Carter v. Kaine

1

AKIL K. CARTER, PAULETTE H. BARR, and SANDRA K. ADAMS, Plaintiffs, v. PATRICK KAINE, Defendant.

No. 19-CV-1422-JPS

United States District Court, E.D. Wisconsin

May 4, 2023

ORDER

J. P STADTMUELLER, U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE.

Plaintiffs in this matter, Akil Carter (“Carter”), Paulette Barr, and Sandra Adams (collectively “Plaintiffs”), sued Defendants the City of Wauwatosa (“Wauwatosa”), Patrick Kaine (“Kaine”), Chief of Police James MacGillis (“MacGillis”),^[1] Luke Vetter (“Vetter”) Nicole Gabriel (“Gabriel”), and Derek Dienhart (“Dienhart”) (collectively, for purposes of this Order, “Defendants”). ECF No. 1-2. The matter was tried to a jury beginning on March 13, 2023. During trial, Defendants moved pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b) to dismiss all Defendants except Kaine, and to dismiss Plaintiffs' claim pursuant to Monell v. Department of Social Services of the City of New York, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), and the Court took the motion under advisement. ECF No. 149 at 5. Ultimately, only four questions were submitted to the jury: (1) whether Kaine seized Plaintiffs without reasonable suspicion on September 2, 2018; (2) if so, whether any Plaintiff was entitled to any compensatory damages; (3) if Kaine seized Plaintiffs without reasonable suspicion, whether he did so in reckless disregard of Plaintiffs' rights; and (4) if Kaine acted with reckless disregard, whether Plaintiffs were entitled to punitive damages. ECF No. 152 at 1-2.

On March 14, 2023, the jury rendered a Special Verdict and found that Kaine did not seize Plaintiffs without reasonable suspicion on September 2, 2018, and therefore did not answer any questions as to reckless disregard or damages. Id. The Court issues this Order contemporaneously with entry of Judgment to clarify the disposition of certain claims and Defendants which were not subject to the jury's Special Verdict.

1. ADDITIONAL PUTATIVE FOURTH AMENDMENT CLAIMS

The Complaint listed, as Count One, a single count of “Violations of the Plaintiffs' Civil Rights Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983,” alleged against all Defendants. ECF No. 1-2 at 11. As the Court recognized on summary judgment, this count unquestionably includes an unreasonable seizure claim that Kaine initiated a traffic stop^[2] of Plaintiffs' vehicle without reasonable suspicion to do so. ECF No. 108 at 20-28. When considering the parties' competing motions for summary judgment, the Court adopted Defendants' further construction of this count. ECF No. 108 at 2, n.3. Specifically, the Court-in response to Defendants' arguments-examined Count One as potentially articulating two additional, distinct factual bases for a Fourth Amendment claim:

• A claim that Defendants Kaine, Luke Vetter (“Vetter”), Nicole Gabriel (“Gabriel”), and Derek Dienhart (“Dienhart”) conducted the ensuing investigation in an unreasonable manner that exceeded the scope of the facts that first justified it, id. at 28-31;^[3]

• A claim that Kaine, Vetter, Gabriel, and Dienhart used excessive force in conducting the traffic stop of Plaintiffs, or that Vetter failed to intervene in Kaine's use of excessive force, id. at 31-33.

The Court expressly noted Defendants' position that Plaintiffs had not sufficiently pleaded an excessive force claim, and generally had failed to specify which Defendants were subject to which counts and claims. Id. at 18, n.16.^[4] Ultimately, the Court denied the cross-motions for summary judgment, due to the core question-whether Kaine had reasonable suspicion to stop Plaintiffs' vehicle-being the subject of a factual dispute, the resolution of which required a jury's fact and credibility determinations. See id. at 20-33.

All possible Fourth Amendment claims have been disposed of as follows. The jury found for Kaine on the question of reasonable suspicion, and the unreasonable seizure claim was never properly alleged as to Vetter, Gabriel, and Dienhart. See supra note 3. An unreasonable investigation claim only ever existed to the extent that Defendants construed the Complaint as supporting such a claim, and moreover Plaintiffs did not press a “scope of investigation” claim in any of their pretrial filings. See ECF No. 125-7 at 1 (parties' joint proposed special verdict forms, articulating only an unreasonable seizure claim as to Kaine, Vetter, Gabriel, and Dienhart); ECF No. 125-5 (Plaintiffs' additional requested jury instructions, which do not include any instructions as to an unreasonable investigation claim); ECF No. 125-8 (Plaintiffs' additional requested special verdict forms, which do not include forms as to an unreasonable investigation claim). The Court therefore considers any unreasonable investigation claim abandoned as to Kaine, Vetter, Gabriel, and Dienhart. See Palmer v. Marion County, 327 F.3d 588, 597-98 (7th Cir. 2003) (deeming abandoned claims on which party presented no evidence and did not raise in briefing).

To the extent an excessive force claim ever existed in this case- which Defendants challenged both on summary judgment and in a motion in limine, see ECF No. 124-1 at 17-Plaintiffs also effectively abandoned any such claim.^[5] Although Plaintiffs opposed Defendants' motion in limine on the basis that such a claim was sufficiently pleaded, Plaintiffs' pretrial filings did not reflect that they were seriously pressing this claim. See ECF No. 125-5 (Plaintiffs' additional requested jury instructions, which do not include any instructions as to an excessive force claim); ECF No. 125-8 (Plaintiffs' additional requested special verdict forms, which do not include forms as to an excessive force claim). It is also true that Plaintiffs' several filings on the eve of trial make offers of proof that, if liberally construed, could pertain to an excessive force claim. See, e.g., ECF No. 141 at 3-4 (Plaintiffs' objections to Court's proposed verdict form, offering evidence that Kaine and Dienhart drew firearms). But “[i]t is not the responsibility of this Court or opposing counsel to try and piece together all potential theories of the case from scattered and opaque fragments in the [pretrial submissions] ....” McFarland v. Tricam Indus., Inc., No. 13 C 4576, 2015 WL 3442027, at *5 (N.D. Ill. May 28, 2015), aff'd, 667 Fed.Appx. 164 (7th Cir. 2016) (rejecting plaintiff's contention that references to certain theories of liability raised in pretrial submissions were a sufficient basis for the court to allow plaintiff to present evidence related to those theories at trial). Accordingly, any excessive force claim is deemed abandoned. For the same reasons, the Court considers abandoned any claim that Vetter (or any Gabriel or Dienhart, for that matter)^[6] failed to intervene in a use of excessive force.

As should be evident from the above descriptions, Plaintiffs litigated this case in a manner that, to put it diplomatically, profoundly confused the Court as to what legal questions Plaintiffs viewed as actually in controversy, and why. (To be sure, there is plenty of blame to go around: Defendants could have addressed the above-described pleading snafus with an early motion to dismiss, a motion for a more definite statement, or simply by identifying them to opposing counsel and not opposing the filing of an amended complaint.) As a result, and based on the observation that “the core issue in this case, indeed the issue on which all the other claims turn, is whether Officer Kaine had reasonable suspicion to initiate the vehicle stop of Plaintiffs,” ECF No. 140 at 4, the Court in its discretion proposed submitting, and indeed did submit, only an unreasonable seizure claim as to Kaine to the jury, rather than adopt Plaintiffs' other amorphous theories of Fourth Amendment liability. See ECF No. 132 at 1. Based on the jury's resolution of that question and the Court's determinations above, the Fourth Amendment claims as to all other Defendants-to the extent they were sufficiently pleaded to begin with-are dismissed.

2. MONELL CLAIM

In Count Two of their Complaint, Plaintiffs alleged a count of municipal liability, pursuant to Monell v. Department of Social Services of the City of New York, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), arising from the alleged violation of Plaintiffs' constitutional rights.^[7] ECF No. 1-2 at 11-16. Shortly before trial, and at the invitation of the Court, Plaintiffs made an offer of proof related to their Monell claim. ECF Nos. 141 at 4-10. The Monell claim was subject to a Rule 54(b) motion by Defendants, which the Court took under advisement. ECF No. 149 at 5. Ultimately, this claim was not submitted to the jury. Because Plaintiffs failed to establish an underlying Constitutional violation, the Monell claim is essentially moot. Accordingly, although it survived summary judgment, see ECF No. 108 at 33-35, it will now stand dismissed.^[8]

3. STATE LAW CLAIMS

In addition to their federal claims, Plaintiffs alleged an array of state law claims, including:

• A negligence claim based on the circumstances under which the traffic stop was initiated and continued, Count Three of the Complaint;

• Claims under the Wisconsin Constitution for violations of the rights to due process, to equal treatment, and to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, Counts Four, Five, and Six of the Complaint;

• A negligent infliction of emotional distress claim, Count Seven of the Complaint;

• A negligent hiring, training, and promotion claim, Count Eight of the Complaint;

• A false imprisonment claim, Count Nine of the Complaint; and

• An intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, Count Ten of the Complaint.

See ECF No. 1-2 at 16-20.^[9] At summary judgment, the Court-while acknowledging Defendants' argument that Plaintiffs' state law claims were barred as a matter of law on either state sovereign immunity or governmental actor...