Punitive award of $200,000 was a violation of due process where plaintiff received only $1.00 in compensatory damages from jury, where officer choked, punched, and used knee strike on plaintiff after he surrendered following attempt to flee; court reduces punitive award to $50,000; court affirms award of fees to plaintiff’s counsel in amount of $143,787.97.
Court affirms termination of consent decree by district court, finding that City was in substantial compliance with provisions of decree prohibiting arrest of homeless individuals without cause and protecting their property.
Dismissal of a prosecution as untimely satisfies the favorable termination element of malicious prosecution claim under Fourth Amendment: “After considering both the common law and Fourth Amendment, we hold that the favorable-termination element of malicious prosecution is not limited to terminations that affirmatively support the plaintiff’s innocence. Instead, the favorable-termination element requires only that the criminal proceedings against the plaintiff formally end in a manner not inconsistent with his innocence on at least one charge that authorized his confinement.
Officer shot plaintiff while executing a no-knock search warrant; plaintiff sued officer under § 1983 and brought state law claims against officer and the City in negligence; jury ruled in the officer’s favor on both the § 1983 claim and negligence claim, but in favor of the plaintiff against the City on the negligence claim, awarding plaintiff $3 million in damages; Second Circuit held plaintiff’s evidence was sufficient to justify a negligence verdict against the City, despite the verdict in the officer’s favor on negligence; however, because the federal court concluded that New York stat
Tenth Circuit law is that “[t]he reasonableness of the use of force depends not only on whether the officers were in danger at the precise moment that they used force, but also on whether the officers’ own reckless or deliberate conduct during the seizure unreasonably created the need to use such force”; jury instruction to that effect was not required in this case because officer was protected by qualified immunity for his alleged recklessness in leaving his vehicle to approach plaintiff in his car.
Law was clearly established that officer could not shoot person with psychiatric disability in his own home who was incapacitated and no longer posed a threat, even though he had previously been armed: “the suspect’s possession of a weapon at some point in the incident does not provide an officer with carte blanche to use deadly force”; officer’s conduct violated Fourth Amendment but did not “shock the conscience,” thus did not justify substantive due process award to deceased’s father for his liberty interest in the companionship and society of his son.