established “handcuffing-resistance” line: when force is used to complete cuffing in the face of refusal/resistance, and the law has not “squarely” forbidden the specific level/type of force in that circumstance, qualified immunity protects the officers.

3.3 Impact

1) Post-verdict qualified immunity is reaffirmed and operationalized. The decision reinforces that a plaintiff can win the excessive-force verdict yet lose the § 1983 damages judgment if the “clearly established” prong is not met—especially where special interrogatories lock in officer perceptions that support reasonable mistake.

2) Special interrogatories become a litigation hinge in force cases. The panel’s approach incentivizes precise interrogatories capturing: (i) resistance status at each discrete use of force, (ii) threat perception, and (iii) reasonableness of any mistake. Plaintiffs and defendants alike will treat interrogatory crafting as outcome-determinative for immunity after trial.

3) “Passive resistance” remains an unstable category (for immunity analysis). By declining to treat “passive resistance” as a clearly established limiter in this context, the decision signals that plaintiffs should not assume that “hands under body” fact patterns, without more, defeat immunity—particularly when there is a reasonable perceived safety threat.

4) Threat perception can outweigh actual threat in the immunity calculus. The case underscores how “reasonable belief” findings can blunt otherwise intuitive excessive-force arguments: even if the suspect was not actually dangerous, the legal question becomes whether precedent made unlawfulness clear to an officer who reasonably perceived danger.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

• Qualified immunity (step two focus): Even if an officer violated the Constitution, the officer avoids damages unless prior case law made it clear—beyond debate— that the specific conduct in the specific situation was unlawful.
• “Clearly established”: Not a general idea (“force must be proportional”), but a fact-specific rule from precedent close enough that it would have warned every reasonable officer. Excessive-force cases demand especially tight factual matching (Kisela v. Hughes; City of Escondido v. Emmons).
• Reasonable mistake of fact: Officers can be wrong about what is happening (e.g., whether someone is a threat), yet still immune if the mistake is reasonable (Pearson v. Callahan; Jones v. Treubig).
• Special interrogatories: Targeted jury questions used to decide disputed factual predicates (Was the suspect resisting? Did the officer reasonably believe there was a threat?), which the judge then uses to decide qualified immunity as a legal question (Stephenson v. Doe; Kerman v. City of New York).
• Excessive force vs qualified immunity: The jury’s “excessive force” finding answers whether force was unconstitutional; immunity asks the separate question whether existing law made that unconstitutionality clear to a reasonable officer in the moment.

5. Conclusion

Matusak v. Daminski crystallizes a practical rule for Second Circuit excessive-force litigation: a jury finding of excessive force does not end the case; qualified immunity may still bar damages where the jury also finds that the arrestee resisted and the officers reasonably (even if mistakenly) perceived a safety threat—and where no precedent clearly established that the specific force used was unlawful under those circumstances.

The decision’s broader significance lies in its methodological emphasis: fact-specific “clearly established” analysis, anchored to special interrogatory findings, can convert a plaintiff’s liability verdict into a defense judgment as a matter of law.