David Engstrom, et al. v. James W. Denby

1a. Three Officers executing a warrant used various degrees of force on a third party’s residence in an effort to safely remove an admittedly dangerous suspect who they reasonably believed had barricaded himself in the residence. This Court has never defined a test for an officer’s destruction of property while executing a warrant other than reference to the general reasonableness standard under the Fourth Amendment. Did the Ninth Circuit err in applying the Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), reasonableness standard for a claim involving the use of excessive force on a person to a destruction of property claim? 1b. If this Court affirms the Ninth Circuit’s application of Graham to Fourth Amendment destruction of property claims, did the Ninth Circuit otherwise err in denying qualified immunity when no prior case authority squarely put the individual Officers on notice that their conduct in executing a valid warrant violated a clearly established constitutional right? 2a. This Court has never authorized the “integral participant” or “failure to intervene” theories of § 1983 liability against an officer who uses no force but is present when officers damage property while executing a warrant. Did the Ninth Circuit err in utilizing these theories to affirm the denial of summary judgment to Officers that did not cause a constitutional violation? 2b. If this Court recognizes the theories of integral participation or failure to intervene, did the Ninth Circuit err in failing to conduct a qualified immunity analysis by concluding that the law is clearly established any time that an officer fails to intervene or acts as an integral participant, regardless of the facts of the underlying case? (i)