a district court's order denying a defendant's motion for summary judgment [is] an immediately appealable “collateral order” (i.e., a “final decision”) ... where (1) the defendant [is] a public official asserting a defense of “qualified immunity” and (2) the issue appealed concern[s] not which facts the parties might be able to prove, but, rather, whether or not certain given facts show[ ]a violation of “clearly established” law.
A determination that the law allegedly violated by the defendant was clearly established at the time of the challenged actions is an abstract issue of law that is immediately appealable. A determination that under either party's version of the facts the defendant violated clearly established law is also immediately appealable. However, government officials cannot appeal pretrial denial of qualified immunity to the extent the district court's order decides nothing more than whether the evidence could support a finding that particular conduct occurred. An order denying qualified immunity on summary judgment is not appealable if it merely determines the facts asserted by the plaintiff are sufficiently supported by evidence in the record to survive summary judgment.
[We] review whether, under [plaintiff's] version of the facts, [defendant] violated clearly established law. In making this determination, we must scrupulously avoid second-guessing the district court's determinations regarding whether [plaintiff] has presented evidence sufficient to survive summary judgment. Rather, we review only whether [defendant's] conduct, as alleged by [plaintiff], violated clearly established law.
In analyzing qualified immunity claims, we first ask if a plaintiff has asserted the violation of a constitutional right at all, and then assess whether that right was clearly established at the time of a defendant's actions. Once a public official raises a qualified immunity defense, the plaintiff bears the burden of (1) coming forward with sufficient facts to show that the defendant's conduct violated the law; and (2) demonstrating that the relevant law was clearly established when the alleged violation occurred.
In the substantive due process analysis, it is the State's affirmative act of restraining the individual's freedom to act on his own behalf—through incarceration, institutionalization, or other similar restraint of personal liberty—which is the “deprivation of liberty” triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause, not its failure to act to protect his liberty interests against harms inflicted by other means.
we must bear in mind three basic principles highlighted by the Supreme Court ...:(1) the need for restraint in defining [the] scope [of substantive due process claims]; (2) the concern that § 1983 not replace state tort law; and (3) the need for deference to local policymaking bodies in making decisions impacting upon public safety.
Plaintiff must demonstrate that (1) [Plaintiff] was a member of a limited and specifically definable group; (2) Defendants' conduct put [Plaintiff] ... at substantial risk of serious, immediate and proximate harm; (3) the risk was obvious or known; (4) Defendants acted recklessly in conscious disregard of that risk; and (5) such conduct, *1263 when viewed in total, is conscience shocking.
While the State may have been aware of the dangers that [plaintiff] faced in the free world, it played no part in their creation, nor did it do anything to render him any more vulnerable to them.... [I]t placed him in no worse position than that in which he would have been had it not acted at all.
The key to the state-created danger cases ... lies in the state actors' culpable knowledge and conduct in affirmatively placing an individual in a position of danger, effectively stripping a person of her ability to defend herself, or cutting off potential sources of private aid. Thus the environment created by the state actors must be dangerous; they must know it is dangerous; and, to be liable, they must have used their authority to create an opportunity that would not otherwise have existed for the third party's [acts] to occur.
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