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Malicious Prosecution
A man was visiting acquaintances at a house after finishing work nearby. He was waiting for a cab to take him home when police officers kicked down the doors. He claimed that they then beat him, threatened him, and took him to a hospital. One of the officers stated in his report that he had observed the man engaged in a hand-to-hand drug transaction, that the man had initiated the physical altercation with officers, and that he was in possession of 49 bags of a controlled substance. The arrestee filed an internal affairs complaint but received no response. He pled guilty to possession with intent to distribute and served 18 months. He was released when the officer admitted that he had falsified the police report. Three officers pled guilty to conspiracy to deprive persons of their civil rights, disrupting over 200 criminal cases. The arrestee’s lawsuit was among 89 lawsuits against the city. He opted out of a global settlement. The trial court unilaterally divided his municipal liability claim into three theories: failure to supervise through internal affairs, failure to supervise, and failure to train. The court associated certain evidence with only the first theory, granted the city summary judgment on the failure to supervise and train theories, excluded evidence that was material to the remaining theory, and awarded summary judgment on a state law negligent supervision claim. A federal appeals court found that the jury instructions confused the relevant law and vacated. The “artificial line,” drawn by the trial court, between what were ostensibly theories with largely overlapping evidence resulted in erroneous rulings as to what was relevant, and instructions as to what law the jury was to apply. Forrest v. Parry, #16-4351, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis 20486, 2019 WL 2998601 (3rd Cir.).
There is no viable constitutional claim under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, #301, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), based on assertions that a federal law-enforcement officer lied, manipulated witnesses, and falsified evidence. In the immediate case, the claims were that a federally deputized officer duped prosecutors and a grand jury into believing that the plaintiffs were part of a multistate sex-trafficking conspiracy. A federal appeals court declined to extend Bivens to cover these claims and remanded with respect to the 42 U.S.C. 1983 claims against the defendant for the trial court to consider the applicability of section 1983 in the first instance. In regard to the unlawful arrest claim, the court held that defendant was not entitled to qualified immunity because her actions constituted a violation of a clearly established right. Under these circumstances, a reasonable officer would know that deliberately misleading another officer into arresting an innocent individual to protect a sham investigation was unlawful. Farah v. Weyker, #17-3207, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis 17566 (8th Cir.).
After a female college student was found dead in her apartment, police questioned her current boyfriend and several former boyfriends. At a meeting including county prosecutors and several detectives, the prosecutors decided to charge one former boyfriend with the woman’s death. In discussing the dead woman’s relationship with another former boyfriend with the charged man’s defense attorney, the prosecution did not disclose the other man’s drug use and incidents of domestic violence against another girlfriend, nor his incomplete polygraph examination. At trial, the state argued that all other possible suspects were excluded by alibis. The accused ex-boyfriend was convicted of first-degree murder. He sought post-conviction relief, based on failure to disclose material information on the other man’s viability as a suspect. In 2008, the Illinois Supreme Court vacated the conviction. The state dismissed the charges. In April 2013, the state certified his innocence. He then filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the prosecutors and detectives with state law claims, including malicious prosecution, against the town. The trial court dismissed the claims. In 2014, he filed a state court suit against the detectives and town, pleading the state law claims that the federal court had dismissed without prejudice. The trial court granted the defendants summary judgment, reasoning that the plaintiff could not satisfy the elements to establish malicious prosecution, noting testimony that the prosecutor rejected suggestions to investigate other avenues. The intermediate appellate court affirmed. The Illinois Supreme Court reversed. The appellate court erroneously focused its inquiry on whether the “officer[s] pressured or exerted influence on the prosecutor’s decision or made knowing misstatements upon which the prosecutor relied” and failed to consider whether the defendants proximately caused the commencement or continuance or played a significant role in the plaintiff’s prosecution. Beaman v. Freesmeyer, 2019 IL 122654, 2019 Ill Lexis 262.
A woman enrolled in a community college’s online criminal justice course and was advised by the instructor, who was a police officer, that she was failing the course. Shortly thereafter, the police department started receiving anonymous threats and a harassing email targeting the officer. A different officer swore out a complaint accusing the student of engaging in the harassment. She was arrested, posted bond, and two years later was acquitted. She sued the city and a number of officers, seeking damages for wrongful prosecution. A federal appeals court ruled that a Fourth Amendment claim for unlawful pretrial detention accrues when the detention ends. The appeals court, however, did not determine the timeliness of the plaintiff’s claim because the parties did not adequately address whether and under what circumstances a person who is arrested but released on bond remains “seized” for Fourth Amendment purposes or what conditions of release, if any, were imposed on the plaintiff when she bonded out, requiring further proceedings. Mitchell v. City of Elgin, #16-1907, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis 26 (7th Cir.).
A former employee of the Pennsylvania state legislature sued various current and former state officials, including a former Attorney General who later became Governor, claiming that they were involved in his malicious prosecution in bringing criminal charges against him. He was one of nine staff members arrested after the “Computergate” investigation, which involved receiving bonuses for campaign-related work performed on state time. He was charged with intentionally hindering an investigation “by concealing or destroying evidence of a crime.” The charges were subsequently dismissed. A federal appeals court overturned the trial court’s denial of the defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings. There was probable cause to initiate those criminal proceedings based on the information known at the time, so the plaintiff could not establish a prima facie case of malicious prosecution, regardless of the result in the criminal case. Zimmerman v. Corbett, #16-3384, 873 F.3d 414 (3rd Cir. 2017).
A man was found dead in the Kentucky River. A woman was a suspect because of her sporadic relationship with him, because she had bullet holes inside her home, and because, after his disappearance, she had shared premonitions of him “being found in water.” Officers unsuccessfully tried to get a search warrant for her residence. Eight years later, a police detective obtained a warrant, but his affidavit omitted the facts that the decedent’s bullet wounds were non-exiting and could not have caused bullet holes in her floor and that she had one leg and weighed 100 pounds, while the decedent weighed 187 pounds. There was no evidence that the woman had destroyed evidence and the gunshot evidence at her home did not match bullets recovered from the deceased. She entered an “Alford plea,” maintaining her innocence. Years later, a serial murderer confessed that he had killed the man, relating specific details of the crime which had not been released. The detective who obtained the warrant allegedly visited the serial killer in jail and intimidated him into recanting. But two years later, the charges against the woman were dismissed and she was exonerated. A federal appeals court reversed the dismissal of the woman’s malicious prosecution claim against the detective. She raised genuine issues of material fact, including whether he set King’s prosecution in motion by applying for warrants and an indictment despite the lack of probable cause; whether his false statements, together with his material omissions were material to her prosecution; and whether any false statements, evidence, and omissions were “laying the groundwork for an indictment," not “preparatory activity” for a grand-jury hearing that would provide absolute immunity. King v. Harwood, #16-5949, 852 F.3d 568, (6th Cir. 2017).
Six years after a woman was raped and
strangled to death, police arrested a man who was convicted of the crime. He
spent six years in prison before DNA evidence showed that someone else, a
serial killer linked to nine similar homicides, was responsible. The plaintiff
claimed that police detectives made up a fake confession and got jailhouse
informants to falsely incriminate him. He further argued that they violated Brady v. Maryland, #490, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), requirements by failing to disclose impeachment evidence
about the informants false statements. A jury found two detectives liable for
violating the plaintiff’s due process rights by fabricating the confession, and
also found the city liable, awarding $1 million in damages. A federal appeals
court upheld this result, and held that the trial court improperly granted
summary judgment to the defendants on the Brady violation claims. The fact that
the plaintiff knew that the informants’ statements were false did not relieve
the detectives of their duty to disclose possible impeachment evidence. Avery
v. City of Milwaukee, #15-3175, 847 F.3d 433
(7th Cir. 2017).
A sheriff’s
officer used a confidential informant to make a controlled buy of marijuana as
part of a county-wide drug-bust operation. A warrant was issued for the plaintiff’s
arrest as a result, and she turned herself in, but the charges were dismissed
because of misidentification. She sued for malicious prosecution, claiming that
the officer prepared a misleading police report as well as giving false grand
jury testimony identifying her as the seller of the drugs. While the trial
court denied the officer both absolute and qualified immunity, a federal
appeals court reversed on the absolute immunity issue. The officer’s absolute
immunity defense presented a question of first impression about how the U.S.
Supreme Court’s provision of absolute immunity for grand jury witnesses in
Rehberg v. Paulk , #10-788, 132 S.Ct. 149 (2012), intersected with the Sixth
Circuit’s requirement that an indicted plaintiff asserting malicious prosecution
present evidence that the defendant provided false testimony to the grand jury.
The court concluded that Rehberg’s absolute immunity for false grand jury
testimony precluded the plaintiff’s malicious prosecution claim because she
could not rebut the indictment’s presumption of probable cause without using
his grand jury testimony. Sanders
v. Jones, #15-6384, 845 F.3d 721 (6th Cir. 2017).
A man read a newspaper
article stating that there was a warrant for his arrest for a store theft based
on a store security employee's identification of him. He claimed to have never
been in that store. When he called the store, a security employee refused to
review the surveillance videotape. He then called a state trooper who allegedly
told him that a court would have to "figure it out." He was then
arrested and jailed because he could not afford bail. He missed the birth of
his child and lost his job. After two months, he pled no contest to the
charges, fearing the loss of his home and vehicle and wishing to be released.
He sued the state trooper as well as the store and its security employee for
malicious prosecution, false arrest, and false imprisonment. The trial court
did not err in dismissing these claims, which were barred by his conviction
until and unless it was reversed, expunged, or invalidated. During his two
months of incarceration, a police detective filed unrelated charges against him
which were subsequently dropped, with that detective admitting that he was
innocent of those charges. Claims against that detective were rejected, as the
plaintiff was already in custody on the store theft charges, and therefore was
never "seized" on the additional charges. Curry v. Yachera, #15-1692,
835 F.3d 373 (3rd Cir. 2016).
Four women sued,
raising various claims about their arrests for and now-vacated convictions for
prostitution, including malicious prosecution. Rejecting the malicious
prosecution claim, a federal appeals court ruled that the plaintiffs had failed
to meet their burden of showing that their convictions had been vacated for
reasons indicating their actual innocence of the underlying charges. There was
no legal support for the plaintiffs' argument that evidence regarding the
reliability of a key witness necessarily proved that the accused was actually
innocent of the charges against her. M.G. v. Young, #15-2090, 2016 U.S. App.
Lexis 11206 (10th Cir.).
Two persons lawfully repossessing cars were
stopped for a traffic violation. The officers were aware of recent robberies in
the area, and grew suspicious, so they called a victim to the scene, who
identified the two as the men who had robbed him the night before. During
questioning, one of the men, who suffered from a learning disability and had a
low IQ, confessed to several robberies and implicated the other man. The other
man pled guilty in exchange for probation. Further investigation revealed that
both men were innocent. Neither man was imprisoned. They sued the officers for
fabricating one man's confession, failing to disclose an alibi witness, and
coercing the other man's confession. Summary judgment was granted to the
defendants as there were insufficient facts to show that the defendants
concealed evidence unknown to the plaintiffs or that their actions caused any
loss of liberty. No reasonable jury could find that the interrogation in
question shocked the conscience. Probable cause existed for the criminal
charges, defeating claims for malicious prosecution. Cairel v. Alderden,
#14-1711, 2016 U.S. App. Lexis 8354 (7th Cir.).
A woman claimed that
two city parking enforcement officers falsely reported to police that she had
hit them with her truck after they issued her a parking ticket. She filed a
federal civil rights lawsuit for malicious prosecution under 42 U.S.C. Sec.
1983. A federal appeals court upheld summary judgment for the defendant parking
enforcement officers, holding that in filing the allegedly false report to
police they did not act "under color of state law. There was no nexus
between their authority to issue parking tickets and impound vehicles and their
alleged conduct of lying in witness statements and at a probable cause hearing.
The defendants also did not engage in a joint action with police when they
reported their encounter and then testified against her. Schaffer v. Salt Lake
City Corp., #14-4112, 2016 U.S. App. Lexis 3846 (10th Cir.).
Four detectives and an investigator participated
in an investigation of a burglary and the sexual assault of a child. In the
course of it, they interviewed an 18-year-old man with cognitive disabilities
who confessed to the burglary but not the sexual assault. He was charged with
both crimes, and he was placed in pretrial detention after multiple judges
found probable cause, partially based on the confession. He claimed that his
disability had prevented him from understanding what was happening during the
interviews, and that his confession was false. A later medical exam supported
his explanation, and the charges were dropped. A federal appeals court upheld
the denial of qualified immunity to the detectives and investigators on a claim
that they had used the confession to maliciously prosecute the plaintiff even
though they knew it was untrue. The plaintiff plausibly alleged the individual
defendants' knowledge or reckless disregard for the truth that his confession
was untrue. He also showed that the underlying right was clearly established in
2009, when the events took place. Sanchez v. Hartley, #14-1385, 2016 U.S. App.
Lexis 371 (10th Cir.).
A man served his full ten year sentence for rape
and residential burglary, after which his conviction was vacated because of
newly available DNA evidence. He sued a police detective involved in his case,
accusing him of fabrication of evidence. Overturning a trial court's dismissal
of the lawsuit, a federal appeals court found that the claim did not accrue
until the plaintiff was acquitted of all charges, so that the lawsuit was filed
in a timely fashion within the applicable three year statute of limitations and
was not time barred. The appeals court did not address the detective's
qualified immunity defense, as the court below had not reached the issue.
Bradford v. Scherschligt, #14-35651, 803 F.3d 382 (9th Cir. 2015).
A former prisoner convicted of murder had
his sentence modified to time served after finding documents that appeared to
show that the police and prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence from his
defense, in violation of their obligations under Brady v. Maryland. Despite
this, a federal appeals court ruled, his claim for damages for the failure to
disclose evidence were barred by the principles in Heck v. Humphrey, since his
conviction had not been overturned on appeal, expunged by executive order, or
declared invalid by a state tribunal, nor had it been called into question by a
federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus. An award of damages on his
claims would imply the invalidity of his conviction, so no such claim could be
pursued. Griffin v. Baltimore Police Dept., #14-1494, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 18723
(4th Cir.).
A
trial court did not act erroneously in denying qualified immunity as a matter
of law to a former audit investigator and former prosecutor on claims that they
denied the plaintiff a fair trial by intentionally manipulating data displayed
on spreadsheet summary charts presented to a grand jury to create a false
impression that he had billed Medicaid for dental services never performed.
This led to his indictment and trial, and although he was acquitted, he lost
his dental practice as well as suffering other damages. The knowing creation of
false or misleading evidence by a government employee acting in an
investigative capacity has been clearly established as constituting an
unconstitutional violation of rights. The jury awarded the plaintiff $6,724,936
in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages, and the plaintiff
accepted a reduction to compensatory damages of $4,624,936 and punitive damages
of $100,000, rather than undergoing a new trial on damages. Morse v. Fusto,
#13-4074, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 16154 (2nd Cir.).
A man told an officer that while he was sleeping
his neighbor had entered his home, possibly by prying open a bathroom window,
grabbed and threatened him, and put his hand down the front of his pants. When
the officer questioned the neighbor, he allegedly said, without prompting, that
he had not entered the man's bathroom or gotten into his pants. The neighbor
later denied having made these statements. The complainant identified the
neighbor as the man who had assaulted him. The officer arrested the neighbor on
a variety of charges and he was later acquitted. A federal appeals court found
that the officer had probable cause for the arrest and that the officer abd the
city were both immune from Indiana state law malicious prosecution claims. A
federal malicious prosecution claim could not go forward as the plaintiff did
not allege a separate constitutional injury or show that the officer lacked
probable cause or acted with malice. Howlett v. Hack, #14-1351, 794 F.3d 721
(7th Cir. 2015).
A former police officer was arrested twice on
domestic violence complaints by his now estranged wife, with the second arrest
based on a warrant. He was subsequently acquitted and sued both the estranged
wife and two of the arresting officers for malicious prosecution, based on
claims that the wife's medical records contained details inconsistent with her
story and that police department policies, if followed during the
investigation, should have raised questions as to whether there was probable
cause to prosecute. The trial court declined to dismiss the malicious
prosecution claim, but a federal appeals court reversed, referring to an
"overly charitable" reading of the complaint by the trial court. The
defendant officers were entitled to qualified immunity, as the complaint's
factual allegations did not set forth conduct plausibly making out a violation
of clearly established law. Johnson v. Moseley, #14-5870, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis
9129, 2015 Fed App. 109P (6th Cir.).
The plaintiff was convicted of rape and murder,
but later acquitted of those charges on retrial 19 years later. His claims for
alleged due process violations and malicious prosecution against the county and
its police were tried jointly with those of two other persons whose convictions
for the same crime had also been vacated. The jury found in favor of the
defendants. A federal appeals court upheld this result, including the trial
judge's ruling denying the plaintiff a separate trial on the grounds that the
statements attributable to the other two plaintiffs were admissible not on the
issue of whether there was probable cause to arrest the plaintiff, but instead
to show lack of malice. This ruling was not an abuse of discretion.
Additionally, as most of these statements admitted did not explicitly or
implicitly mention the plaintiff, they did not unfairly prejudice him. Kogut v.
County of Nassau, #13-3130, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 7934 (2nd Cir.).
A man's conviction for rape ad murder was
reversed after 29 years of incarceration. A state judge subsequently dismissed
the charges, finding that the prosecution had destroyed key exculpatory
evidence. In a lawsuit against a prosecutor and state crime lab technicians,
the man alleged shocking prosecutorial misconduct, including: destroying
potentially exculpatory evidence from the crime scene; arranging for highly
suggestive hypnosis of an eyewitness; contriving suggestive identification
show-ups; concealing a later confession from a third party that was relayed by
a person with no apparent motive to fabricate the report; and enlisting lab
technicians to perform an inconclusive DNA test that consumed the last of a
sample that could have proven the plaintiff's innocence and identified the true
killer. A federal appeals court upheld the denial of qualified immunity to the
defendants. At the time of the original investigation, it was clearly
established that bad faith destruction of exculpatory evidence, which was
alleged, would violate a suspect's due process rights. A reasonable prosecutor
could not have believed that evidence could legally be destroyed or lost to
avoid disclosing it. Armstrong v. Daily, #13-3482, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 7761
(7th Cir.).
A woman claimed that a state trooper started
harassing her in 2007, tailgating her in an off-duty vehicle, parking behind
her, and questioning her about her driving. When the officer and the female
motorist's adult son exchanged heated words, the officer at first allegedly
stated that the motorist would receive an additional ticket because of her
son's statements and then left without issuing any tickets when the son stated
that he would complain to the officer's supervisor. After the motorist
complained abut this, the officer, hours later, arrived at her home and
delivered three tickets. After her son mentioned the alleged harassment at a
restaurant, the trooper, accompanied by a fellow officer, again returned to the
home, resulting in a confrontation with the woman's son-in-law. A federal
appeals court ruled that a First Amendment retaliatory prosecution claim was
time barred as it was filed two years after the tickets were delivered to the
woman, which was the date the claim accrued, rather than the later date of the
trial when she was convicted on the tickets. The trial court erred, however, in
dismissing a Fourth Amendment constructive seizure complaint against the
trooper on the basis that the plaintiff failed to specifically identify in that
claim that she was proceeding under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 rather than merely under
the Fourth Amendment. Smith v. Campbell, #14-1468, 782 F.3d 93 (2nd Cir. 2015).
A $20 million settlement as been reached in a
wrongful conviction lawsuit brought by a man who spent 20 years in prison on a
life sentence for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl before DNA
evidence pointed to someone else as the culpable party. The settlement will be
paid by county law enforcement and law enforcement agencies from a number of
towns involved in the investigation. The lawsuit claimed that a confession
given by the plaintiff was not true and was coerced as a result of four
straight days of interrogation, including one session that lasted 24 hours. The
girl's blood soaked shoes, which had blood from the rapist/murderer, were ever
introduced in evidence at trial, which the lawsuit pointed to as proof that the
prosecution was a "frame-up." The plaintiff was convicted three
separate times in jury trials before being exonerated. The settlement is
reportedly the largest wrongful conviction settlement for an individual person
in the U.S. Rivera v. Lake County Illinois, #1:12-cv-08665, U.S. Dist. Ct.
(N.D. Ill. March 20, 2015).
A man who served over 26 years on a conviction
for secod degree murder was released after a federal court determined that
falsified evidence had been introduced at his trial. The state dismissed the
charges rather than retrying the case. The man sued, claiming that two police
detectives fabricated photos of the crime scene, investigative notes, and
police reports. A federal appeals court upheld an order denying the defendants
motion for absolute witness immunity. The notes, investigative reports, and
photographs fell out of the scope of absolute immunity, and the defendants
plainly acted in an investigative capacity in producing them. These materials
were not inextricably linked to the defendants' court testimony. Lisker v.
Monsue, #13-55374, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 4564 (9th Cir.).
A D.C. prisoner was incarcerated for over two
decades in both federal and state prisons on a conviction for raping and
robbing a woman in 1981 when he was 18. After his parole, he was required to
register as a sex offender, limting his employment, housing, and other
opportunities. During his incarceration, he suffered multiple instances of
sexual and physical assaults, and contracted HIV. In 2012, at the age of 50, he
was exonerated and determined to be actually innocent of the robbery and rape,
based on DNA evidence. He reached a settlement of claims against the fedeeral
government under the Unjust Convictions Act, 28 U.S.C. Secs. 1495 and 25a3, and
the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2671 et seq. of $1,128,082.19,
based on $50,000 times the 22.56 years he was incarcerated. Continuing to
pursue his claims against the District of Columbia inder the D.C. Unjust
Imprisonment Act, D.C. Code Sec. 2-421 et. seq., he was awarded $9,154,500 in
damages for wrongful conviction, unjust imprisonment, sexual and physical
assaults, contracting HIV, lost income, and physcal and psychological injuries.
A D.ZC. court found that his wrongful conviction and unjust imprisonment had
been a proximate cause of all these damages. It also rejected an argument that
D.C. was entitled to an offset from the award for the amount of the plaintiff's
settlement with the federal government. Odom v. District of Columbia,
#2013-CA-3239, 2015 D.C. Super. Lexis 2.
A federal appeals court has upheld a $7 million
damage award against two police officers who were accused of having framed a
mentally challenged man with an IQ of 67 for the brutal rape, multiple
stabbings, and murder of a 58-year-old woman. He was exonerated of any
involvement in the crime through DNA testing after almost 26 years in prison.
The officers allegedly spent hours alone with him after his arrest in 1983,
telling the then 15-year-old boy information about the crime scene and then
"tricking" him into repeating the information back in a manner that
looked ike a confession. The jury's award is against the officers personally,
with one liable for $4 million and the other for $3 million. Spadaro v. City of
Miramar, #13-14884, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 932 (Unpub. 11th Cir.). The facts of
the case are covered in a prior decision. Spadaro v. City of Miramar,
#11-61607, 2013 U.S. Dist. Lexis 16714 (S.D. Fla.).
An officer was properly denied absolute immunity
on an arrestee's malicious prosecution lawsuit when the plaintiff claimed that
he knowingly falsified and omitted material facts from police reports and lied
to the prosecutor and grand jury. The claims against the officer were not based
on his grand jury testimony, but rather on the police reports, the officer's
knowledge of the falsehoods in another officer's police report, police radio
transmissions, and statements to the prosecutor. Qualified immunity was also
not available to the officer on the alleged falsification of evidence and a
related conspiracy, since if these were true, they would constitute a violation
of clearly established law. Coggins v. Buonora, #13-4635, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis
487 (2nd Cir.).
A man was arrested for murder based on an
investigating police sergeant's affidavit for a warrant. He was subsequently
convicted but the conviction was later overturned on appeal for insufficient
evidence. He sued the sergeant for malicious prosecution, claiming that the
affidavit for the warrant purposefully distorted a statement by a witness who
saw a car containing two young men with light brown hair like the plaintiff's
drive by the murdered man's home not long before the murder. A federal appeals
court held that the sergeant was entitled to qualified immunity as there was
ample evidence of probable cause for the arrest, including ballistics evidence
showing that the plaintiff's gun, found in a duffle bag with hairs similar to
his, was the murder weapon. There was no evidence that the sergeant had
deliberately or recklessly misrepresented anything in the affidavit. Newman v.
Twp. of Hamburg, #14-1455, 2014 U.S. App. Lexis 23366 (6th Cir.).
A malicious prosecution lawsuit against a police
officer and the city that employed him was not covered under the city's
insurance policy. The insurance contract's unambiguous language indicated that
the "occurrence" triggering coverage was the beginning of the
allegedly malicious prosecution, which took place before the policy period,
rather than the termination of the prosecution in the plaintiff's favor. St.
Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company v. The City of Zion, #2-13-1312, 2014 IL
App (2d) 131212, 2014 Ill. App. Lexis 659.
An arrestee acquitted in state court on charges of
aggravated battery could not pursue federal civil rights malicious prosecution
claims against two officers who he alleged prepared false police reports and
used them to persuade a prosecutor to file charges. Such a federal lawsuit for
malicious prosecution by state officers is only permissible if the state does
not provide an adequate remedy for malicious prosecution, which Illinois does.
The arrestee's initial seizure was supported by probable cause and the fact
that the deprivation of liberty may have lasted longer than it should have did
not violate the Fourth Amendment. Llovet v. City of Chicago, #13-3351, 2014
U.S. App. Lexis 14945 (7th Cir.).
Five men initially convicted and then
exonerated of involvement in the 1989 brutal rape and beating of a female
jogger in Central Park in New York City have reached a $40 million settlement
in a lawsuit over their arrests, prosecutions, and imprisonment. The proposed
settlement works out to approximately $1 million for each year the plaintiffs spent
incarcerated. They claimed that incriminating statements they had made had been
coerced. They were convicted in 1990 and incarcerated, but DNA and other
evidence later showed that the beating and rape had not been committed by the
five black and Hispanic teenagers, who were ages 14 to 16 at the time of the
crime, but by another person, a convicted rapist and murderer who stated in a
confession that he acted alone. McRay v. City of New York, #1:03-cv-09685, U.S.
Dist. Ct. (S.D.N.Y), reported in The New York Times, June 19, 2014.
In a settlement, the Illinois State Police agreed
to pay a total of $40 million to five men who were wrongfully convicted and
imprisoned for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Dixmoor, Illinois
in 1991. They spent a total of 70 years in prison between them before being
cleared by DNA evidence. Their lawsuit accused officers of having coerced false
confessions from them. Barr v. Kachiroubas, #12-cv-9327 (N.D. Illinois). Claims
against the Village of Dixmoor remain pending.
A man was charged with the murder and sexual
assault of his three-year-old daughter. Charges were dropped after his defense
attorney obtained DNA evidence and had it privately tested, but he was first
imprisoned for eight months after detectives coerced a confession from him and
delayed DNA testing, according to his lawsuit. A jury awarded him $15.5
million, including $6.2 million in punitive damages on malicious prosecution
and other claims. Fox v. Hayes, #08-3736, 600 F.3d 819 (7th Cir. 2010). Offers
to settle for less were rejected both before and after the verdict. A primary
insurance policy required the insurer to defend the detectives up to a policy
limit of $1 million. The county also had express insurance policies for $5
million from a second company, and further excess coverage from a third
insurer. $8,166,000 of the damages awarded were upheld, including $3.4 million
in punitive damages. The detectives assigned to the plaintiffs any claims
against the insurers in exchange for an agreement not to seek punitive damages
against the detectives' personal assets. A federal appeals court rejected the
plaintiffs' claim against the secondary insurer that it breached a good faith
duty to reasonably settle the claims and inform the detectives of their alleged
conflicts of interest. The appeals court upheld the finding that the secondary
insurer never had any control over the defense of the case before the jury
verdict and accordingly had no duty either to settle the case or inform the
detectives of a supposed conflict of interest. Fox v. Am. Alt. Ins. Corp.,
#13-1290, 2014 U.S. App. Lexis 12799 (7th Cir.).
A man who previously worked as a confidential
drug informant sued a DEA agent and city police for false drug charges
allegedly brought against him, claiming malicious prosecution, abuse of
process, and deprivation of (and conspiracy to deprive him of) his
constitutional rights on the basis of race or color. The DEA agent was entitled
to absolute immunity for his allegedly false grand jury testimony against the
plaintiff. The alleged cooperation between the DEA agent and the city police
did not support an inference that they acted for an improper motive, and no
discriminatory animus was shown. Abuse of process, malicious prosecution, and
racial discrimination claims were all rejected. Morales v. City of New York,
#13-2126, 2014 U.S. App. Lexis 9157 (2nd Cir.).
A man sued Chicago police who arrested him on
drug possession charges, as well as solicitation of an unlawful act. After he
spent 19 days in jail, the charges were dismissed for want of probable cause.
The plaintiff and the officers had differing accounts of the events that led to
his arrest, which did involve someone in the vicinity shouting
"rocks," referring to drugs. In a false arrest, malicious
prosecution, and illegal search lawsuit, a jury returned a verdict for the
defendant officers. A federal appeals court upheld the jury verdict. “This was
a swearing contest, and nothing precluded the jury from crediting the
defendants’ account of what occurred.” Venson v. Altamirano, #12-1015, 2014
U.S. App. Lexis 7334 (7th Cir.).
The plaintiff was awarded $25 million in a federal
civil rights malicious prosecution lawsuit claiming that a police officer and
the city violated his due process rights in that coercive tactics were used to
get witnesses to falsely identify him as a murderer, leading to his conviction
and 16 years of incarceration before he was exonerated. The federal appeals
court upheld the award. The sustaining of a Batson racial discrimination
objection to a peremptory challenge by the defendants against a black juror was
not reversible error when there was no indication that it resulted in a biased
juror sitting on the case. It also was not erroneous to allow the plaintiff's
expert witness to testify as to what were reasonable police practices. He did
not state a legal conclusion or offer any opinion about whether other witnesses
were credible. Jimenez v. City of Chicago, #12-2779, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 20438
(7th Cir.).
A man was released from prison 24 years after
being convicted of murder, when a state court found that his trial had been
fundamentally unfair. The federal trial court did not err in granting summary
judgment to the defendants on claims that they had manipulated the evidence and
carried out suggestive identification procedures to improperly convict. There
was no evidence that any of the defendants conspired to frame him. Municipal
liability claims failed since none of the individual defendants were liable. There
was also no evidence that the identification procedures used were impermissibly
suggestive.Burton v. St. Louis Board of Police, #12-2524 2013 U.S. App. Lexis
19503 (8th Cir.).
A man was stopped while walking away from his
brother's home after an argument. He was arrested after he was identified from
a photographic lineup by a kidnapping victim. He was charged with kidnapping
and subsequently indicted by a grand jury, and spent seventeen months in
custody awaiting trial before the charges were dropped because the complaining
witness was unavailable, possibly having moved to Germany. The New Hampshire
Supreme Court found that the grand jury indictment did not entitle the law
enforcement defendants in a false imprisonment lawsuit to statutory or official
immunity because the finding of probable cause for prosecution by the grand
jury did not establish that his arrest was supported by probable cause or that
his arrest was not made in a wanton or reckless manner. The court found that it
could be concluded that there was no probable cause to arrest as a result of
inconsistencies in the kidnap victim's description and photographic
identification, and the actual appearance of the plaintiff at the time of the
arrest. The dismissal of the lawsuit was reversed. The malicious prosecution
claim was rejected, however, based on the grand jury indictment. Ojo v.
Lorenzo, #2012-510, 64 A.3d 974, 2013 N.H. Lexis 35.
When officers could have reasonably believed that
a man had attempted to cause serious physical injury to a person, they had
probable cause to arrest him. They could rely on the victim's statement and did
not need to take a statement from the arrestee's neighbor, who did not witness
the fight in question. Both false arrest and malicious prosecution claims were
rejected. Joseph v. Allen, #12-2411, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 7459 (8th Cir.).
Police arrested a woman's son for driving
a vehicle involved in an accident. The woman and her son's girlfriend, who
witnessed the accident, went to the police station, where the girlfriend was
told to remain and threatened with a warrant for her arrest being obtained if
she left. The woman counseled the girlfriend to leave, however, and escorted
her out. She was charged with witness tampering, although that charge was later
dismissed. A federal appeals court found that the defendant officer was
entitled to qualified immunity on as federal false arrest claim and official
immunity under New Hampshire law on a state malicious prosecution claim, as
there was at least arguable probable cause for the arrest. Moses v. Mele, #12-1729, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 6150 (1st
Cir.).
Members of the 2005-2006 Duke University lacrosse
team claimed that defendant officers were responsible for false rape charges
brought against them. A federal appeals court found that two officers were
entitled to the dismissal of malicious prosecution claims against them when it
was not alleged that they either misled or pressured the prosecutor to seek
their indictments. Additionally, while affidavits they prepared contained some
false statements, corrected affidavits contained enough true statements to
suffice to establish probable cause to believe both that there had been a rape
and that the individuals named had been involved in the crime. Evans v. Chalmers,
#11-1436, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 25660 (4th Cir.).
A man about to take his children
trick-or-treating was arrested on charges of armed robbery and attempted
murder, and convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony despite a lack of
physical evidence. Ten years after the arrest, the conviction was overturned,
and the case ultimately dismissed. He sued, claiming that his wrongful
conviction was based on police misconduct in soliciting multiple statements to
falsely implicate him, and in staging a suggestive photo lineup. A jury awarded
him $73,125 in compensatory damages and $5,000 in punitive damages for his
eight years of wrongful incarceration after his conviction. The trial court
improperly denied his motion for a new trial, in which he argued that the
average jury award for wrongful imprisonment was almost $950,000 per year. The
trial court improperly refused to allow the plaintiff to present evidence of
his actual innocence at trial, such as the identification of others as the
possible offenders and recantations of his identification by a number of
eyewitnesses. This may have impacted on the jury returning a low damage award,
especially as the court had allowed evidence of the plaintiff's prior
identification as the perpetrator by the eyewitnesses. Parish v. City of
Elkhart, #11-1669, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 25998 (7th Cir.).
A man and his wife traveling in a car with the
wife driving encountered a police officer using a radar device. The husband
knew this because he had a radar detector. He gave the officer "the
finger" to express his disapproval of what the officer was doing. The
officer stopped the vehicle, which had not been speeding or committing any
traffic violations. When both occupants got out, they were ordered to get back in
the car, which they did. Subsequently, the husband again got out of the
vehicle, seeking to speak to the three officers present, and repeated twice
that he felt "like an ass." He was arrested for disorderly conduct.
Reversing summary judgment for the defendant officers, a federal appeals court
ruled that the vehicle stop was not lawful, and that qualified immunity for the
officers was improper, since a reasonable officer would not have thought that
the mere insult of "giving the finger" provided a basis for initiating
a law enforcement process, or that there was probable cause for a disorderly
conduct arrest. A malicious prosecution claim also should not have been
rejected on the basis of summary judgment for the defendants. Swartz v.
Insogna, #11-2846, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 186 (2nd Cir.).
A man claimed that a sheriff had improperly
caused him to enter a guilty plea to charges of terroristic threatening in
1989, despite the alleged fact that he was incompetent to stand trial. This, he
claimed, caused him further damages in 1992 when he received an enhanced
sentence on new charges because of the prior conviction. The 1989 conviction
was later set aside, on a finding that the guilty plea was entered when the
defendant was not competent to understand what he was doing. He sued the
sheriff, claiming violation of a right not to be prosecuted while incompetent.
Rejecting the plaintiff's federal civil rights claim, the appeals court stated
that it could find no prior cases imposing liability for "coercing or
inducing a guilty plea that is later determined not to be knowing and
voluntary." The sheriff also had no obligation to determine the
plaintiff's fitness to stand trial at the time he obtained the confession.
Hayden v. Nevada County, #10-3838, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 472 (8th).
A man arrested and convicted of sexual
assault had his conviction overturned when DNA testing indicated that his
uncle, rather than he, was the guilty party. Despite this, his malicious
prosecution lawsuit against the police was properly dismissed, since, based on
the evidence they had at the time, they had probable cause to arrest him, even
if they were ultimately mistaken. Under these circumstances, they had no
improper malice towards him, and did nothing improper. Holland v. City of
Chicago, #09-3905, 2011 U.S. App. Lexis 12688 (7th Cir.).
An arrestee filed a federal civil rights lawsuit
concerning his arrest and pepper spraying. While that lawsuit was pending, he
picketed police headquarters with signs stating that an officer was
"dirty" and a "liar." This resulted in him being charged
with criminal libel, and he sought to sue the charging officer, claiming that
the charges were retaliatory for his exercise of his First Amendment rights. He
had, however, subsequently settled the original lawsuit, and a federal appeals
court found that the settlement agreement also covered the claims made in his
second lawsuit. The plaintiff argued that his claim arising from the picketing
incident did not accrue until after the charges concerning it were dismissed,
but the court stated that, unlike a malicious prosecution claim, a" First
Amendment retaliatory-prosecution claim does not require a favorable
termination of the underlying action." Mata v. Anderson, # 10-2031, 635
F.3d 1250 (10th Cir. 2011).
An agent from Homeland Security, dispatched by
the federal government to observe but not participate in the questioning of a
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer by Puerto Rican police officers
played no active part in his prosecution on charges arising from his taking
from a police vehicle and shredding of a sticker that allowed access to secured
areas of an airport. The U.S. government, therefore, was not liable in his
malicious prosecution claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Barros-Villahermosa
v. U.S., No. 09-2614, 2011 U.S. App. Lexis 7750 (1st Cir.).
A federal appeals court upheld a jury's award of
$1,426,261 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages, as well as
an award of $215,037.50 in attorneys' fees against a police detective for
malicious prosecution of a man for murder. The appeals court found ample
evidence that the detective acted without probable cause, refrained from
looking into other possible suspects, and acted with actual malice. The
plaintiff was acquitted of murder charges at trial. Manganiello v. City of N.Y,
#09-0462, 612 F.3d 149 (2nd Cir.2010).
There was arguable probable cause to stop a
motorist and arrest him for racing, defeating his malicious prosecution claim.
An officer testified to having heard the loud motor of the motorist's truck,
and seeing the truck and another vehicle accelerate at a high rate of speed
from a stop for a short distance. Two other officers, while they did not
personally observe this, reasonably relied on the information the first officer
provided. The court also rejected the argument that there was no probable cause
to arrest the motorist for DUI, given his admission that his had consumed three
or four beers before the arrest, and an officer's testimony that he smelled alcohol
on his breath, and that he refused to take a required, state-administered
chemical test. Burnett v. Unified Government of Athens-Clarke County, Georgia,
#10-10324, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 18505 (Unpub. 11th Cir.).
A woman claimed that she was maliciously prosecuted
for attempted theft of a dog after observing a sickly and skinny dog on the
street, lacking a collar or tags, and took it into her car, intending to take
it to an animal shelter. Police subsequently acted on a complaint by the dog's
owner. The city police department was immune, under Ohio state law, from a
malicious prosecution claim, and there was no statute imposing liability for
malicious prosecution on the officers when the woman did not assert that they
acted outside the scope of their official duties or with malice. There was,
under the circumstances, arguable probable cause for the charges against her,
so her malicious prosecution claims were frivolous. Attorneys' fees and
expenses were therefore awarded to the city and its employees. Slye v. City of
London Police Dept., #CA2009-12-027, 2010 Ohio App. Lexis 2337 (12th Dist.).
A man prosecuted and convicted of charges of
sexual misconduct appealed the dismissal of his lawsuit asserting various
claims arising out of his arrest, prosecution, and conviction. Noting that he
had pled guilty to the charges in his state criminal case, a federal court
ruled that his lawsuit was barred by the defense of collateral estoppel since
he neither appealed his conviction nor sought to withdraw his guilty plea. The
plaintiff's argument that he was denied a full and fair opportunity to litigate
the issue of his guilt because he had incompetent counsel was rejected, with
the appeals court noting that he himself had practiced law at a large firm
prior to his disbarment, and stated that his plea was being entered voluntarily
and knowingly, and that he had committed the offenses for which he was pleading
guilty. Additionally, some claims against the prosecutor were barred by
absolute prosecutorial immunity. Colliton v. Donnelly, #09-4186, 2010 U.S. App.
Lexis 22727 (Unpub. 2nd Cir.).
A school district employee was indicted and
arrested in connected with an allegedly false report concerning high school
dropout statistics sent to the state of Texas, purportedly changing records to
show no drop-outs from a high school that actually had 30. He subsequently
claimed that a variety of defendants had intentionally withheld information and
manipulated evidence to procure his indictment. A federal appeals court ruled
that there could be no "free-standing" federal malicious prosecution
claim. The initiation of criminal charges without probable cause may set in
play events that violate explicit constitutional rights, but the plaintiff must
show that government officials violated specific constitutional rights in
connection with a malicious prosecution claim. This plaintiff failed to do so,
and explicitly waived any false arrest claim. Two separate grand juries
indicted the plaintiff, and there was no showing that any of the defendants
knowingly withheld allegedly exculpatory evidence prior to these indictments.
Cuadra v. Houston Independent School District, #09-20715, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis
23623 (5th Cir.).
An award of damages against a police
officer for malicious prosecution was upheld when it was clear that he
influenced the decision to prosecute the plaintiffs by making various
misstatements to the prosecutor. A false arrest claim was also upheld, as there
was no probable cause for the arrest at the time the officer submitted a
warrant application. Further proceedings were ordered, however, on the issue of
whether the award of over $2.5 million in damages was excessive and should be
reduced. Sykes v. Anderson, #08-2088, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 23204 (6th Cir.).
An arrestee claimed that a grand jury indictment that
resulted in her arrest was "tainted" by the actions of a justice of
the peace/county judge and a police chief. The plaintiff claimed that the judge
sexually assaulted her, and then, to try to discredit her, he conspired with
the police chief to have her prosecuted for extortion. The problem with this
claim, a federal appeals court found, was that there was no competent summary
judgment evidence that the extortion claim was false, since the plaintiff had
not filed a sworn statement to that effect with the trial court. While a
district attorney did file an affidavit stating that his investigation had
uncovered no evidence of extortion, his statement did not assert that the
extortion claim was false. There was also no evidence from which it could be
inferred that the police chief knew that the judge's accusations were false,
and the judge did not testify before the grand jury that indicted the
plaintiff. The plaintiff, therefore, failed to establish a violation of her
constitutional rights, so summary judgment was properly entered for the
defendants, including the city, the county, the judge, and the chief of police.
Espinosa v. Zamora, #10-40190, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 21573 (Unpub. 5th Cir.).
A motorist was arrested by a city police officer
for DUI, and a court, acting on the motorist's petition to rescind the
statutory summary suspension of his driver's license, ruled that the officer
had probable cause to make the arrest for alcohol-impaired driving. The
motorist subsequently sued the officer and the employing city for malicious
prosecution. The Illinois Supreme Court has overturned rulings by the trial and
intermediate appeals court which rejected his malicious prosecution claim on
the reasoning that he was collaterally estopped from relitigating the validity
of probable cause because of the probable cause determination in the license
suspension proceeding. If the lower court's reasoning were upheld, the Illinois
Supreme Court commented, there would be a need to conduct
"full-blown" hearings on probable cause at statutory summary
suspension proceedings, which would conflict with the desirable goal of
conducting "swift hearings" focused on the sole purpose of whether
there were grounds to rescind the summary suspension of a motorist's driving
privileges. Hurlbert v. Charles, #109041, 2010 Ill. Lexis 1064.
A woman and her sister, who received citations
for retail theft, were found not guilty after trial, and filed a malicious
prosecution lawsuit against the police officer who wrote the citations, as well
as the store's loss prevention officers. The defendants had probable cause to
commence the prosecution, the appeals court ruled, based on both the store
officers' observations of the sisters, who appeared to have picked up a
bracelet at a jewelry counter and then failed to return it to the counter, and
the citing officer's receipt of the store officers' statements and viewing of a
store security videotape of the incident. The bracelet was subsequently not
found in the store, and the sisters, when they realized that they were being
observed, departed in different directions before they could be apprehended.
Under these circumstances, the defendants were entitled to summary judgment.
Anderson v. Mesure, #09-4405, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 19508 (Unpub. 3rd Cir.).
A former inmate released on a habeas corpus order
filed a lawsuit claiming that a prosecutor and a police sergeant, among others,
conspired with a witness to frame him on murder charges. His murder conviction
had been based on the testimony of a former cellmate who falsely testified that
he had not been promised anything in exchange for his testimony. Both the
police sergeant and the prosecutor, however, had promised to contact the parole
board on behalf of the witness. The defendant prosecutor was entitled to
absolute prosecutorial immunity for allegedly failing to correct the witness's
statement at trial, and the sergeant was entitled to qualified immunity, since
there was probable cause for the plaintiff's arrest for the murder. Beckett v.
Ford, #09-3719, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 12957 (Unpub. 6th Cir.).
When a woman went to the police department to
report that she had been raped weeks earlier, unknown to her, her alleged
rapist had called police to complain about "menacing" phone calls
accusing him of raping her. After she was interrogated, she withdrew her rape
complaint, and was herself arrested for filing a false report. She was
subsequently acquitted of this charge, and sued the city, the police
department, and a detective for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution.
Her false imprisonment claim was time barred as it was filed three years after
the date of her arrest. Her malicious prosecution claim, which only accrued
after her acquittal, was not time barred. A federal civil rights malicious
prosecution claim, however, could not be based on a warrantless arrest, since
that did not amount to legal process, the court held, and the pretrial
conditions that she faced were not a significant deprivation of her liberty
constituting a Fourth Amendment seizure. Summary judgment was granted to the
defendants. Harrington v. City of Nashua, #09-2275, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 13210
(Unpub. 1st Cir.).
The plaintiff claimed that he was entitled to
damages because his criminal conviction was the result of constitutional
errors. His conviction, however, had never been overturned, and his arguments
concerning the alleged constitutional violations related to his conviction had
been rejected in his trial, in the direct appeal of his conviction, and in a
habeas corpus proceeding. His claims were barred, both because he had had a
full and fair opportunity to litigate them previously and courts had rendered
decisions adverse to him, and because success on his civil rights claims would
imply the invalidity of his conviction, which had not been set aside. Smith v.
City of Tulsa, #10-5006, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 12209 (Unpub. 10th Cir.).
The City of New York has reached a $9.9 million
settlement with a man who served nineteen years in prison for murder, who was
exonerated and released. He had filed a federal lawsuit contending that he had
been framed for the crime by a police detective. The detective is himself
currently serving a life sentence in prison for involvement in mob-related
killings. The plaintiff previously received a $1.9 million settlement from the
state. The murder was of a prostitute that the plaintiff had previously had a
relationship with. The lawsuit claimed that the detective coerced a witness into
falsely identifying the plaintiff as the killer. The detective also allegedly
withheld exculpatory evidence. Gibbs v. City of New York, #1:06-cv-05112, U.S.
Dist. Ct. (E.D.N.Y.).
A motorist filed suit for malicious prosecution
on charges arising during a traffic stop and arrest for several traffic
infractions, civil infractions, and drunk driving. All charges were dismissed
when his blood alcohol level was determined to be 0.00%. The federal appeals
court held that summary judgment was properly granted on malicious prosecution
claims related to four of the seven tickets written, since they were not
criminal prosecutions, but civil infractions. The court also upheld summary
judgment on an unlawful search claim related to a second blood test conducted, and
on claims for municipal liability. Further proceedings were ordered, however,
on federal and state malicious prosecution, unlawful arrest, and excessive
force claims arising out of the criminal charges. Miller v. Sanilac County,
#09-1340, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 11469 (6th Cir.).
A man was prosecuted and convicted of molesting
his adopted daughter. After the conviction was overturned, he was reprosecuted
and acquitted. He sued his ex-wife, as well as his ex-wife's current husband,
who was the police officer who investigated the molestation charge, claiming
conspiracy to violate his rights and suppression of exculpatory evidence. The
jury found that the defendant officer conspired with his wife (the plaintiff's
ex-wife) to violate the plaintiff's due process rights. The officer allegedly
steered the investigation to benefit his wife. He allegedly failed to tell
prosecutors the "full extent" of his relationship with the
plaintiff's ex-wife, and also allegedly did not preserve the purported victim's
diary, which did not support the molestation claim. The jury awarded $14
million in actual damages against both defendants, and punitive damages of $1
million each against both of them, for a total of $16 million. A federal
appeals court upheld this result, rejecting arguments that the amount of
punitive damages was excessive, since they amounted to only 7% of the
compensatory damages. White v. McKinley, #09-1945, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 9980
(8th Cir.). Editor's note: In a prior decision in the case, the appeals
court held that the officer was not entitled to qualified immunity, since no
reasonable officer could have believed that his alleged actions were proper.
White v. McKinley, #07-1002, 514 F.3d 807 (8th Cir. 2008).
A husband and wife operated a bail bond company.
A number of law enforcement officials and employees investigated the couple
based on allegations of criminal activities and information that a suspect may
have paid for his bail bond with the proceeds of a bank robbery. The
investigation culminated in the issuance of search and arrest warrants,
although criminal charges were subsequently dismissed. The couple sued for
illegal search and seizure, falsified evidence, and failure to investigate the
truth of the charges against them. An appeals court found that only a malicious
prosecution claim was timely, with all other claims barred by a two-year state
statute of limitations. The malicious prosecution claims, however, were
frivolous, since there was no evidence of the fabrication of evidence or the use
of persons of questionable veracity as agents of the investigation. The
defendants were therefore entitled to an award of attorneys' fees and the
rejection of all claims was upheld. Thorpe v. Ancell, #06-1404, 2010 U.S. App.
Lexis 4195 (Unpub. 10th Cir.).
Two police officers arrested a woman and her
mother, claiming that the woman reached into their squad car, grabbed an
officer's shirt, and was otherwise disorderly, and that the mother was also
disorderly and interfered with her daughter's arrest. The arrestees claimed
that they did nothing, but that the officers fabricated a story to support
their arrests and the prosecution of the woman, who was acquitted. After trial,
a jury returned a verdict for the officers. A federal appeals court, however, found
that this result could not be upheld because the jury was exposed to a
"significant amount of erroneously admitted and highly prejudicial"
testimony, including opinions by a police lieutenant and two assistant district
attorneys on the officers' credibility, and on the issue of probable cause for
the arrests and prosecution. "The admission of these statements violated
bedrock principles of evidence law that prohibit witnesses (a) from vouching
for other witnesses, (b) from testifying in the form of legal conclusions, and
(c) from interpreting evidence that jurors can equally well analyze on their
own." A new trial was therefore granted. Cameron v. N.Y., #08-5937, 598
F.3d 50 (2nd Cir. 2010).
A juvenile claimed that a number of defendants violated his
Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by beginning juvenile proceedings
against him and summoning him to court. For purposes of federal civil rights
claims, it is not sufficient to assert that you are prosecuted without probable
cause or summoned in order to impose liability. A court summons, the court
noted, is not a seizure for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, and there is
"no constitutional right not to be prosecuted without probable
cause." The court's ruling, it hastened to add, "should not be misconstrued
to deny any rights to parties whom prosecutors or other officials falsely
accuse by way of fabricating evidence, withholding exculpatory evidence,
tampering with witnesses, or committing any other independent constitutional
violation," none of which the plaintiff alleged. "Nor should it be
misconstrued to deny any rights to parties unlike Tully who have been
wrongfully jailed or imprisoned." Tully v. Barada, #09-3237, 2010 U.S.
App. Lexis 5494 (7th Cir.).
After a couple's three-year-old daughter was
kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered, the father was allegedly framed by
police detectives for the crime, and coerced until he agreed to a
"confession" that the detectives had concocted, arresting him and
causing him to be jailed and face a possible death penalty on a charge of first
degree murder. Charges against him were eventually dropped eight months later
on the basis of DNA testing that excluded him as the source of the DNA found on
his daughter's body. No one else has been accused of the crime. A jury returned
awards for the father and his wife on claims of violation of due process, false
arrest, malicious prosecution, emotional distress, and punitive damages, as
well as the wife's loss of consortium. A total of $9.3 million was awarded to
the father and $6.2 million to his wife. A federal appeals court, while
generally upholding the awards to the plaintiffs, ordered either a reduction of
damages to a total of $8,166,000 or to $8 million and a new trial on the false
arrest and emotional distress claims, at the election of the plaintiffs. Fox v.
Hayes, #08-3736, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 7154 (7th Cir.).
An arrestee sued Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
agents, claiming that they violated his rights by subjecting him to arrest and
prosecution without probable cause. The arrest took place after the agents were
informed that a police officer had allegedly been selling large quantities of
drugs, that a second officer had been supplying him with heroin, and that the
plaintiff, who was also a police officer, had been in contact with both of
them. When a meeting took place at a restaurant between an undercover agent and
the two officers believed to be involved in the drug transactions, the
plaintiff was also present, sitting at a nearby table. An agent subsequently
testified at a grand jury proceeding that the plaintiff had been present as a
bodyguard, leading to his indictment and arrest on charges for which he was
later acquitted. The court ruled that the agents were entitled to qualified immunity,
since a reasonable officer, confronting these facts, could have believed that
the plaintiff was, in fact, involved in the drug trafficking and present as a
bodyguard. Martinez-Rodriguez v. Guevara, #08-10862, 010 U.S. App. Lexis 4178
(1st Cir.).
The plaintiff claimed that he had been
maliciously prosecuted for forgery. The appeals court noted that his arrest was
made pursuant to a grand jury indictment, which established probable cause. The
plaintiff also failed to show that a defendant deputy who testified before the
grand jury maliciously withheld pertinent information, so the deputy was
entitled to qualified immunity. Trois v. Long, #08-51231, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis
1397 (Unpub. 5th Cir.).
Under prior precedent, Newsome v. McCabe,
#00-2326, 256 F. 3rd 747 (7th Cir. 2001), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Seventh Circuit ruled that there could be no separate cause of action under
federal civil rights law for malicious prosecution if a state remedy for such
claims exists. Illinois does provide a state remedy for malicious prosecution.
In this case, the Seventh Circuit rejected an argument that its prior ruling
should be reconsidered, while also noting that this did not preclude a federal
civil rights claim against officers who misrepresent evidence to prosecutors--a
due process claim based on the withholding of exculpatory evidence. The
plaintiff, who was acquitted in his criminal trial, therefore, could not bring
a federal civil rights malicious prosecution action, but could have a due
process claim if, as he asserted, the prompt disclosure of suppressed evidence
would have changed prosecutors' decision to put him on trial to begin with. The
plaintiff, however, had limited his appeal to asking the court to alter its
prior rulings concerning claims for malicious prosecution, which the court
declined to do. Parish v. City of Chicago, #09-1385, 2009 U.S. App. Lexis 24699
(Unpub. 7th Cir.).
An arrestee who had murder charges against him
dropped could pursue malicious prosecution claims despite the fact that he was
subsequently also charged, prosecuted, and convicted of evidence tampering for
attempting to eat business cards in his possession at the time of his arrest.
Malicious prosecution claims can be pursued on a charge-by-charge basis, and a successful
malicious prosecution claim does not necessarily have to be based on a showing
that the plaintiff achieved a favorable termination of all criminal charges
against him. Miller v. Spiers, #07-2134, 2009 U.S. App. Lexis 17077 (Unpub 10th
Cir.).
A detainee showed that a police officer
used excessive force against him after encountering him attempting to restrain
a developmentally delayed adult who had fled a residential facility where he
worked. He also showed that a second officer and a sergeant on the scene
improperly failed to intervene to end the first officer's use of force. The
defendants then made false reports about the incident, and caused the detainee
to be maliciously prosecuted. The plaintiff prevailed against the defendants
individually on both excessive force and malicious prosecution federal civil
rights claims, as well as state law negligence claims. While federal claims
against the city were rejected, the city was vicariously liable for the
officers' negligence. Claims of racial animus were rejected. The plaintiff was
awarded $125,155.20 in compensatory damages and $55,000 in punitive damages.
Knapps v. City of Oakland, #05-2935, 2009 U.S. Dist. Lexis 67141 (N.D. Cal.).
Almost thirty years after four men were convicted
of involvement in an organized crime "gangland slaying," the F.B.I.
disclosed, for the first time, that it had all along possessed reliable
intelligence undercutting the testimony of a cooperating witness whose version
of the murder was the basis of the convictions, but had suppressed this
information. All four convictions were vacated, but by then, two of the men had
died in prison, the third had been paroled, and only the fourth was still
incarcerated. The two surviving men, along with the estates of the two decedents,
sued the U.S. government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C.
Secs. 1346(b), 2671-2680. After a bench trial, the court found the government
liable, awarding over $100 million in damages. A federal appeals court, while
commenting that the damage awards were "considerably higher than any one
of us, if sitting on the trial court bench, would have ordered,"
nevertheless upheld the awards, finding that they were not "so grossly
disproportionate to the harm sustained as to either shock our collective
conscience or raise the specter of a miscarriage of justice." There was no
liability for malicious prosecution, the court held, as the U.S. government had
not initiated the murder prosecution of the four men by the state of
Massachusetts, but liability was found on the basis of a state law claim for
intentional infliction of emotional distress, applicable to the U.S. government
through the FTCA. Limone v. U.S., #08-1327, 2009 U.S. App. Lexis 19239 (1st
Cir.).
Homicide investigators were not entitled to
summary judgment in a malicious prosecution lawsuit brought by former inmates
who served almost 13 years in prison on a murder conviction before being found
factually innocent. The obligation to reveal exculpatory evidence to the
accused's defense attorney applies to police, not just to prosecutors. There
was evidence that the investigators were told by a person that they had
arrested the wrong person, identified the actual shooter, and described the
murder in a manner consistent with the evidence. These facts, if true, should
have been disclosed instead of being "buried" in a police file. The
investigators' inconsistent and contradictory statements concerning when they
received this evidence, which contradicted the testimony of the key prosecution
witness at the criminal trial, showed that there were factual issues as to
whether they violated their duty to disclose exculpatory evidence. Tennison v.
City and County of San Francisco, #06-15426, 2009 U.S. App. Lexis 13885 (9th
Cir.).
An arrestee was convicted of kidnapping, assault
with intent to commit murder, and criminal sexual conduct. The conviction was
reversed, based on new evidence and discredited testimony. After a new trial,
the arrestee was acquitted, but he spent a total of twelve years in
incarceration. The arrestee sued, claiming that nine law enforcement defendants
fabricated evidence against him, failed to disclose exculpatory evidence, and
pursued his prosecution and his retrial without probable cause. A federal
appeals court rejected all claims based on testimony presented at trial, for
which absolute immunity exists. A police detective's alleged suppression of a
witness's statement, which cast serious doubt on, if not entirely discrediting,
the identification of the arrestee as the offender, if true, would have
violated the duty to disclose exculpatory evidence. A police officer who
destroyed certain evidence, however, was not shown to have had any idea that it
could have exonerated the arrestee, and therefore could not be held liable.
Moldowan v. City of Warren, #07-2115/2116/2117, 2009 U.S. App. Lexis 14238 (6th
Cir.).
In a malicious prosecution lawsuit, the trial
court erred in holding that the existence of a grand jury indictment
conclusively proved the existence of probable cause. The indictment only
established a rebuttable presumption of probable cause, and the plaintiff could
prevail if he showed that the indictment was produced by "fraud,
corruption, perjury, fabricated evidence, or other wrongful conduct undertaken in
bad faith." Moore v. Hartman, No. 08-5370, 2009 U.S. App. Lexis 14942
(D.C. Cir.). Editor's Note: In earlier proceedings in the case, which
has a long history going back to the 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
lack of probable cause is an essential element of a federal civil rights claim
for retaliatory prosecution, rejecting an argument that government officials
are barred from bringing charges that they would not have pursued absent
retaliatory motive regardless of whether the had probable cause to do so.
Hartman v. Moore, #04-1495, 547 U.S. 250 (2006).
A federal jury awarded $21 million to a reputed
gang leader who claimed that a former Chicago police detective framed him for a
murder. After his murder conviction was reversed on appeal, a gang member
stated at a second trial that the detective had coerced him and directed him to
pick the arrestee out of a lineup and identify him as the killer. The award
includes $21 million in compensatory damages and $15,000 in punitive damages
against the detective. Claims against the city were not tried during the trial
of claims against the detective, and remain pending. The plaintiff served over
eleven years in prison before his conviction was overturned on the basis that
his identification was tainted. Johnson v. Guevara, #05C1042 (N.D. Ill. June
22, 2009).
Officers and a prosecutor were not liable for
malicious prosecution of a man's ex-fiance for driving with a suspended
license, domestic violence, and violation of a temporary protective order.
There was no showing of selective or vindictive prosecution or that she was
targeted for some improper reason. Claims that a police officer taunted her and
that a police captain told her there would be no investigation of her complaint
of stolen property did not show a violation of any constitutional right. Wiley
v. Oberlin Police Dept., #07-4441, 2009 U.S. App. Lexis 10607 (Unpub. 6th
Cir.).
Probable cause existed for the prosecution of a
mother for responsibility in the accidental drowning death of her
eleven-month-old daughter. The mother allegedly left a sliding door in the
house open and her daughter crawled out of the house and drowned in the
backyard swimming pool. While the mother claimed that a police detective
fabricated evidence concerning how wide the sliding door was open and whether
the father had previously warned the mother that something like this could
happen, his conduct was not "shocking" to the conscience. The mother
only claimed a two inch discrepancy concerning how wide the door had been open,
and the evidence allegedly fabricated by the detective differed so slightly
from the mother's story that it was not reasonable to believe that it could
have affected the jury's decision in the prosecution. The jury acquitted the
mother on involuntary manslaughter and second-degree child abuse charges.
Garner v. Grant, #08-1418, 2009 U.S. App. Lexis 10602 (Unpub.6th Cir.).
An arrestee could not pursue federal civil rights
claims for malicious prosecution or abuse of process when Illinois provided
state law remedies for such claims. The arrestee's claim that a detective
lacked probable cause or a warrant for his arrest did state a federal civil
rights claim, but it was time barred under an Illinois two-year statute of
limitations. Adams v. Rotkvich, #08-3998, 2009 U.S. App. Lexis 9900 (Unpub. 7th
Cir.).
Because there was no evidence that a deputy acted
maliciously to withhold exculpatory evidence from a grand jury, he could not be
held liable for malicious prosecution of the plaintiff, a former sheriff's
department employee, for embezzlement and false pretenses. The fact that the
deputy did not mention to the grand jury that the plaintiff's wife had
repeatedly stated that he had not engaged in criminal conduct was insufficient
to show that the deputy's testimony had tainted the grand jury process. Porter
v. Farris, #08-60832, 2009 U.S. App. Lexis 9502 (Unpub. 5th Cir.).
A man arrested and prosecuted following a bar
fight could not pursue malicious prosecution claims when he was acquitted of
aggravated assault and public intoxication, but found guilty of disorderly
conduct. The court ruled that, because of the conviction on one charge, the
plaintiff could not show that the prosecution terminated in a manner favorable
to him. All three charges, the court noted, were aimed at punishing the same
underlying misconduct. Kossler v. Crisanti, #06-3241, 2009 U.S. App. Lexis 8432
(3rd Cir.).
A man arrested and prosecuted for murder claimed
that officers fabricated the case against him by pressuring witnesses to
falsely identify him and ignoring evidence that was inconsistent with his
participation in the crime. He further claimed that a prosecutor did not
provide him with available exculpatory evidence. The federal appeals court
found that the plaintiff had adequately pled a case for the city being liable
for false arrest and malicious prosecution by virtue of failure to train
officers and prosecutors in proper identification and investigation techniques
and procedures or the need to reveal exculpatory evidence to criminal
defendants. Claims based on failure to adequately supervise and discipline
officers and prosecutors also survived. The verdict acquitting the plaintiff in
the criminal prosecution, however, defeated any civil rights claim based on the
failure to provide exculpatory evidence. Ambrose v. City of New York,
#02-CV-10200, 2009 U.S. Dist. Lexis 27498 (S.D.N.Y.).
In a malicious prosecution lawsuit in which the
plaintiffs also claimed that police officers engaged in racial profiling in
making a traffic stop, an appeals court upheld a jury verdict for the defendant
officers. The plaintiffs failed to successfully carry the burden of showing the
jury that the marijuana found in their vehicle was not in plain view. King v.
Brando, No. 07-3678, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 25642 (Unpub. 2nd Cir.).
A 15 year-old girl, acquitted of charges of
having sexually abused a six year-old child, could not pursue a federal
constitutional claim based on the alleged false accusation. She was not seized,
for Fourth Amendment purposes when she was merely summoned for trial before a
juvenile court and given minimal pre-trial restrictions. Her malicious
prosecution claim would more appropriately be brought in state court. Bielanski
v. County of Kane, No. 07-1928, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 26303 (7th Cir.).
For purposes of a malicious prosecution claim,
the vacating of a motorist's guilty plea to a drug offense on the basis of a
state report indicating that state police engaged in unlawful racial profiling
in stopping motorists did not establish his innocence, as required to show a
"favorable termination" of the criminal case against him. Hilton v.
Whitman, Civil Action No. 04-6420, 2008 U.S. Dist. Lexis 102157 (D.N.J.).
A disabled woman's malicious prosecution lawsuit
was based on the contention that, in a case of mistaken identity, she was not
the person from whom officers bought drugs, but she was arrested and prosecuted
for that crime. There were genuine factual issues as to whether the officers
carried out a reasonable investigation, from which the plaintiff claimed that
they would have seen clear physical differences between her and the suspect
sought. Garrett v. Stanton, Civil No. 08-0175, 2008 U.S. Dist. Lexis 86249
(S.D. Ala.).
Lawsuit for malicious prosecution for harassment,
when the arrest and prosecution was based solely on information provided by the
victim, was valid, as the harassment offense at issue had to be committed in
the officers' presence to establish probable cause. The plaintiff failed to
show, however, a municipal policy or custom, as required to establish municipal
liability. Ramos v. City of New York, 06-5252, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 23226 (2nd
Cir.).
A former Chicago police officer sentenced to
death on kidnapping and murder charges subsequently had his conviction
overturned, and sued FBI agents for allegedly "framing" him in
violation of his constitutional rights. A jury found for the plaintiff on these
claims, and $6.5 million in damages was awarded. The trial court subsequently
granted judgment to the U.S. government on malicious prosecution claims under
the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. Secs. 1346, 2671-2680. The trial court
subsequently also vacated the jury's award to the plaintiff on the federal
civil rights claims, finding that the "judgment bar" rule of the
FTCA contained in 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2676 barred the federal civil rights
claims against the FBI agents, even though the judgment against them had
previously been entered. Under the applicable provision of the FTCA, a judgment
under the FTCA acts as a "complete bar to any action by the claimant, by
reason of the same subject matter, against the employee of the government whose
act or omission gave rise to the claim." In this case, the plaintiff, by
pursuing both federal civil rights claims, and claims under the FTCA, and
failing to drop the FTCA claims after he received the jury's $6.5 million
verdict on the federal civil rights claim lost any right to collect on the
jury's verdict. His decision to proceed to take the FTCA claims to
judgment, the court found, triggered Sec. 2676 and required the vacating of the
jury's award after the FTCA claim was rejected. A federal appeals court
upheld this result. The appeals court stated that it was "bound by the
plain language of the judgment bar, which makes no exception for claims brought
in the same action, and gives no indication that the sequencing of judgments
should control the application of the bar." Manning v. U.S.A., No.
07-1120, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 20996 (7th Cir.).
A man convicted of a sexual assault, and
exonerated when DNA proved that the semen found on the victim's underwear was
not his, presented evidence sufficient to support a jury's verdict in his favor
against a police officer for allegedly violating his due process right by
tampering with or manipulating testimonial evidence and identification, causing
his trial to be unfair. His claim was not time barred because his right to sue
for malicious prosecution only arose after his criminal conviction was set
aside. The Plaintiff was awarded $9,063,000 against the officer, a judgment for
which the city was required to indemnify him. Dominguez v. Hendley, No.
07-1004, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 20577 (7th Cir.).
A man accused of murdering his wife had charges
dropped when a medical exam determined that she died of natural causes.
Prosecutors, however, had absolute immunity on their decision to charge him,
and an officer who testified during grand jury proceedings had absolute witness
immunity. Further, probable cause to arrest existed at the time of the arrest.
Andros v. Gross, No. 07-2259, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 20187 (Unpub. 3rd Cir.).
Three former police officers filed a federal
civil rights lawsuit arising from the Los Angeles Police Department's
investigation and prosecution of them after they were implicated in wrongdoing
by a former LAPD officer in an event that was known as the
"Rampart Scandal." The three plaintiff officers were
acquitted and claimed that the defendants, including prosecutors, the city, and
the former chief of police conducted an improper and negligent investigation,
and that they had been arrested without probable cause for falsifying a police
report and conspiring to file such a report. While claims against the
prosecutor and county were dismissed, a jury returned a verdict against the
city and former police chief for damages of $5,000,001 for each of the
officers. Upholding these awards, an appeals court noted that the jury found
violations of the officers' constitutional rights, and that the violations
stemmed from the city's official policy. The appeals court further noted that
the former police chief was an authorized policymaker, and was
"instrumental" in instituting the proceedings against the plaintiffs,
with an alleged policy of preparing more cases for the filing of charges
against officers in a quick manner, with or without probable cause. This, the
court concluded, could have been found by a reasonable jury to have resulted in
the officers' arrests. Harper v. City of Los Angeles, No. 06-55519, 2008 U.S.
App. Lexis 14892 (9th Cir.).
Twenty years after an arrestee was convicted of
assault, rape, and robbery, a medical examiner determined, from evidence in a
rape kit, that he was innocent of these offenses. Because the arrestee had
presented an alibi and there was a lack of physical evidence linking him to the
incident, the court ruled that his claim that police officers and prosecutors
pressured eyewitnesses into making false identifications, failed to produce the
rape kit and other exculpatory evidence, and failed to investigate a suspect
named by the victim was sufficient to present a claim that they acted in bad
faith. The plaintiff could proceed with his malicious prosecution claims, and
any claims concerning the rape kit were not time-barred because of the
defendants' alleged deliberate deception in falsely stating that they searched
for, but did not find, the rape kit. Newton v. City of New York, No. 07 Civ.
6211, 2008 U.S. Dist. Lexis 54084 (S.D.N.Y.).
A father sued police and the county for allegedly
maliciously prosecuting his son for marijuana trafficking, resulting in the
son's suspension from a university, and the son's suicide. A decision by a
lower court ruling that the officer involved in the incident did not act in bad
faith barred any claim against the officer as an individual. The father failed
to establish, according to the appeals court, that there was any pattern of
constitutional violations by the county, such as inadequate training. His
challenge to the state university's disciplinary policies, seeking injunctive
relief, was properly denied, as he failed to show any credible threat that he
would face future injury from the continued application of the policy. Plinton
v. County of Summit, No. 7-3985, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 18723 (6th Cir.).
Arrestee failed to establish that the arresting
officer improperly influenced a prosecutor to charge him with resisting arrest
because of a complaint he had previously filed against the officer. The
arrestee also failed to show that officers' searches of his garage and home
were unreasonable. Peals v. Terre Haute Police Dept., No. 07-2804, 2008 U.S.
App. Lexis 15875 (7th Cir.).
A man allegedly arrested on false charges based
on fabricated or "planted" evidence of cocaine could seek nominal
damages based on a three day period during which he was allegedly jailed only
for these "fabricated charges," but after those three days was
essentially serving a 25-year sentence on an unrelated murder conviction, and
therefore did not suffer any compensable injury from his continued confinement.
Eloy v. Guillot, No. 07-13818, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 14730 (Unpub. 11th Cir.).
When the plaintiff arrestees were indicted by a
grand jury, this created a presumption of probable cause. When they failed to
create a triable issue of fact to rebut that presumption, the trial court
properly granted summary judgment in a malicious prosecution and wrongful
arrest lawsuit. Chetrick v. Cohen, No. 2007-03069, 2008 N.Y. App. Div. Lexis
4914 (A.D. 2nd Dept.).
Two arrestees were twice prosecuted for murder,
unsuccessfully, and later sued, claiming that officers based their arrests and
caused their prosecutions by coercing fellow gang members into making false
statements implicating them. Upholding a denial of qualified immunity, the
appeals court found that, with the allegedly false information set aside,
nothing remained in the affidavits to support probable cause for the arrests.
Accepting, for purposes of the analysis, the facts asserted by the plaintiffs,
the officers intentionally coerced false statements to support the arrests and
prosecutions, and no reasonable officer could have believed that there was
probable cause for the arrests and prosecutions without the allegedly false
statements. Wilkins v. DeReyes, No. 06-2245, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 12676 (10th
Cir.).
Two police departments, two counties, a district
attorney, and a correctional facility were all entitled to summary judgment in
an arrestee's lawsuit for malicious prosecution because he failed to show the
necessary elements of a lack of probable cause, actual malice, and a favorable
termination of the criminal proceeding in his favor. Rush v. County of Nassau,
No. 2007-04522, 2008 N.Y. App. Div. Lexis 4183 (2nd Dept.).
An FBI agent who turned over potentially
exculpatory evidence to a prosecutor fulfilled her non-discretionary duty in
doing so, and the federal government could not be held liable under the Federal
Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. Secs. 1346(b)(1) and 2671 et seq. for alleged
wrongful prosecution of the plaintiff for engaging in a sexual act with a
person under the age of twelve on an Indian reservation. The plaintiff's
conviction for the offense was overturned based on the prosecutor's failure to
turn that exculpatory evidence over to the defense. Once the FBI agent
presented the exculpatory evidence to the prosecutor, however, her actions
satisfied due process. Further, a private party in Montana, the location of the
case, who acted as the FBI agent did, would not have been liable for the
prosecutor's subsequent failure to turn over the material to the defense. Gray
v. Dept. of Justice, No. 07-35171, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 9597 (Unpub. 9th Cir.).
A prosecution against an arrestee for alleged
embezzlement of auto parts from his employer's store did not terminate in his
favor when the case was "retired to file" after he agreed to pay for
the parts and court costs, so that he could not pursue his malicious
prosecution claim. Brabham v. Waide & Associates PA, No. 06-61092,
2008 U.S. App. Lexis 8230 (5th Cir.).
Police officers were entitled to summary judgment
in a lawsuit by an arrestee claiming malicious prosecution, among other things.
The plaintiff had been acquitted of assault upon one of the officers, but was
convicted of other charges of carrying a weapon, resisting arrest, and
aggravated assault. A grand jury's finding of probable cause barred the
plaintiff's claim for malicious prosecution. Cook v. McPherson, No. 07-5552,
2008 U.S. App. Lexis 7705 (6th Cir.).
After a prosecution against a motorist for
careless driving was dismissed, she sued the city for malicious prosecution.
That claim was rejected, based on a finding that officers had probable cause to
issue her the citation, since her vehicle struck the back of another car, and
the officers had interviewed both the motorist and the other driver. Orban v.
City of Tampa, Florida, No. 07-12635, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 3724 (11th Cir.).
The fact that a retest of evidence in a DUI case
a year later showed a lower blood alcohol level did not negate the fact that
officers and a prosecutor had a basis to prosecute the arrestee for intoxicated
driving on the basis of blood samples and the tests results at the time of the
arrest. Blood alcohol levels for such tests often decrease over time when
samples are stored and retested, so that the variance in test results was most
probably based on a "normal decrease" given the passage of time.
Qualified immunity was granted to the defendants, including crime lab officials
and employees. Kjellsen v. Mills, No. 07-11918, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 3645 (11th
Cir.).
In a lawsuit by an arrestee claiming that a
deputy sheriff had planted drugs which were used to give him a citation for
possession of marijuana, resulting in a fine, the trial court acted properly in
dismissing the lawsuit under Heck v. Humphrey, #93-6188, 512 U.S. 477
(1994). An award of damages in the case would have implied the
invalidity of the plaintiff's criminal petty-misdemeanor conviction and the fine,
which had not been overturned or otherwise invalidated. Abdullah v. Minnesota,
No. 06-4142, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 2448 (8th Cir.).
In a malicious prosecution due process lawsuit
against a police detective and the plaintiff's ex-wife, the plaintiff claimed
that he had been deprived in bad faith of a fair trial on charges concerning
the alleged molestation of his adopted daughter. The detective, who had
investigated the molestation accusation, was also the current husband of the
plaintiff's ex-wife, and allegedly steered the investigation to benefit his
wife. He allegedly failed to tell prosecutors the "full extent" of
his relationship with the plaintiff's ex-wife, and also allegedly did not
preserve the purported victim's diary, which did not support the molestation
claim. A federal appeals court rejected an argument that the detective was
entitled to summary judgment, since no reasonable officer could have believed
that these alleged actions were proper. White v. McKinley, No. 07-1002, 2008
U.S. App. Lexis 1930 (8th Cir.).
At the time of his arrest, officers had probable
cause to charge a man with selling cocaine, on the basis of statements from an
informant concerning a "controlled buy." While charges were not filed
for four months, the plaintiff in a malicious prosecution lawsuit failed to
show that a sheriff, during that time period, was made aware of any information
contradicting the informant's information or which otherwise showed that
probable cause no longer was present for the prosecution. McCloud v. Fortune,
No. 07-10850, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 1091 (11th Cir.).
A twelve-year-old child was interrogated away from his
mother and a prosecutor then ordered police to arrest him in connection with
the death of a toddler. His conviction was subsequently overturned on the basis
of a coerced confession in violation of the Fifth Amendment. He subsequently
filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the prosecutor and her employer
for alleged violations of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. After the
lawsuit was filed, the prosecutor allegedly told a Marine recruiter that the
plaintiff would "always" be a suspect in the murder, resulting in the
rejection of his enlistment. A federal appeals court overturned qualified
immunity for the prosecutor, ruling that the prosecutor could not reasonably
have believed that there was probable cause for the arrest. The court also
ordered further proceedings on claims against the county based on its alleged
withholding of exculpatory (Brady) materials, and on the Plaintiff's malicious
prosecution, First Amendment retaliation, and defamation claims. Harris v.
Bornhorst, No. 06-3729, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 724 (6th Cir.).
Dismissal of criminal charges against an arrestee
was a favorable termination of the proceedings in his favor for purposes of his
malicious prosecution claims against the county when the dismissal was based on
a failure to prosecute and an imminent violation of the right to a speedy
trial. Rivas v. Suffolk County, No. 04-4813, 2008 U.S. App. Lexis 72 (2nd
Cir.).
The question of whether there was probable cause
of prosecute an arrestee for resisting arrest depended on whether the arrestee
or an officer was telling the truth about whether the arrestee pushed an
officer, which should be decided by a jury in his malicious prosecution
lawsuit. Holmes v. Village of Hoffman Estates, No. 06-2759, 2007 U.S. App.
Lexis 29699 (7th Cir.).
Arrestee failed to show malicious prosecution
when he was arrested under a warrant based on witness statements accusing him
of involvement in a burglary, and he was prosecuted for a controlled substance
on the basis of bags of a white powdery substance found in his jacket in an
apartment. The fact that the substance subsequently tested negative for a
controlled substance did not alter the result. Moore v. Carteret Police Dept.,
No. 07-2840, 2007 U.S. App. Lexis 26232 (3rd Dist.).
A federal trial judge has awarded $101.7 million
against the U.S. government on claims that the FBI was "responsible
for the framing of four innocent men" for murder, causing them to serve
decades for a crime they did not commit. Four men falsely convicted of a 1965
gangland murder, and their estates and families asserted claims against the
U.S. government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C. Secs. 1346
and 2671-2680 for malicious prosecution, civil conspiracy, intentional
infliction of emotional distress, and related claims. The trial court rejected
the argument that the U.S. government was entitled to immunity based on the
discretionary function exception to liability in 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2680(a). The
FBI's alleged conduct in knowingly allowing an informant to provide perjurious
testimony in the murder trial, failing to reveal exculpatory evidence, and
failing to disclose information about the actual murderers for a period of
thirty years was unconstitutional and violated its own rules, the judge ruled.
The court found that the FBI's conduct was the cause of the convictions, and
that the conduct met the standard for intentional infliction of emotional
distress, as the alleged actions violated all standards of decency and were
intentional. The family members of the convicted persons were entitled to
damages, under Massachusetts law for bystanders' intentional infliction of emotional
distress. $1 million for each year of imprisonment was awarded to the men
falsely convicted, or their estates. The minor children of the convicted men,
and three of the wives of the convicted men were also awarded damages, as were
an adult child of one of the men, and a wife who divorced one of the men. Two
of the four men are now deceased, while two of them are still alive. Limone v.
U.S., No. 02cv10890-NG, 2007 U.S. Dist. Lexis 54224 (D. Mass.). [Editor's
Note: The total damages awarded were $101.7 million].
Police officers were not entitled to summary
judgment in a lawsuit claiming that they denied the plaintiff his
constitutional rights by concealing allegedly exculpatory evidence. The
plaintiff spent over 17 years incarcerated for a double homicide that he
insists he did not commit, and he claims that Illinois state police officers,
from the beginning, knowingly possessed and concealed evidence of his innocence
and never disclosed this evidence to him, throughout his trial, his appeals,
and most of his post-conviction proceedings. He was finally released in 2004
after a federal court concluded that "acquittal was reasonably probable if
the jury had heard all of the evidence." The lawsuit further claims that
Illinois state police officials who were not involved in the case at the
beginning learned about the existing exculpatory evidence and that the state
had possessed this evidence all along, but that, rather than advise a state
appeals court that the state had prosecuted the wrong man, they "kept mum
and took steps actively to conceal the exculpatory evidence." Qualified
immunity, the federal appeals court ruled, was not available to the defendants
because the due process right of a defendant to be told about exculpatory
evidence is clearly established in Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963) and
the cases which follow it. Steidl v. Fermon, No. 06-2017 2007 U.S. App. Lexis
16996 (7th Cir.).
Even if the plaintiff's now-overturned conviction
for armed robbery was based on the erroneous introduction of testimony about a
station house eyewitness identification which was allegedly improperly
conducted, it was the decisions of the prosecutor and trial judge, not the
actions of the police officer, which caused the violation of the plaintiff's
constitutional rights, so the officer could not be held liable. Additionally,
because the officer's conduct with respect to the identification did not cause
any violation of the plaintiff's rights, any alleged failure by the city to
adequately train him on the subject of identifications did not cause a
deprivation, and a judgment as a matter of law should be entered on his claims
against the city. Wray v. City of New York, No. 05-3341, 2007 U.S. App. Lexis
14302 (2nd Cir.).
An arrestee who was awarded $275,000 in damages
($25,000 compensatory and $250,000 in punitive) on claims that he was
"framed" and maliciously prosecuted on a firearms charge, and that
excessive force was used against him by an officer who shot him in the
buttocks, was also entitled to an award of attorneys' fees and costs of
$507,000. The defendant city failed to convince a federal appeals court that
the trial judge had abused his discretion in refusing to lower the amount of
attorneys' fees awarded. The court rejected the city's argument that the
plaintiff's success should be viewed as "minimal," requiring a
reduction in the attorneys' fees award because the jury award was less than the
amount of damages the plaintiff sought. Additionally, the court stated that the
plaintiff's success should not simply be viewed in monetary terms. ''He
effectively persuaded a jury that a significant number of City of Harvey
officials conspired to plant a gun at the crime scene -- a victory that serves
the public interest by exposing to light disturbing police malfeasance and
grave municipal institutional failures, and one that will presumably help to
deter future constitutional violations by the city's officers,'' the court
stated. ''These achievements are anything but minimal.'' Robinson v. City of
Harvey, No. 04-3993 2007 U.S. App. Lexis 13705 (7th Cir.).
Police officers had probable cause to arrest and
prosecute a suspect after a woman identified him as her assailant, and that
probable cause defeated a malicious prosecution claim under Illinois law. Lockheart
v. Drapiewski, No. 05-2816, 2007 U.S. App. Lexis 9865 (7th Cir.).
In a malicious prosecution claim, the mere fact
that there were grounds for prosecution on one of the charges pursued, standing
alone, did not bar the possibility of liability for pursuing other criminal
charges. Johnson v. Knorr, No. 05-5029, 2007 U.S. App. Lexis 3242 (3d
Cir.).[N/R]
In malicious prosecution lawsuit, prosecutor was
entitled to absolute immunity for all his actions, including his decisions as
to which witnesses to call before the grand jury which indicted the plaintiff.
Redwood v. Dobson, No. 05-4324, 2007 U.S. App. Lexis 2606 (7th Cir.).[N/R]
In lawsuit brought by man who spent 22 years on
death row for a kidnapping, rape, and murder he was subsequently cleared of,
detectives were not entitled to qualified immunity on claims that they acted in
bad faith in essentially destroying exculpatory DNA evidence. Prosecutors in
the case were not entitled to absolute immunity on similar claims that they
destroyed exculpatory evidence. Yarris v. County of Delaware, No. 05-1319, 465
F.3d 129 (3d Cir. 2006). [2006 LR Dec]
A presumption of probable cause arising from a
grand jury indictment applied to an arrestee's claim against an officer for
malicious prosecution, but there were genuine issues of fact as to whether the
officer obtained the indictment through perjury or bad faith, barring summary
judgment for the officer. Additionally, the court finds that the presumption of
probable cause applied from the indictment returned by a second grand jury,
even though a first grand jury returned a "No True Bill" against the
plaintiff. McClellan v. Smith, No. 04-5996-CV, 439 F.3d 137 (2nd Cir. 2006).
[N/R]
Plaintiffs did not show, for purposes of a
malicious prosecution claim, that the criminal proceedings terminated in their
favor, since they entered into guilty pleas on certain charges. Further, the
law enforcement officers who stopped them had a reasonable suspicion that they
may have been hunting in an improper zone. Heverly v. Simcox, No. 4:05-1370,
2006 U.S. Dist. Lexis 73990 (M.D. Pa.). [N/R]
In police officer's lawsuit under the Federal
Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2680, against an IRS agent who obtained his
arrest and prosecution, summary judgment was properly granted on false
imprisonment and malicious prosecution claims. A presumption of probable cause
which arose from the arrestee's indictment was not rebutted for purposes of the
malicious prosecution claim when there was no evidence that the IRS agent lied
in his testimony before a federal grand jury. Conrad v. U.S., No. 04-15402, 447
F. 3d 760 (9th Cir. 2006). [N/R]
County environmental health employees were
entitled to summary judgment in malicious prosecution lawsuit when the county
prosecutor made the decision to prosecute the plaintiffs. Additionally, the
prosecutor's subsequent decision to dismiss the charges did not qualify as a
favorable termination of the case in favor of the plaintiffs. Ayala v. KC
Environmental Health, No. CV F 02-5846, 426 F. Supp. 2d 1070 (E.D. Cal. 2006).
[N/R]
Acquitted murder suspect's allegation that
Chicago police detectives conspired to frame him and several others for a
murder they did not commit did not constitute a valid civil RICO claim despite
the scheme purportedly involving multiple criminal acts, over a period of
years, and targeting multiple victims, when there was no indication that the
detectives engaged in any misconduct before or after the alleged scheme, or
threatened to do so in the future. Under these circumstances, there was no
"pattern" of racketeering activity. Gamboa v. Velez, No. 05-1690,
2006 U.S. App. Lexis 20493 (7th Cir.). [2006 LR Oct]
When no reasonable jury could find a lack of
probable cause, there was a complete defense to an arrestee's false arrest and
malicious prosecution claims under both federal and New York state law. Maron
v. County of Albany, No. 05-3354, 166 Fed. Appx. 540 (2nd Cir. 2006). [N/R]
The mere fact that an arrested motorist's version
of an incident differed from that of the deputy who arrested him was
insufficient to defeat summary judgment for the deputy on a malicious
prosecution claim. In the absence of a showing that the deputy interfered with
the prosecutor's independent judgment in pursuing criminal charges, the
prosecutor's decision to file a criminal complaint is the exercise of
independent judgment that there was probable cause for the arrest. Newman v.
County of Orange, No. 04-56103, 2006 U.S. App. Lexis 20130 (9th Cir.). [2006 LR
Sep]
Arrestee was not entitled to injunctive relief
against his pending criminal prosecution under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 when he
failed to show that the prosecution was being carried out in bad faith and for
purposes of harassment. His claim that his prosecution for an alleged bribery
was selective, politically motivated and based on the use of false testimony
was insufficient to show such bad faith. Olson v. Fajardo-Velez, No. 05-1837,
419 F. Supp. 2d 32 (D. Puerto Rico 2006). [N/R]
An officer who testified at a grand jury
proceeding against an arrestee, and who turned over to a prosecutor all
evidence he knew of, including all exculpatory evidence, was entitled to
absolute immunity from federal civil rights liability for malicious
prosecution. Zamora v. City of Belen, No. Civ. 03-743, 383 F. Supp. 2d 1315
(D.N.M. 2005). [N/R]
Conservation officers had probable cause to seek
prosecution of man who allegedly pointed a gun at them after criticizing their
job performance, and they were entitled to qualified immunity on his malicious
prosecution and First Amendment retaliation claims, given that he was
subsequently convicted on some of the charges he was indicted on based on their
grand jury testimony. Barnes v. Wright, No. 04-6288, 449 F.3d 709 (6th Cir. 2006).
[2006 LR Aug]
Man's actions in taking photographs in front of
the home of a person who had obtained a protective order against him provided
officer with arguable probable cause to initiate a criminal prosecution against
him for harassment in the second degree, entitling the officer to qualified
immunity in a resulting malicious prosecution lawsuit. The arrestee's actions
could have been viewed by a reasonable officer as constituting a threat of
further violence. Jaegly v. Couch, No. 05-2191, 168 Fed. Appx. 480 (2nd Cir.
2006). [N/R]
U.S. Supreme Court: a civil rights lawsuit for
retaliatory prosecution in violation of a person's First Amendment rights must
be based on, among other things, the absence of probable cause to prosecute for
the asserted criminal charges. Hartman v. Moore, No. 04-1495, 126 S. Ct. 1695
(2006). [2006 LR Jul]
There was probable cause for the arrest and
prosecution of a police officer for reckless endangerment while off-duty, so
that he could not pursue a claim against the city for malicious prosecution.
The officer himself admitted that he operated his motorcycle in a reckless
manner and fled from other officers while speeding and improperly changing
lanes to travel southbound in a northbound lane. Winn v. McQuillan, No. 03
Civ.2210, 390 F. Supp. 2d 385 (S.D.N.Y. 2005). [N/R]
Despite her claim that her first conviction for
rape and sodomy, subsequently set aside, was caused by county prosecutors
withholding exculpatory materials in violation of her due process rights, she
could not pursue her federal civil rights claim for malicious prosecution when
she was again found guilty of lesser charges and sentenced to time served on
retrial. The plaintiff could not show, based on these facts, that the criminal
prosecution had terminated in manner favorable to her. Stein v. County of
Westchester, No. 05 Civ. 3729, 410 F. Supp. 2d 175 (S.D.N.Y. 2006). [N/R]
Officer had probable cause to swear out a
criminal complaint against a homeowner for animal fighting and cruelty to
animals. Officer was not liable for malicious prosecution when he based his
complaint on a sworn witness statement concerning dogfights, and his own
observation that the dogs in question had scars consistent with such fights.
Garraway v. Newcomb, No. 04-4626, 154 Fed. Appx. 258 (2nd Cir. 2005). [N/R]
Decision of prosecutor to dismiss charges against
arrestee, not reached as part of any plea bargain, was not sufficient, under
Connecticut law, standing alone, to constitute a favorable termination allowing
the arrestee to proceed with a malicious prosecution lawsuit. Holman v. Cascio,
No. 3:02CV1523, 390 F. Supp. 2d 120 (D. Conn. 2005). [N/R]
Excessive force, unreasonable search, and
invasion of privacy claims were properly dismissed as time-barred under Texas
two-year statute of limitations, but false arrest and malicious prosecution
claims would not accrue until criminal prosecution against arrestee terminated
in his favor. These claims, therefore, were not time-barred, and might be able
to be re-filed after the prosecution of the plaintiff concluded. Price v. City
of San Antonio, No. 04-51213, 2005 U.S. App. Lexis 26539 (5th Cir.). [2006 LR
Feb]
A man arrested for intoxication while burning
trash on his business property could not pursue his malicious prosecution claim
under Pennsylvania law when he failed to show that the prosecution terminated
in a manner favorable to him. He was given a citation for a summary offense
upon being released from custody, and his wife allegedly sent in the required
payment for the citation without his approval or knowledge. Despite his dispute
as to whether she had authority to do so, the fact remained that the proceeding
was terminated in favor of the municipality. Walker v. North Wales Borough, No.
Civ. A. 05-CV-0425, 395 F. Supp. 2d 219 (E.D. Pa. 2005). [N/R]
Arrestee failed to show that arresting officers
violated his due process rights by allegedly suppressing evidence concerning
the details of his arrest, when that evidence was not material to the criminal
charges he faced. He therefore could not pursue his malicious prosecution
claims, and he abandoned any Fourth Amendment false arrest claim that he may
have had. Ienco v. Angarone, No. 03-4193, 2005 U.S. App. Lexis 24467 (7th
Cir.). [2006 LR Jan]
In police officer's malicious prosecution lawsuit
claiming that he was improperly prosecuted following the death of an arrestee,
he could not pursue claims against the county based on the actions of the
county coroner, as the coroner was not a county policymaker, but instead only
had the authority to make factual determinations as to a decedent's cause of
death. Jorg v. City of Cincinnati, #04-4039, 145 Fed. Appx. 143 (6th Cir.
2005). [N/R]
City had probable caused to prosecute an employee
for aggravated harassment, despite subsequent dismissal of charges for lack of
"specificity of threat," when police officer received information
that employee sent letters indicating that he was willing to do
"anything," including "more serious acts" to attempt to get
a favorable outcome in an employment discrimination case. Dorn v. Maffei, No.
02 CIV.2001, 386 F. Supp. 2d 479 (S.D.N.Y. 2005). [N/R]
Man arrested for harassment adequately stated
claims for malicious prosecution and false arrest, alleging facts that would
show his arrest and prosecution were not supported by probable cause. Sirlin v.
Town of New Castle, 790 N.Y.S. 2d 484 (A.D. 2nd Dept. 2005). [N/R]
Officers' initial withholding of police
reports from defense attorney in prosecution of 16-year-old for murder of
9-year-old boy did not result in prejudice to his defense, precluding his
federal civil rights claim. Civil rights claim was also barred by prior
determination, in his appeal of his criminal conviction, that no prejudice
occurred. No liability despite subsequent release of plaintiff after new
evidence exonerated him of the crime. Johnson v. Mahoney, #04-1745, 2005 U.S.
App. Lexis 20111 (1st Cir.). [2005 LR Nov]
Arresting officer's observation of motorist swerving
his vehicle while driving, the odor of alcohol on the driver's breath, and the
fact that the driver failed a field sobriety test provided probable cause for
an arrest and prosecution, precluding a malicious prosecution claim. Joseph v.
West Manheim Police Dept., No. 04-3828, 131 Fed. Appx. 833 (3rd Cir. 2005).
[N/R]
Deputy was not entitled to either absolute or
qualified immunity on malicious prosecution claim when there were genuine
issues of fact as to whether he fabricated the evidence which resulted in the
prosecution of an arrestee for battery on him. Chweya v. Baca, #03-56226, 130
Fed. Appx. 865 (9th Cir. 2005). [N/R]
Dismissal of plaintiff's suit under the Federal
Tort Claims Act is affirmed where a reasonable factfinder could conclude that
plaintiff has failed to show that defendants assaulted or maliciously
prosecuted him under Ohio law. Harris v. U.S., No. 04-3520, 2005 U.S. App.
Lexis 19058 (6th Cir.). [2005 LR Oct]
A motorist could not pursue a claim for damages
for alleged malicious prosecution for a traffic infraction in the absence that
his conviction or sentence had been reversed on appeal, expunged, declared
invalid or otherwise set aside. Koger v. Florida, No. 04-15649, 130 Fed. Appx.
327 (11th Cir. 2005). [N/R]
Grand jury indictment showed that prosecution of
suspect for possessing a gambling device was supported by probable cause,
entitling officer who gave grand jury testimony to qualified immunity in
suspect's subsequent malicious prosecution lawsuit. The suspect did not claim
that the officer had lied during his grand jury testimony, and the indictment
created a presumption, which was unrebutted, of probable cause to prosecute.
Matheis v. Fritton, No. 03-7719-CV, 128 Fed. Appx. 787 (2nd Cir. 2005). [N/R]
Arrest of former police officer under warrant charging
him with theft of funds while in office was supported by probable cause,
entitling defendants to summary judgment on false arrest and malicious
prosecution claims. Voyticky v. Village of Timberlake, No. 04-3252, 2005 U.S.
App. Lexis 11948 (6th Cir.). [2005 LR Aug]
Issuance of a citation requiring two men to
appear in court on charges of trespass did not constitute a Fourth Amendment
"seizure," and therefore they could not pursue a federal civil rights
lawsuit for malicious prosecution after the charges were subsequently
dismissed. Jury award of $173,237 in damages was properly vacated. DiBella v.
Borough of Beachwood, No. 03-4892, 407 F.3d 599 (3d Cir. 2005). [2005 LR Jul]
While a one-year statute of limitations applied
to an arrestee's malicious prosecution claim under Illinois law, the statute
started to run not at the time criminal charges against him were first
dismissed, since they could have still been reinstated, but rather at the time
when a statutory speedy trial period lapsed, and the prosecutor was barred from
continuing to seek to prosecute him. Ferguson v. City of Chicago, No. 97218,
820 N.E.2d 455 (Ill. 2004). [N/R]
Probable cause existed for arrest and prosecution
of man for bank robbery after which he was identified as the robber from
surveillance photographs by his former wife and subsequently identified by a
bank teller as the robber from a clear photograph of six men. Trial court
therefore properly dismissed malicious prosecution claim against U.S. government
under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1346 and 2671. Waller v.
United States, No. 03-20877, 100 Fed. Appx. 254 (5th Cir. 2004). [N/R]
Detective who arrested suspect for alleged drug
trafficking was entitled to qualified immunity from false arrest and malicious
prosecution claims when a reasonable officer could have found probable cause
for the arrest based on circumstantial evidence, including the presence of
drugs and drug paraphernalia, including a drug scale, found in a bedroom
believed to be the suspect's. Further, the arrestee was subsequently released,
with the charges against him dropped, when exonerating evidence was presented.
Devatt v. Lohenitz, No. Civ.A.03-CV-5558, 338 F. Supp. 2d 588 (E.D.Pa. 2004).
[N/R]
Arrestee did not present viable claims for
wrongful arrest or malicious prosecution when grand jury indicted him for
alleged sexual molestation of a child, and there was no showing that the
defendants misled the grand jury. Shields v. Twiss, No. 03-51171, 2004 U.S.
App. Lexis 22059 (5th Cir. 2004). [2005 LR Jan]
Indictment of arrestee for second-degree
attempted murder charge barred his claims for false arrest and malicious
prosecution, in the absence of any proof that the indictment was returned
because of a suppression of evidence, perjury, fraud, or other government
misconduct. Rivas v. Suffolk County, No. CV95-387, 326 F. Supp. 2d 355
(E.D.N.Y. 2004). [N/R]
Officer was entitled to qualified immunity in
motorist's lawsuit asserting claims for malicious prosecution and false arrest
based on a pursuit that concluded with the motorist's vehicle colliding with a
fire hydrant. Based on the motorist pleading guilty to disorderly conduct
charges in exchange for the dismissal of other charges against him, the plaintiff
could not show that the prosecution terminated in his favor or that the officer
did not have probable cause for the arrest. Timmins v. Toto, No. 02-9206, 91
Fed. Appx. 165 (2nd Cir. 2004). [N/R]
Despite a man's acquittal on a charge of murdering
his spouse, his conviction on charges of domestic violence arising out of the
same facts showed that there was probable cause for his arrest and prosecution,
barring his claim for malicious prosecution. Garrett v. Fisher Titus Hospital,
318 F. Supp. 2d 562 (N.D. Ohio 2004). [N/R]
Arrestee's indictment by a grand jury established
a rebuttable presumption that his arrest was supported by probable cause, which
barred his claim for malicious prosecution, in the absence of any showing that
the indictment was obtained by bad faith police conduct, suppression of
evidence by the officers, or was the product of perjury or fraud. Wiggins v.
Buffalo Police Department, 320 F. Supp. 2d 53 (W.D.N.Y. 2004). [N/R]
Police officer had probable cause to initiate criminal
charges against the plaintiff based on statements he obtained from an off-duty
officer who had been involved in a fight with the plaintiff, and an interview
with a neighbor who had witnessed the incident, defeating any claim for
malicious prosecution. A genuine issue, however, as to whether the off-duty
officer acted in his capacity as an officer or purely as a private person
during the fight precluded summary judgment on federal civil rights claims
arising from the fight itself. Ousley v. Town of Lincoln Through Its Finance
Dir., 313 F. Supp. 2d 78 (D.R.I. 2004). [N/R]
Law enforcement officers who are accused, in lawsuit,
of purposefully eliciting false testimony to frame three men for murder, and
then participating in a cover-up to protect themselves and the real killers,
one of whom was being "groomed" as an informer, were not entitled to
qualified immunity. Such behavior, if true, violated clearly established law,
even as long ago as 1967. Limone v. Condon, No. 03-2130, 2004 U.S. App. Lexis 11577
(1st Cir.). [2004 LR Jul]
In the absence of a showing that the defendants
initiated a prosecution against the plaintiff, he could not pursue a malicious
prosecution claim under either federal or New York law. Further, alleged
violations of New York state criminal law, standing alone, could not be the
basis for a federal civil rights action. Hansel v. Brazell, #02-9433, 85 Fed.
Appx. 237 (2nd Cir. 2004). [N/R]
Police department forensic chemist could be sued
for malicious prosecution for allegedly withholding exculpatory evidence and
fabricating inculpatory evidence, even if she did not initiate the prosecution
or make the decision to continue it. She was not entitled to qualified immunity
in lawsuit brought by man who spent fifteen years in prison for a rape that DNA
evidence now shows he did not commit. Pierce v. Gilchrist, No. 02-6241, 359
F.3d 1279 (10th Cir. 2004). [2004 LR May]
Arrestee whose rape conviction was overturned
after more than ten years of imprisonment failed to show that police officer
named as defendant in his federal civil rights lawsuit took an active part in
procuring or continuing his prosecution as required for malicious prosecution
claim under Massachusetts state law. Miller v. City of Boston, 297 F. Supp. 2d
361 (D. Mass. 2003). [N/R]
Losses that individual allegedly incurred as a
result of wrongful incarceration on narcotics charges, including loss of
employment and wages, were "personal injuries," rather than injuries
to the plaintiff's business or property, so that he was not able to bring a
lawsuit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18
U.S.C. Sec. 1964(c) against city officials and police officers who allegedly
conspired to falsely arrest and maliciously prosecute him. Guerrero v. Gates,
#02-56017, 357 F.3d 911 (9th Cir. 2004). [N/R]
FBI agents were not entitled to either absolute
or qualified immunity on claims that they essentially "framed" a
former informant on charges of kidnapping and murder by arranging for false evidence
against him which led to convictions and sentences of life imprisonment and
death respectively, which subsequently were overturned. Plaintiff claimed that
these actions were in retaliation for his decision to stop being an informant.
Manning v. Miller, #02C372, 355 F. 3d 1028 (7th Cir. 2004). [2004 LR Apr]
Officers had probable cause to arrest suspect
when complaining witness stated that the arrestee had stabbed him several times
with an awl during an argument and that the arrestee was the aggressor.
Additionally, the arrestee's subsequent indictment for assault created a
presumption of probable cause for the arrest which the plaintiff arrestee
failed to overcome in his false imprisonment and malicious prosecution lawsuit.
Jenkins v. City of New York, 770 N.Y.S.2d 22 (A.D. 1st Dept. 2003). [N/R]
Police officers' alleged withholding from
prosecutors of the fact that the arrestee had provided his identification to
them when they requested it was insufficient to constitute the suppression of
exculpatory evidence. Arrestee himself had that information. Further, this fact
was only related to the issue of whether the arrest was proper and was
irrelevant to the arrestee's conviction on extortion, racketeering, and
firearms charges, and therefore irrelevant for purposes of his malicious
prosecution claim. Summary judgment entered for defendant officers. Ienco v.
Angarone, 291 F. Supp. 2d 755 (N.D. Ill. 2003). [N/R]
Arrestee could not successfully seek damages
based merely on a custodial interrogation without Mirada warnings when none of
her elicited statements were ever used against her at trial. Federal appeals
court also overturns $80,000 malicious prosecution award to arrestee, who
claimed that officers filed false charges against her and maliciously pursued
them in order to assist her officer boyfriend, who she accused of domestic
abuse. Plaintiff's opening statement at trial put the question of the defendant
officer's truthful character into issue, so it was prejudicial error to exclude
evidence of that character. Renda v. King, #01-2421, 347 F.3d 550 (3rd Cir.
2003). [2004 LR Feb]
Probable cause existed to arrest and prosecute
plaintiff for harassment in allegedly faxing pictures with faces of a famous
couple superimposed on the bodies of nude models based on many complaints made
against him for allegedly faxing such photos, and his previous history of
harassment of the famous couple [Marla Maples Trump and Donald J. Trump]. His
federal civil rights claims were therefore properly dismissed. Jones v. Trump,
#02-7650, 71 Fed. Appx. 873 (2nd Cir. 2003). [N/R]
Arrestee's malicious prosecution claim was barred
by a one-year statute of limitations for claims against a municipality. The
cause of action against the city accrued, and one-year time period began to run
when the charges against the arrestee were first "stricken with leave to
reinstate," not when the 160-day time period for reinstating the charges
expired. Ferguson v. City of Chicago, #1-02-2463, 795 N.E.2d 984 (Ill. App. 1st
Dist. 2003). [N/R]
City employee indicted and prosecuted for
the theft of a ring from a crime scene failed to show that his indictment was
obtained as the result of police conduct carried out in bad faith, and
therefore failed to rebut a presumption of probable cause which arose from his
indictment, defeating his malicious prosecution claim. There was no showing
that supposedly exculpatory observations of the plaintiff by one officer at the
crime scene were intentionally withheld from the prosecutor prior to the
indictment. Savino v. City of New York, No. 02-7108, 331 F.3d 63 (2nd Cir.
2003). [N/R]
Arrestee who was awarded $80,000 in jury verdict
for city's prosecution of him for obstruction of justice without probable cause
was properly awarded attorneys' fees, but trial court applied the wrong legal
standard in reducing the award of attorneys' fees to $95,507 based on the hours
attorneys spent on plaintiff's unsuccessful claims. Webb v. Sloan, No.
01-16855, 330 F.3d 1158 (9th Cir. 2003). [2003 LR Sep]
Dismissal without prejudice of loitering charge against
defendant on the basis that the charging document was based on hearsay from an
unidentified source was not a "favorable termination" of the charges
sufficient to allow the pursuit of a malicious prosecution claim under New York
law against the arresting officer. Neal v. Fitzpatrick, No. CV-6209-NG-WDW, 250
F. Supp. 2d 153 (E.D.N.Y. 2003). [N/R]
Plaintiff adequately alleged factual issues of
whether county police officer knowingly presented false information in an
affidavit of probable cause that resulted in a criminal complaint against him
in retaliation for his opposition to the county's alleged discrimination
against disabled persons. Douris v. Schweiker, No. 02-1749, 229 F. Supp. 2d 391
(E.D. Pa. 2002). [N/R]
Prosecutor was entitled to absolute immunity for
alleged suppression of exculpatory evidence in criminal prosecution and alleged
instructions to witness to falsely implicate defendant during murder trial.
Federal appeals court rejects argument that it should adopt an exception to
prosecutorial immunity for "egregiousness" in cases of "drastic
and systematic departure" from the proper exercise of prosecutorial power.
Cousin v. Small, No. 01-30745, 325 F.3d 627 (5th Cir. 2003). [N/R]
Arrestee allegedly misidentified as seller of
drugs in undercover drug "buy" by police officers did not show that
police officers failed to follow their standard operating procedures for
identification, and therefore could not pursue her malicious prosecution claim
against the state of New York, since nothing supported her assertion that the
officers acted intentionally or recklessly in misidentifying her. Harris v.
State of New York, 756 N.Y.S. 2d 302 (A.D. 3rd Dept. 2003). [N/R]
Department of Motor Vehicles investigator was
entitled to qualified immunity in federal civil rights malicious prosecution
claim since the investigator informed the prosecutor in a timely fashion that
the arrestee was innocent of the charge of possessing a "forged instrument"
when he tried to exchange a valid U.S. Virgin Islands driver's license for a
New York license. Record of Virgin Islands license's issuance could not be
found at the time of the arrest, but showed up later, so there was probable
cause for the arrest. Kinzer v. Jackson, #01-0157, 316 F.3d 139 (2nd Cir.
2003). [N/R]
A reasonable officer could have believed that
there was probable cause to prosecute an attorney for concealing evidence when
he advised a client being investigated for involvement in a hit and run
accident that he could move his vehicle as long as evidence was preserved.
Officers were entitled to qualified immunity from attorney's malicious
prosecution claims. Tittle v. Raines, 231 F. Supp. 2d 537 (N.D. Tex. 2002).
[N/R]
Federal appeals court upholds $3.5 million damage
award for alleged malicious prosecution of restaurant owner for arson of one of
his restaurants. Off-duty police officer who worked for restaurant as security
officer and a former restaurant employee who allegedly conspired with him to
have the plaintiff arrested, convicted and sentenced are both found liable.
Castellano v. Fragozo, #00-50591, 311 F.3d 689 (5th Cir. 2002). [2003 LR Mar]
Three year statute of limitations for both
Maryland state and federal malicious prosecution claims by inmate wrongfully
incarcerated for rape and murder started to run on the date that the criminal
proceedings terminated in his favor, but the claims for false arrest and
imprisonment accrued as of the date of the original arrest. Gray v. Maryland,
228 F. Supp. 2d 628 (D. Md. 2002). [N/R]
Officer who investigated a mother's alleged
assault of her teenage daughter was not liable for malicious prosecution when
the mother provided no evidentiary support for her claim that the officer was
untruthful in his trial testimony, and did not even show that he caused her to
be prosecuted or arrested or seized her. Nothing in the record showed that the
investigating officer had anything to do with the prosecution, in fact, after
he submitted his report to the prosecutor's office. Skousen v. Brighton High
School, #00-2170, 305 F.3d 520 (6th Cir. 2002). [2003 LR Feb.]
Arizona Supreme Court upholds $1.4 million malicious
prosecution jury award against city and police detective for pawn shop manager
after dismissal of charges of theft and trafficking in stolen goods. Gonzales
v. City of Phoenix, No. CV-01-0170-PR, 52 P.3d 184 (Ariz. 2002). [2003
LR Jan]
Detective's affidavit, on the basis of which an
arrest warrant was obtained to arrest a postal employee for retaliating against
a witness, had sufficient facts to support probable cause even though it also
contained exculpatory claims of the employee which would have negated probable
cause if the judge had decided to believe his version of the incident.
Detective was not liable for malicious prosecution. Lewis v. Rock, #01-1329, 48
Fed. Appx. 291 (10th Cir. 2002). [N/R]
Officer had probable cause to proceed with
charges against male high school student accused by female student of sexually
assaulting her and later menacing her in violation of his conditions of
release. Arrestee's contention that investigative network of police and
prosecutors focusing on domestic violence and sexual abuse cases had an
"anti-male" bias and a "secret, sinister agenda" was
"unsupported speculation." Treon v. Whipple, 212 F. Supp. 2d 285 (D.
Vt. 2002). [2002 LR Dec]
Federal appeals court overturns $20,000 malicious
prosecution award against sheriff's department arising from suspect's arrest
for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. The circumstances
surrounding the plaintiff's acceptance of delivery of a package containing the
drugs gave the officers probable cause to believe he was guilty of the charged
offense. Gordy v. Burns, #01-30234, 294 F.3d 722 (5th Cir. 2002). [2002 LR Nov]
State police officer was not liable for malicious
prosecution or false arrest of man arrested for alleged criminal sexual conduct
with a child on the basis of taking down "false information" from a
deputy prison warden who called him. Arrestee did not show that officer was
personally involved in the alleged violation of the arrestee's rights.
Additionally, under Michigan law, the issue of probable cause was decided in
court when the arrestee was bound over for trial at a preliminary hearing and
he could not relitigate that issue. Morris v. Boyd, #01-1433, 39 Fed. Appx. 281
(6th Cir. 2002). [2002 LR Nov]
Police officer lacked probable cause for pursuing
prosecution of motorist a second time for allegedly having inadequate brakes on
his vehicle since officer did not have either the training or authority to
conduct a safety check of the motorist's vehicle. New trial granted on
malicious prosecution claim. Hicks v. City of Buffalo, 745 N.Y.S.2d 349 (A.D.
2002). [N/R]
Reversal of criminal convictions for larceny and
unlawful practice of law on the basis that the Attorney General did not have
the authority to prosecute the accused under the state law was not a
"favorable termination" for the accused for purposes of a malicious
prosecution lawsuit when there was probable cause for the criminal prosecution
and the accused was indicted by a grand jury. Romero v. State of New York, 742
N.Y.S.2d 701 (A.D. 2002). [N/R]
Police officers' alleged failure to follow some leads
or to take accurate investigation notes in child sexual abuse investigation
only showed possible carelessness, rather than the malice required to support a
claim under New York law by an arrested day care aide for malicious
prosecution. Ramos v. City of New York, 729 N.Y.S.2d 678 (A.D. 2001). [N/R]
Malicious prosecution claims against officers,
based on arrest pursuant to warrant, were not time-barred by Indiana's two-year
statute of limitations since the claims did not accrue until the criminal
prosecution was dismissed, rather than at the time of the arrest. Appeals court
still upholds dismissal of claims against officers, however, in the absence of
any allegation that they played an "essential or influential" role in
obtaining the warrant or indictment. Snodderly v. R.U.F.F. Drug Enforcement
Task Force, No. 99-3688, 239 F.3d 892 (7th Cir. 2001). [N/R]
Jury awards $15 million to man incarcerated for
15 years for murder and armed robbery conviction based in part on lineup in
which officers allegedly "manipulated" three witnesses to incorrectly
identify the plaintiff as the criminal. Newsome v. James, No. 96C-7680, Oct.
29, 2001, U.S. Dist. Ct., N.D. Ill, reported in The National Law Journal, p. A1
(Nov. 12, 2001). [2002 LR Feb]
Woman arrested for alleged narcotics sale
to undercover officer stated a claim for false arrest and malicious prosecution
when she alleged that she did not meet the description of the suspect sought,
was arrested on the basis of an unreliable and suggestive one-person
"show-up" identification, and officers had a videotape of the subject
sought that they could have compared her appearance to. Hutchins v. Peterson,
No. 2:00-CV-457, 139 F. Supp. 2d 575 (D. Vt. 2001). [2002 LR Jan]
346:152 Federal appeals court rules that
plaintiff did not have a constitutional claim for malicious prosecution
separate from his Fourth Amendment false arrest, false imprisonment and
unreasonable seizure claims; elements of a constitutional claim for malicious
prosecution "cannot depend" on state law. Frantz v. Village of
Bradford, No. 99- 4186, 245 F.3d 869 (6th Cir. 2001).
EDITOR'S NOTE: The cases from other circuits
cited by the majority panel decision above are:
"Fourth Amendment analysis": Britton v.
Maloney, #98-2092, 196 F.3d 24 (1st Cir. 1999); Gallo v. City of Philadelphia,
#98-1071, 161 F.3d 217 (3d Cir. 1998); Brooks v. City of Winston-Salem,
#94-7063, 85 F.3d 178 (4th Cir. 1996); Taylor v. Meacham, #95-4008, 82 F.3d
1556 (10th Cir. 1996); Whiting v. Traylor, #95-4268, 85 F.3d 581 (11th Cir.
1996).
"State law elements analysis": Kerr v.
Lyford, #97-41553, 171 F.3d 330 (5th Cir. 1999); Reed v. City of Chicago,
#95-1606, 77 F.3d 1049 (7th Cir. 1996); Haupt v. Dillard, #92-15966, 17 F.3d
285 (9th Cir. 1994); and (illustrating the two different approaches the
majority said the Second Circuit took): Cook v. Sheldon, #94-7282, 41 F.3d 73
(2d Cir. 1994) (state law elements analysis) and Singer v. Fulton County
Sheriff, #94-9093, 63 F.3d 110 (2d Cir. 1995) (Fourth Amendment analysis).
342:85 Officer liable for $35,000 for civil
rights violation and false imprisonment of attorney arrested for alleged
interference with apprehension of two of his clients; lawsuit asserted officer
and prosecutor obtained arrest warrant based on false/misleading information;
prosecutor also liable for $65,000. Etoch v. Newton, Ark., No. CIV-96-105,
Phillips County Cir. Ct., Ark., Sept. 14, 2000, reported in ATLA Law Rptr.
(Feb. 2001).
340:60 Dismissal of criminal charges on statutory
speedy trial grounds was a "favorable termination" of the charges in
favor of the accused, sufficient to allow them to pursue a malicious
prosecution lawsuit, highest court in New York rules. Smith-Hunter v. Harvey,
712 N.Y.S.2d 438 (N.Y. 2000).
340:59 Even if the techniques used to interview
child complainants were improper and coercive, nursery school teacher indicted
and prosecuted for alleged sexual abuse of children could not recover damages
since these interrogation techniques did not violate her own constitutional
rights; prosecutors were entitled to absolute immunity for presenting
children's testimony to grand jury and at trial. Michaels v. New Jersey,
#99-5486, 222 F.3d 118 (3rd Cir. 2000).
340:53 New York appellate court reduces total damages
awarded for emotional distress, false arrest, and malicious prosecution from
jury's award of $250,000 to $135,000, including reduction in punitive damages
from
$100,000 to $50,000. Lynch v. County of Nassau,
717 N.Y.S.2d 248 (A.D. 2000).
338:19 Officer was entitled to official immunity
against liability for malicious prosecution under Georgia state law for
obtaining arrest warrants, in the absence of any proof that he acted with
"actual malice" or intent to cause harm. Todd v. Kelly, No. A00A0712,
535 S.E.2d 540 (Ga. App. 2000).
337:8 N.Y. state trooper was liable for
compensatory and punitive damages for failure to turn over exculpatory
materials to prosecutor which he developed during internal and criminal
investigation of fellow trooper being prosecuted for allegedly striking his
former girlfriend; investigating officer determined that criminal charges
against trooper were not justified, but failed to disclose exculpatory evidence
or his report. Kemp v. Lynch, 713 N.Y.S.2d 790 (A.D. 2000).
330:91 $4.5 million settlement reported in
lawsuit brought by former member of the Black Panther Party whose conviction
for murder was overturned after he spent twenty- seven years in prison; lawsuit
claimed that law enforcement officials hid and/or destroyed wiretap evidence
that would have supported his alibi of being elsewhere at the time of the
murder. Pratt v. City of Los Angeles, U.S. Dist. Ct., S.D.Cal., reported in The
New York Times, p. A18 (April 27, 2000).
331:105 Law enforcement officials had probable
cause to pursue prosecution of man for allegedly murdering his wife; despite
jury acquittal on criminal charges, he could not recover damages on a malicious
prosecution theory. Nugent v. Hayes, 88 F.Supp. 2d 862 (N.D. Ill. 2000).
334:149 False arrest and malicious prosecution
claims against officers were time barred under Illinois law when filed more
than a year after the time the criminal case against the plaintiff had been
dismissed; dismissal with "leave to reinstate" did not, in any event,
constitute a final disposition of the case in favor of the criminal defendant,
as required to support a malicious prosecution claim. Woodard v. Eubanks, 94
F.Supp. 2d 940 (N.D. Ill. 2000).
334:154 Mississippi state gaming commission and
two of its investigating agents held liable for $45,000 for malicious
prosecution of man placed temporarily in charge of charitable bingo game by his
brother-in-law, the authorized person; appeals court finds that agents obtained
immediate arrest of plaintiff only after he refused to continue cooperating
with their investigation; 15% penalty imposed for unsuccessful appeal of award.
Mississippi Gaming Commission v. Baker, No. 97-CA-01507-COA, 755 So. 2d 1129
(Miss. App. 1999).
[N/R] Dropping of criminal charges against a
government employee in exchange for his agreement to retire from his job was
not a termination of the prosecution in the employee's favor which would allow
him to sue for malicious prosecution under Texas state law. Evans v. Ball, No. 97-41389,
168 F.3d 856 (5th Cir. 1999).
331:108 Officer's unsigned and unsworn
memorandum, prepared for police department's legal section, was inadmissible
hearsay which was improperly relied on by trial judge in granting summary
judgment in malicious prosecution case brought by a member of a community
police monitoring organization who was issued a citation for following a police
vehicle in which two members of her group were being transported following
their arrest. Sikora v. Gibbs, No. 98AP-655, 726 N.E.2d 540 (Ohio App. 1999).
333:133 Georgia notice of claims statute only
applied to claims that married couple arrested after school board meeting had
against the city, not to claims against individual city employees; couple's
counter-claim for alleged abusive litigation was improper in officer's lawsuit
against them for injuries, since it could only be brought after the termination
of the first lawsuit. Jacobs v. Littleton, Nos. A99A2014-A99A2016, 525 S.E.2d
433 (Ga. App. 1999).
26:27 UPDATE Danish mother who left sleeping
infant outside restaurant in carriage was not falsely arrested, New York
federal jury finds, but still awards her $66,400 in damages for post-arrest
damages, including alleged police department practice of failing to advise foreign
arrestee of their right to seek assistance from their country's consulate; $1
each awarded to woman and the father of her baby for strip search. Sorensen v.
City of New York, U.S. Dist. Ct., S.D.N.Y., reported in The New York Times, p.
A23 (Dec. 15, 1999).
327:42 Sheriff's action of allegedly issuing
criminal summons to woman in retaliation for her political opposition to him
did not state a civil rights claim for malicious prosecution when she was not
arrested, detained, fingerprinted, or ultimately prosecuted; plaintiff's
liberty was not restricted in any way; summons and alleged defamatory remarks
to the press also did not constitute a violation of First Amendment rights when
no tangible adverse damage resulted from these acts. Matherne v. Larpenter, 54
F.Supp. 2d 684 (E.D. La. 1999).
329:68 Man arrested for disorderly conduct by New
York state park police officer could not sue for false arrest or malicious
prosecution when a citation issued to him was "adjourned in contemplation
of dismissal," since this was not viewed as a termination in his favor
under state law. Bowles v. State of New York, 37 F.Supp. 2d 608 (S.D.N.Y.
1999).
329:68 Officers and city were not liable for
false arrest or malicious prosecution to man arrested pursuant to valid arrest
warrants for theft and criminal trespass, despite the fact that he was not
actually the person named in the warrants; arrestee had the same first and last
name as suspect sought, lived at the address named in the warrant, and
generally fit the description of the suspect. Montgomery v. City of Montgomery,
No. 2971214, 732 So. 2d 305 (Ala. Civ. App. 1999).
323:171 City liable for45% ($5.2533 million) of
$11.674 million award to man imprisoned for seventeen years based on false
accusation by someone involved in robbery/killing of taxi driver that he was
the triggerman; Louisiana appeals court finds that officers did not have
probable cause for arrest and that prosecutor did not have probable cause for
prosecution. Gibson v. State, 731 So. 2d 379 (La. App. 1999).
323:169 Connecticut Supreme Court upholds
$930,000 false arrest/malicious prosecution award against two detectives who
procured warrant for his arrest; plaintiff argued that omissions in affidavit
for warrant resulted in his arrest and prosecution without probable cause. Ham
v. Greene, 729 A.2d 740 (Conn. 1999).
323:167 Police officer who made arrest of store
employee could rely on information supplied to him by store security and did
not need to make independent investigation or examine all documents in question
before arresting employee for alleged theft; city was not liable for false
arrest or malicious prosecution. Melder v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 731 So. 2d
991 (La. App. 1999).
322:153 Officers lacked probable cause for arrest
of father who submitted four nude photos of his three-year- old daughter to a
photo lab for developing; mere nudity did not show "lewdness" and
daughter's explanation, during questioning, that her daddy had helped her take
off her clothes, put a necklace around her waist, and told her to stand against
a wall was consistent with an "innocent act" as well as a criminal
act; malicious prosecution claim rejected because of an absence of a showing of
malice on officers' part. Galante v. County of Nassau, #QDS:72700764, N.Y. Sup.
Ct. (Nassau County), reported in New York Law Journal, (Feb. 16, 1999).
322:153 Danish couple who left sleeping infant
outside restaurant in carriage while going inside for drinks could sue officers
who arrested them for endangering child's welfare and who removed child from
their custody; malicious prosecution claim dismissed, however, since dismissal
of criminal charges against them was not unqualified. Sorensen v. City of New
York, 1999 U.S. Dist. Lexis 10927 (S.D.N.Y.).
317:75 Four men wrongfully convicted of
participation in kidnapping, gang-rape and double homicide, two of whom faced
death sentences, receive $36 million settlement in lawsuits against county
claiming that investigators, including sheriff's deputies, "framed"
them by encouraging witness to lie, failing to reveal exculpatory evidence, and
failing to pursue leads that would have led to actual killers, three of whom
have now been convicted. Williams v. Sheahan, Circuit Court of Cook County, Chicago,
Ill., reported in Chicago Tribune, Sec. 1, p. 1 (March 6, 1999).
315:43 Arrestee whose convictions for armed
robbery and murder were overturned on appeal because he was arrested without
probable cause could not sue arresting officers for malicious prosecution when
he did not claim that officers did anything improper to further his prosecution
following his arrest. Sneed v. Rybicki, #97-2256, 146 F.3d 478 (7th Cir. 1998).
314:23 Federal civil rights claim against police
chief for malicious prosecution abated with police chief's death under Oklahoma
law; state law governed survival of action under federal civil rights statute.
Pietrowski v. Town of Dibble, #97-6012, 134 F.3d 1006 (10th Cir. 1998).
301:11 Prisoner could not pursue federal civil
rights malicious prosecution claim against officers when his conviction for
murder had not been overturned; vague allegations that officers arrested him
and "orchestrated" his prosecution because of his active
participation in the Muslim community were insufficient for an abuse of process
claim. Duamutef v. Morris, 956 F.Supp. 1112 (S.D.N.Y. 1997).
302:22 Police officer could not be liable, under
California state law, for damages arising from false arrest which occurred
after the time that the arrestee was formally arraigned in court on criminal
charges; California statute provides immunity from liability for malicious
prosecution; California Supreme Court orders further proceedings in case where
jury awarded $1.257 million against officer and city. Asgari v. City of Los
Angeles, 63 Cal.Rptr.2d 842, 937 P.2d 273 (Cal. 1997).
303:35 Port Authority employee arrested by
officers for entering restricted area without showing identification or obeying
commands to stop awarded $46,000 in damages for excessive force during arrest,
despite ruling that officers had probable cause to arrest him, since they
reasonably thought that he was a trespasser; intermediate state appeals court
rules that damages awarded were inadequate. Freeman v. Port Authority of New
York, 659 N.Y.S.2d 13 (A.D. 1997).
304:57 Dismissal of criminal prosecution for
violation of the right to a speedy trial could constitute a "favorable
termination" for purposes of a malicious prosecution lawsuit under New
York state law if there was evidence that the prosecution was abandoned because
the charges lacked merit. Velasquez v. City of New York, 960 F.Supp. 776
(S.D.N.Y. 1997).
305:74 Arrestee entitled to $50,000 in damages
and $89,888.17 in attorneys' fees and costs in malicious prosecution case
brought over criminal charges dropped for failure to bring them to speedy
trial. Murphy v. Lynn, 118 F.3d 938 (2nd Cir. 1997).
305:70 Wife's statement to officers that her
estranged husband had violated restraining order, together with corroboration
of witness and officers' independent knowledge of husband's past conduct, gave
officers probable cause to arrest him, barring false arrest, false
imprisonment, and malicious prosecution claims. Beaudoin v. Levesque, 697 A.2d
1065 (R.I. 1997).
305:75 Federal Marshals were not entitled to
absolute witness immunity on claim that they fabricated story of what happened
in initial Ruby Ridge shootout; court finds that agents acted as
"complaining witnesses" and could be liable for malicious prosecution;
court also disapproves of "Special Rules of Engagement" under which
agents were to shoot to kill any armed male in the vicinity of a farmhouse,
without warning or showing of immediate danger. Harris v. Roderick, 126 F.3d
1189 (9th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, Smith v. Harris, 118 S.Ct. 1051 (1998).
308:120 Two year statute of limitations on
malicious prosecution claim began to run when magistrate dismissed case against
arrestee, despite the fact that criminal charges against him could have been
reinstated during a subsequent four year period; lawsuit brought three years
later was time-barred under Georgia law. Waters v. Walton, 483 S.E.2d 133 (Ga.
App. 1997).
{N/R} Governor's pardon did not have effect of
freeing individual from adjudication of guilt for purpose of bringing lawsuit
for wrongful imprisonment and violation of civil rights. Wilson v. Lawrence
County, Missouri, 978 F.Supp. 915 (W.D. Mo. 1997).
{N/R} Officer liable for $200,000 in compensatory
damages in malicious prosecution lawsuit; allegation that officer filed false
felony assault charge against plaintiff in retaliation for his objection to
illegal seizure of his rifle stated claim for violation of civil rights.
Britton v. Maloney, 981 F.Supp. 25 (D. Mass. 1997).
{N/R} Detective was not entitled to qualified
immunity in arrestee's malicious prosecution lawsuit when plaintiff alleged
that there was no evidence against him other than the fact that he had a name
"similar" to the actual suspect's name. Morales v. Busbee, 972
F.Supp. 254 (D.N.J. 1997).
290:22 Man serving sentence for second degree
burglary after pleading guilty was barred by that plea from pursuing federal
civil rights lawsuit for arrest without probable cause; claims for malicious
prosecution and officer's alleged false testimony could not be pursued when
plaintiff's conviction and sentence had not been overturned Williams v.
Schario, 93 F.3d 527 (8th Cir. 1996).
290:25 Federal civil rights claim for alleged use
of tainted evidence in criminal prosecution accrued when plaintiff's conviction
for murder was reversed on appeal, and he could file and pursue the suit even
though there was a pending second trial on the same charges Davis v. Zain, 79
F.3d 18 (5th Cir. 1996).
291:40 Trial court erroneously awarded damages to
man arrested by New York police based on erroneous information that there was a
warrant for his arrest in Maryland; New York state could not be held liable on
"negligence" theory in such circumstances when trial court ruled
there was probable cause for the arrest, which barred false arrest and
malicious prosecution claims Heath v. State of New York, 645 N.Y.S.2d 366 (A.D.
1996).
296:121 Man charged with sexual assault on mildly
retarded girl receives $200,000 settlement after charges are dropped; suit
asserted that charges were pursued despite statements of witnesses that
plaintiff, although physically present, did not participate in the assault
Corcoran v. Essex County, U.S. Dist. Ct., NJ, The New York Times, p. 34,
National Edition (April 20, 1997).
{N/R} Boat owner stated claim for malicious
prosecution civil rights violation based on seizure of boat for alleged
violation of registration number display requirement and subsequent arrest of
boat owner Whiting v. Traylor, 85 F.3d 581 (11th Cir. 1996).
{N/R} Trial court erred in setting aside jury's
verdict for plaintiff on state law malicious prosecution claim on basis that it
was "inconsistent" with jury's verdict for officer on federal civil
rights claim Mosley v. Wilson, 102 F.3d 85 (3rd Cir. 1996).
{N/R} Striking of criminal charges with leave to
reinstate constituted a favorable termination for the accused when subsequent
lapse of time prevented charges from being reinstated, giving rise to possible
malicious prosecution claim Jenkins v. Meginnis, 931 F.Supp. 567 (N.D.Ill.
1996).
283:109 Determination, in criminal proceeding,
that police officers' search of arrestee was unlawful did not bar officers or
city from contesting that issue in later false arrest/malicious prosecution
lawsuit brought by arrestee Taveras v. City of New York, 635 N.Y.S.2d 608 (A.D.
1995).
284:120 Mere fact that individuals were indicted
by grand jury after they had already filed federal civil rights lawsuit against
officers who conducted gambling raid on their business premises did not show
that prosecution was retaliatory in violation of their First Amendment rights;
evidence clearly showed that there was intent to seek indictments prior to
filing of civil rights lawsuit Enlow v. Tishomingo County, Mississippi, 45 F.3d
885 (5th Cir. 1995).
277:7 Eyewitness identification of suspect as the
shooter in a murder provided probable cause for arrest and prosecution;
officer's alleged subsequent failure to talk with witnesses presented by arrestee's
parents did not negate probable cause at time of arrest Dukes v. City of New
York, 879 F.Supp. 335 (S.D.N.Y. 1995).
278:22 Three year statute of limitations began to
run on malicious prosecution claim from the time the charges against the
plaintiff were finally dismissed, not from the time of the arrest Murphy v.
Lynn, 53 F.3d 547 (2nd Cir. 1995).
277:3 County Sheriff's Department liable for $159
million for raid by 100 deputies on Samoan/American bridal shower at which
deputies allegedly falsely arrested 36, used excessive force, and shouted
racial epithets Dole v. County of Los Angeles Sheriffs, No C751398, L.A.
Superior Ct., Cal., Aug 16, 1995, Vol 108 no 167 LA Daily Journal (Verd. &
Stl.), p. 4 [Cross-references: False Arrest/Imprisonment: No Warrant;
Governmental Liability: Policy/Custom; Malicious Prosecution]
281:75 Suspect in murder investigation whose
indictment was dismissed after witness recanted his testimony could not sue
investigating detective and city for malicious prosecution when dismissal of
charges was not necessarily final Russell v. Smith, 68 F.3d 33 (2nd Cir. 1995).
284:121 Jury awards $201,001 in damages against
police officer for malicious prosecution and assault and battery; court finds
sufficient evidence to support jury's conclusion that officer maliciously filed
false report stating that arrestee attacked him and resisted arrest; assault
and battery award, under state law, was not contradictory to jury's finding of
no Fourth Amendment unreasonable force violation Lee v. Edwards, 906 F.Supp. 94
(D.Conn 1995). [Cross-reference: Assault and Battery: Physical]
285:140 Evidence of arrestee's acquittal on
criminal charges growing out of altercation with off-duty officer was properly
admitted since favorable termination of criminal case was a necessary element
of malicious prosecution claim; Rhode Island Supreme Court upholds $20,000
compensatory damages award, but rules that $50,000 punitive damages award
against officer was excessive and that $10,000 would be a more appropriate
amount of punitive damages Minutelli v. Boranian, 668 A.2d 317 (RI 1995).
[Cross-references: Damages: Punitive]
287:171 Alabama Supreme Court rules that
municipality may not be sued, under state law, for malicious prosecution, but rejects
argument that municipality was also immune from liability for false
arrest/imprisonment or assault and battery allegedly carried out by one of its
police officers Franklin v. City of Huntsville, 670 So2d 848 (Ala 1995).
[Cross-references: Assault and Battery: Physical; False Arrest/Imprisonment: No
Warrant]
{N/R} Arrestee's civil rights action against
federal law enforcement authorities for malicious prosecution/false arrest was
barred in absence of proof that his conviction had been overturned Tavarez v.
Reno, 54 F.3d 109 (2nd Cir. 1995).
265:12 Trial judge in malicious prosecution
lawsuit erred in failing to instruct jury that it had to find, before awarding
damages, that officer had no probable cause for commencing and continuing
prosecution for "harassment," the charge in the criminal complaint,
rather than instructing that it could award damages if officer had no probable
cause for earlier charge of "assault," later dropped Kellermueller v.
Port Authority of NY & NJ, 607 N.Y.S.2d 942 (A.D. 1994).
271:105 Convicted robber could not sue under
federal civil rights statute on his allegation that police officers committed
perjury against him and coerced witnesses to wrongfully identify him when his
conviction had not been overturned on appeal or otherwise invalidated Channer
v. Mitchell, 43 F.3d 786 (2nd Cir. 1994).
274:154 Arrestees' agreement to enter into
federal pre-trial diversion program, which resulted in them not being
prosecuted, did not constitute "favorable" termination of criminal
proceeding for purposes of bringing a malicious prosecution lawsuit Taylor v.
Gregg, 36 F.3d 453 (5th Cir. 1994).
Arrestee did not establish a federal civil rights
claim for malicious prosecution when state law malicious prosecution remedy was
not inadequate, and there was no allegation that prosecution was based on
racial or political grounds or to otherwise deprive him of equal protection of
law; no liability under state law for malicious prosecution in this case when
arresting officers did not initiate or participate actively in bringing of
criminal charges by Attorney General's office Senra v. Cunningham, 9 F.3d 168
(1st Cir. 1993).
U.S. Supreme Court holds that courts should
dismiss federal civil rights suits seeking damages when a judgment in favor of
the plaintiff necessarily implies that invalidity of the plaintiff's criminal
sentence, but that sentence has not already been overturned Heck v. Humphrey,
114 S.Ct. 2364 (1994).
Motorist issued a more serious speeding citation
after she contested a less serious one was entitled to an injunction against
prosecution on the new citation and an award of $20,000 and attorneys' fees
against issuing officer when he allegedly issued more serious charges in
retaliation for her pleading not guilty and requesting a hearing Ruscavage v.
Zuratt, 821 F.Supp. 1078 (E.D. Pa 1993).
Man arrested in courtroom corridor by court
security officers, and not convicted of any charges, awarded $75,000 in
compensatory damages in malicious prosecution claim, and a total of $150,000 in
punitive damages on malicious prosecution, excessive force, and false arrest
claims King v. Macri, 993 F.2d 294 (2nd Cir. 1993).
Pennsylvania Supreme Court holds that quashing of
an indictment on the basis of double jeopardy and prosecutorial abandonment of
charges in a second case both constituted "favorable termination" of
criminal cases for purposes of an arrestee bringing a malicious prosecution
lawsuit against law enforcement officials Haefner v. Burkey, 626 A.2d 519 (Pa
1993).
Federal constitutional claims based on malicious
prosecution must be brought under the Fourth Amendment rather than the
Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, a plurality of the U.S. Supreme
Court holds Albright v. Oliver, 114 S.Ct. 806 (1994).
Jury which awarded a total of $770,000 in
compensatory damages for malicious prosecution against city and four officers
was improperly instructed; all defendants should have been found jointly and
severally liable for a total amount of damages for this "single
injury" rather than being assessed different individual amounts; $440,000
in damages against five officers awarded on other civil rights claims Rodick v.
City of Schnectady, 1 F.3d 1341 (2nd Cir. 1993).
Oklahoma Supreme Court finds that state statute
immunizes municipality from liability for malicious prosecution Parker v. City
of Midwest City, 850 P.2d 1065 (Okl 1993).
Federal appeals court holds that alleged
malicious prosecution of arrestee was insufficient to support federal civil
rights lawsuit, absent violation of another right or deprivation of liberty or
property Ayala-Martinez v. Anglero, 982 F.2d 26 (1st Cir. 1992).
Termination of criminal case under Connecticut's
"accelerated pretrial rehabilitation program" was not a termination
favorable to the arrestee for purposes of bringing a federal civil rights claim
based on malicious prosecution or false imprisonment Roesch v. Otarola, 980
F.2d 850 (2nd Cir. 1992).
Officers not liable for malicious prosecution of
man arrested for alleged drug sale; officers did not furnish any false evidence
to prosecutor or grand jury, and in fact, their truthful information regarding
their uncertainty of identification of arrestee was part of the grounds for
dismissal of the prosecution Patterson v. JM Armatys, 808 F.Supp. 550 (E.D.
Tex. 1992).
Neither officers or municipality could be held
liable for malicious prosecution of woman indicted for aiding and abetting her
son in selling marijuana; while prosecutors later dropped the charges, there
was no evidence supporting malice in initially bringing the charges, and there
was probable cause for the arrest and indictment of the plaintiff Carver v.
Hartville Police Dept, 594 N.E.2d 92 (Ohio App. 1992).
Deputy was not entitled to absolute immunity for
his allegedly false testimony before grand jury or at preliminary hearing if he
was a "complaining" witness who instigated the prosecution Anthony v.
Baker, 955 F.2d 1395 (10th Cir. 1992).
Dismissal of criminal charges "in the
interest of justice" was not a favorable proceeding of the criminal
proceeding allowing the arrestees to bring a malicious prosecution action
Delaney v. Gerdon, 785 F.Supp. 1128 (E.D.N.Y. 1992).
Jury verdict for officer on malicious prosecution
claim overturned because argument to the jury improperly suggested videotaped
deposition of witness was to be given less credence than live testimony;
appeals court rejects argument plaintiff failed to prove officer instigated the
prosecution Langdon v. Wight, 821 S.W.2d 508 (Mo App. 1991).
Finding of probable cause in preliminary hearing
of murder case did not, under Connecticut law, bar relitigation of issue of
probable cause in subsequent civil rights lawsuit for malicious prosecution
Golino v. City of New Haven, 950 F.2d 864 (2nd Cir. 1991).
Judgment against city for $950,000 for false
arrest and malicious prosecution reduced on appeal to $475,000; charges dropped
before arraignment or indictment cannot serve as the basis for a malicious
prosecution claim Stile v. City of New York, 569 N.Y.S.2d 129 (A.D. 1991).
Use of other person's name to identify suspect in
criminal records after suspect had been placed in custody and fingerprinted
stated claim for malicious prosecution and intentional infliction of emotional
distress Sergio v. Doe, 769 F.Supp. 164 (E.D. Pa 1991).
New York court overturns $150,000 malicious
prosecution award against city; grand jury indictment of plaintiff created a
presumption that probable cause for the prosecution existed, which was not
overcome Carthens v. City of New York, 562 N.Y.S.2d 534 (A.D. 1990).
Officer could not be held liable for malicious
prosecution when his arrest of the plaintiff was "sensible" and there
was no evidence of retaliatory motive Bennett v. Village of Oak Park, 748
F.Supp. 1329 (N.D.Ill. 1990).
Officer liable to store owner for $50,000 for
malicious prosecution and false arrest for falsely charging him with possession
of stolen property, but $25,000 jury award for abuse of process is reversed
Duboue v. City of New Orleans, 909 F.2d 129 (5th Cir. 1990).
Police detective liable for $150,000 in
compensatory and $75,000 in punitive damages to suspect babysitter she
allegedly had charged with murder in retaliation for suspect's hiring of an
attorney during investigation; court holds that such action violated First
Amendment rights of association and speech DeLoach v. Bevers, 922 F.2d 618
(10th Cir. 1990).
Officers liable for $75,000 for malicious
prosecution of man for murder of police officer; suit alleged that they
manufactured perjured testimony for witnesses to give at trial Robinson v.
Maruffi, 895 F.2d 649 (10th Cir. 1990).
Dismissal of criminal charges "in the
interest of justice" was not a resolution favorable to the defendant;
dying patient's son arrested while trying to enter hospital to pray at his
mother's bedside could not sue for malicious prosecution Macleay v. Arden Hill
Hospital, 563 N.Y.S.2d 333 (A.D. 1990).
Police chief was not liable for malicious prosecution
when facts demonstrated that he had probable cause to seek arrest warrant for
encouraging a minor to become delinquent Skinner v. Etheridge, 564 So.2d 902
(Ala 1990).
Arrestee acquitted on charges of criminal
possession of weapon and menacing could not sue for malicious prosecution when
he was convicted of other charges arising out of the same incident Goree v.
Gunning, 738 F.Supp. 79 (E.D.N.Y. 1990).
Even if arrest of man for fish and game ordinance
violations were carried out as part of personal vendetta, no constitutional
rights were violated Gunderson v. Schlueter, 904 F.2d 407 (8th Cir. 1990).
Married couple prosecuted under ordinance (later
held unconstitutional). prohibiting running a brothel or enticing others into
acts of lewdness had no civil rights claim Richardson v. City of South Euclid,
904 F.2d 1050 (6th Cir. 1990).
Malicious prosecution award of $150,000 against
city upheld despite existence of probable cause to arrest Maxwell v. City of
New York, 554 N.Y.S.2d 502 (A.D. 1990).
County liable for $300,000 for malicious
prosecution of diner patrons involved in fight with off-duty officers;
government report was evidence of policy/custom of lax supervision Gentile v.
County of Suffolk, 129 F.R.D. 435 (E.D.N.Y. 1990).
Malicious prosecution, standing alone, is
insufficient to show civil rights claim, absent deprivation of constitutional
right Yaworski v. Pae, 717 F.Supp. 624 (N.D.Ill. 1989).
Plaintiff could sue for malicious prosecution
based on acquittal of resisting arrest, despite conviction of lesser, related
charge Janetka v. Dabe, 892 F.2d 187 (2d Cir. 1989).
Convicted murderer could not bring civil rights,
conspiracy or malicious prosecution lawsuit despite claim of falsified evidence
against him Green v. City of NY Medical Examiner's Office, 723 F.Supp. 973
(S.D.N.Y. 1989).
Malice needed for malicious prosecution action
could be inferred from lack of probable cause for arrest Frye v. O'Neill, 520
N.E.2d 1233 (Ill App. 1988).
Louisiana Supreme Court reinstates finding of
malicious prosecution in case in which detective failed to verify information
provided by career criminal Miller v. East Baton Rouge Parish Sher Dept, 511
So.2d 446 (La 1987).
Department of public safety employee who conducted
narcotics investigation of fellow employee after request from district attorney
not liable for unlawful prosecution Bogle v. Scheer, 512 So.2d 1336 (Ala 1987).
Police investigator who actively continued
prosecution of narcotics defendants without evidence that bag seized contained
drugs liable for malicious prosecution despite probable cause for arrest Callan
v. State, 521 N.Y.S.2d 923 (A.D. 1987).
Lawsuit for malicious prosecution dismissed;
judge's mere use of words "not guilty" in order dismissing
prosecution was not resolution of charges on merits Carlsen v. Village of
Oakwood Hills, 517 N.E.2d 1107 (Ill App. 1987).
Treble damages not applicable to municipalities;
admission of polygraph test in malicious prosecution action grounds for
reversal Bernier v. Szentmiklosi, 810 F.2d 594 (6th Cir. 1987).
Officer's failure to include exculpatory
information in incident report given to prosecutor did not show bad faith; no
liability for malicious prosecution King v. Arbic, 406 N.W.2d 852 (Mich App.
1987).
TV show "Crime Stoppers" aided in
providing probable cause to prosecute; failure to check alibi not grounds for
liability Miller v. East Baton Rouge Parish Sher Dept, 492 So.2d 23 (La App.
1986).
City can criminally prosecute individuals for
filing knowingly false complaints against police Gates v. City of Dallas, 729
F.2d 343 (5th Cir. 1984).
Malicious prosecution suits cannot stem from
proceedings in small claims court Black v. Hepner, 202 Cal.Rptr. 799 (App.
1984).
Willful conspiracy could result in liability to
various city officials Overstreet v. Borough of Yeadon, 475 A.2d 803 (Pa Super
1984). County investigator immune in malicious prosecution suit Barry v.
Johnson, 350 N.W.2d 498 (Minn. App. 1984).
Plaintiff's oppressive litigation techniques
makes him liable for costs; judicial, prosecutorial and witness immunity
doctrines discussed Wickstrom v. Ebert, 585 F.Supp. 924 (E.D. Wis 1984).
Bringing charges against plaintiff for leaving
notice on police station door may result in individual liability to police
officer Losch v. Borough of Parkesburg, Pa, 736 F.2d 903 (3rd Cir. 1984).
Absolute immunity for prosecuting plaintiff until
real perpetrator came forward Johnson v. Town of Colonie, 477 N.Y.S.2d 513
(Albany County 1984).
"Disposition in lieu of trial" program
does not provide a basis for subsequent malicious prosecution claim Junod v.
Bader, 458 A.2d 251 (Pa App. 1983). and Nappi v. Kappeler, 461 N.Y.S.2d 193
(App. 1983).
No liability for false arrest or malicious
prosecution Brown v. City of NY, 459 N.Y.S.2d 589 (App. 1983).
Plaintiff cited for bad driving after colliding
with police officer has no conspiracy or malicious prosecution claim Bell v.
Brennan, 570 F.Supp. 1116, (E.D. Pa 1983).
Probable cause existed to charge parents with
endangering infant's welfare causing him to die Angel v. Kasson, 581 F.Supp.
170 (N.D.NY 1983).