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countervailing governmental interest supporting the use of such
force as the predicate crime at issue, a non-violen t touching,
is clearly not severe, the Complaint reveals no ser ious threat
posed by Plaintiff, and she did not resist arrest o r attempt to
flee. Turmon, 405 F.3d at 207. Furthermore, Plain tiff alleges
that she remained in the excessively tight handcuff s for thirty
minutes after being placed in a holding cell at the police
station, during which she repeatedly ―begged‖ Offic er Briggs to
loosen or remove her cuffs. These facts are suffic ient to
allege a § 1983 claim for excessive force.18
however, as advanced by Plaintiff, fail to suggest that Briggs
ever examined Plaintiff‘s condition.
18 Some of the Defendants argue that allegations of ti ght
handcuffs are necessarily insufficient to state a § 1983 claim.
See Carter, 164 F.3d at 219 n.3 (finding that the plaintiff‘s
claim that ― her handcuffs were too tight and that an officer
pushed her legs as she got into the police car-is s o
insubstantial that it cannot as a matter of law ‖ support a
Fourth Amendment claim). However, Carter, and the cases cited
therein, establishes that excessive force claims st emming from
the use of handcuffs fail as a matter of law only w hen a
plaintiff‘s injuries are limited to minor scrapes o r soreness .
See Cooper v. City of Virginia Beach, Va., 817 F. S upp. 1310,
1314 (E.D. Va. 1993) (collecting excessive force ca ses involving
the use of handcuffs and noting that ― the presence, nature, and
extent of any resulting injury constitute important elements in
the reasonableness calculus ‖). In contrast, here, Plaintiff
alleges that she lost feeling in her hand and finge rs, that her
pain caused her to repeatedly ―beg‖ Briggs to loose n the cuffs,
and that as a result of his failure to do so, Plain tiff suffered
permanent injuries that resulted in her loss of inc ome. See
Morrison v. Board Of Trustees Of Green Twp., 583 F. 3d 394, 401
(6th Cir. 2009) (―T he Fourth Amendment prohibits unduly tight or
excessively forceful handcuffing during the course of a
seizure,‖ and to recover a plaintiff must prove: ― (1) he or she
complained the handcuffs were too tight; (2) the of ficer ignored Jump to an indexed page (39 of 39)