Richards v. Warren Police Dep't

KEVIN RICHARDS, Plaintiff, v. WARREN POLICE DEPARTMENT,JOHN DOE #1, JOHN DOE #2, JOHN DOE #3,JOHN DOE #4, and JOHN DOE #5, Defendants.

Case Number 19-13224

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN SOUTHERN DIVISION

May 28, 2021

Honorable David M. Lawson

OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT AND DISMISSING COMPLAINT WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Plaintiff Kevin Richards filed a pro se complaint against the Warren Police Department and five unnamed police officers in which he alleged that he was assaulted and mistreated when they entered his home without a warrant and arrested him for domestic violence and resisting arrest. As the case progressed, pro bono counsel appeared for Richards. However, he never identified the John Doe defendants or joined them as parties. The Warren Police Department has filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that the case cannot proceed properly against pseudonymously named individuals and it is too late to add the actual police officers now. It also argues that the Warren Police Department is merely an agency of the unnamed City of Warren and the police department is not a juridical entity that can be sued. In addition to these procedural defenses, the defendant contends that the plaintiff's claims are precluded by the substantive rulings of the state court in the underlying criminal prosecution. The motion is fully briefed, and oral argument will not aid in the disposition. The Court will decide the motion on the papers. See E.D. Mich. LR 7.1(f)(2). Because the plaintiff cannot overcome his procedural missteps and the proper party defendants are not before the Court, the motion will be granted, and the case will be dismissed without prejudice.

I.

The plaintiff's claims are based on an incident that occurred on November 2, 2017, when he was at home with his wife in Warren, Michigan. He alleges in his complaint that Warren city police officers entered his home, used excessive force to subdue him, and confined him in jail where he was denied medical attention. The parties have not developed the facts of the case in their motion briefs, but the plaintiff's story has been told in his complaint.

According to that paper, on the night in question, five officers of the Warren city police department came to the plaintiff's home and "began knocking on the doors and windows." The plaintiff was on a video phone call with his brother, and he began to record the ensuing incidents.

The plaintiff alleges that the officers entered the home by force, and he asked them to leave. They did not. Instead, two of the officers grabbed the plaintiff by his wrists, with one holding each arm; a third officer snatched the phone from his left hand and threw it to the ground, smashing it; the fourth then tackled the plaintiff onto his living room couch, while the fifth officer pepper sprayed him. The first two officers proceeded to punch the plaintiff in his sides, while the third kicked the back of his legs, and the fourth grabbed him by the hair and began to punch him in the head. The officers then handcuffed the plaintiff and conveyed him to the back seat of a police car. After he was in the police cruiser, one of the officers punched him several more times in the face, while he was seated and cuffed. When one of the officers got into the front seat of the car, the plaintiff asked for medical attention, but his request was denied.

The plaintiff was taken to the Warren City Jail, where he began to dry heave and almost passed out due to the earlier blows to his head. He again asked for medical attention, and therequest again was refused. The plaintiff says that he then was held in solitary confinement for some time, until he was transferred to the Macomb County Jail to await trial.

The defendants present a somewhat more expansive narrative, which was supported by specimens of the police reports and transcripts from the state court criminal prosecution that followed the plaintiff's arrest. According to them, the officers responded to a 911 call that stated a white female was observed "screaming 9-1-1" as she was "dragged across the front yard" of the Warren residence by a white male. The woman was dragged into the house by the unidentified male, and no one was seen leaving the residence before the 911 call was placed. When officers arrived, the house was dark. Two officers began to make their way around the residence calling out to any occupants and knocking on windows. One officer saw a white female in the bathroom applying makeup in an apparent attempt "to cover something up." Finally, a male voice responded to another officer's continued knocking at the door, but the door was not opened.

When the plaintiff eventually opened the door, he had a cell phone in his hand and appeared to be recording with it. Officers saw past him and spotted a white female who was crying, had a bruise under one eye, and appeared "fearful" and "in distress." When officers then entered the home, the plaintiff became "irate," and he began "screaming" and demanding to know why the officers were in his house, threw his phone on the ground, and then "assumed a bladed stance," while "yelling that he had done nothing wrong." Officers attempted to "detain" the plaintiff by grabbing his wrists and then fell onto the couch with the plaintiff as they continued to restrain and attempted to handcuff him. When the plaintiff began "thrashing around" on the couch, one officer used pepper spray to subdue him. A brief tussle ensued while the plaintiff continued struggling and trying to break free.

The plaintiff was charged with domestic violence and resisting and obstructing a police officer. He was bound over for trial and eventually pleaded no contest. The plaintiff's trial counsel attempted unsuccessfully to challenge the legality of the charges at the preliminary examination and later via a motion to quash the information and a motion to suppress. The defense argued that the charges should be dismissed because (1) the entry into the home was without a warrant and there were no exigent circumstances to justify the warrantless intrusion, and any evidence derived subsequent to the unlawful entry therefore must be suppressed, and (2) the plaintiff had a legally recognized privilege to act in self-defense against an unlawful arrest, and he therefore could not be held liable on the count of resisting and obstructing. The trial court denied both motions, after concluding that there was ample probable cause to suspect that a domestic assault had occurred on the premises, and the entry into the home was justified by exigent circumstances. The plaintiff filed a motion to stay the case for an interlocutory appeal, which was denied. He then pleaded no contest to both charges. He later filed a motion to withdraw his plea, which was denied. He eventually filed a delayed application for leave to appeal in the Michigan Court of Appeals, which was denied summarily "for lack of merit in the grounds presented." His application for leave to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court also was denied in a one-sentence order because the court was not persuaded "that the question presented should be reviewed."

The plaintiff filed his pro se civil rights complaint in this case on November 1, 2019. The case initially was referred to the assigned magistrate judge for management of all pretrial proceedings. However, the magistrate judge granted a request to refer the case for appointment of pro bono counsel, and plaintiff's counsel appeared on March 10, 2020. After discovery closed and the defendants filed their motion for summary judgment, the Court took note that counsel had appeared to represent the plaintiff, and the referral to the magistrate judge was withdrawn.

The sparse pro se pleadings are vague on the precise nature of the claims. The complaint never was amended, even after counsel was appointed for the plaintiff. However, the opposition to the defendants' motion, which was filed by the plaintiff's pro bono counsel, frames the causes of action as follows: (1) warrantless search of the plaintiff's residence, contrary to the Fourth Amendment, (2) excessive force during the arrest consisting of beating, tackling, and pepper spraying the plaintiff without justification, and (3) denying needed medical attention (presumably a Fourteenth Amendment claim). The defendants, for their part, read the complaint as asserting claims of false arrest, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution under the Fourth Amendment, and a "Fifth Amendment" claim, the premise of which is somewhat unclear, since no further specification of that cause was stated in the pleadings.

Noteworthy in the context of the pending motion, the individual officers against whom the complaint was directed were named in the pleadings only as "John Does 1-5." The defendants assert that the officers' names were known to the plaintiff at least since the criminal trial proceedings, and, further, their identities were disclosed by the defense in this case well within the discovery period. Nevertheless, the plaintiff never has filed any amended pleading or motion to amend the complaint to add the individual defendants by name.

II.

Defendant Warren Police Department has moved for summary judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56. Summary judgment is appropriate "if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). When reviewing the motion record, "[t]he court must view the evidence and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party, and determine 'whether the evidence presents a sufficient disagreement to require submission to a jury or whetherit is so one-sided that one party must prevail as a matter of law.'" Alexander v. CareSource, 576 F.3d 551, 557-58 (6th Cir. 2009) (quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 251-52 (1986)). "The court need...