Category: Cases

Important SCOTUS civil rights ruling

The Supreme Court has ruled that a malicious prosecution claim can be maintained without showing the prosecution ended “favorably.” This is an important ruling.

In addition, requiring the plaintiff to show that his prosecution ended with an affirmative indication of innocence would paradoxically foreclose a §1983 claim when the government’s case was weaker and dismissed without explanation before trial, but allow a claim when the government’s evidence was substantial enough to proceed to trial. That would make little sense.

Thompson, at 11.

The Supreme Court, Thompson v. Clark, ruled today that a plaintiff can pursue a malicious prosecution claim without showing the prosecution ended “favorably.” All she needs to show is that ended without a conviction. This is an important ruling.

A person who was wrongly prosecuted may have a cause of action for malicious prosecution under federal law (42 USC §1983) if they can show that a police officer (i) caused her to be prosecuted, (ii) without probable cause, (iii) and did so with malice. The plaintiff also used to have to show that the criminal case ended “favorably.”

Thompson concerned this last criterion. The sole question there is whether the plaintiff need demonstrate anything other than the prosecution ended without a conviction. In New York federal courts, a plaintiff was required to show that the dismissal of his case iwas indicative of his innocence. This is no easy task and created logical and legal inconsistencies. As the Court in Thompson notes,

The bottom line here is that this element, known as the “favorable termination requirement,” created an additional obstacle that plaintiffs often could not satisfy for reasons that were beyond their control. Law enforcement defendants still have plenty of arrows in their quiver, but this ruling properly removes one line of defense that was fundamentally unfair and unjust.

Jury Award for Excessive Force Upheld by U.S. Court of Appeals

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld a jury award of $445,000 for a man who was brutalized by three members of the NYPD. It is an important decision for several reasons, not the least of which was the Court’s recognition that deliberate attempts by officers to cover up and hide their misconduct can be taken into account by jurors in determining how much they should award in punitive damages.

Andrew Yurkiw, Amber Lagrandier, and Joseph Solomito assaulted our client, Thomas Jennings, breaking his nose in multiple places. The case was first tried in Brooklyn federal court in June 2018. That jury, outraged by these officers’ conduct and their attempt to lie their way past the trial, awarded plaintiff $500,000 in compensatory damages and $2.5 million in punitive damages. The Court ruled that those amounts were too high and gave plaintiff the option of accepting $255,000 as a final number (of which $140,000 was for punitive damages) or having a second jury decide how much he should receive.

We elected to retry the case and proceeded to trial in April 2019. This time the jury awarded a total amount of $445,000, including $355,000 in punitive damages. This time the court left the award alone. The three officers appealed, arguing that the Court should have again reduced the punitive damages to $140,000. The defendants argued their brutality was nothing but “a few minutes of violence” against Jennings. The appellate court rejected that argument, finding that “’a few minutes of violence’ is not a trivial matter.” The Court also pointed out that the defendants’ “excessive force was made the more reprehensible because none of the officers intervened to stop the attack, as each was required to do” and that “[t]he reprehensible nature of the officers’ conduct is underscored by the elaborate steps they took to cover up their misconduct. The jury heard and was entitled to consider a record that included falsified charging documents, false accounts of the beating, faked or exaggerated injury, and perjured trial testimony.”

Jennings was represented throughout the case by Amy Rameau. Michael Lumer tried both cases with Ms. Rameau and participated on the appeal with appellate counsel Scott Korenbaum.



LLG Wins Reinstatement of Wrongful Prosecution Case on Appeal

Our client, TK, was wrongly arrested and prosecuted for a narcotics offense he had no involvement in. The criminal prosecution was eventually dismissed for what is commonly called a speedy trial violation, which means that prosecutors were unable to proceed with his case in a timely way. TK then filed suit. In April 2020, a federal district judge dismissed his claims against the arresting officers for malicious prosecution and the denial of his right to a fair trial, which is the formal name of a claim where police officers lie to prosecutors. Michael Lumer appealed the case for TK.

Earlier today the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the dismissal of the wrongful prosecution claims and sent the case back to the district court, where it is now ready for trial.

LLG Client Victim of Shoddy NYPD Investigative practices

On June 5, a United States District Court in Brooklyn, New York issued a ruling criticizing the NYPD for disinterested and meaningless internal investigations. A trial in that case against an officer accused of beating our client, Matthew Jenkins so badly that he suffered a traumatic brain injury is scheduled for September of this year. The City of New York is also a defendant, based on evidence that the NYPD’s investigative practices with respect to the defendant officer were so lax, so superficial, as to make the City liable for the violation of Mr. Jenkins’ constitutional right to be free from excessive force. The Memorandum and Decision follows below. Today’s Daily News also has a short piece on the decision.

As set out in the decision, reproduced below, on October 13, 2012, our client, Matthew Jenkins, was arrested in Brooklyn on a routine drug charge. The arresting officers claimed — wrongly — that Mr. Jenkins had swallowed crack cocaine, and he was taken to the hospital for a stomach scan. While at the hospital, and handcuffed to a gurney, he was violently assaulted by a Det. Orlen Zambrano, who beat Mr. Jenkins so badly that he suffered a subdural hematoma (a brain bleed). That injury has caused Mr. Jenkins to suffer numerous seizures, and he is now diagnosed with a seizure disorder, for which he will have to treat for the rest of his life.

What is perhaps most shocking about this event is that Det. Zambrano had already been the subject of 15 different excessive force complaints in the six years leading up to his assault of Mr. Jenkins. Yet, not once did the NYPD undertake any meaningful investigation into Det. Zambrano, or alter the way he was supervised. Time and again he would deny the allegations, and time and again the NYPD would announce there was no way to resolve the allegations. The facts of this case underscore the NYPD’s bad faith approach to claims of misconduct. As the Court points out, the NYPD appears to take action only when it must, which is to say, when the evidence is so overwhelming that it is politically impossible to ignore.

A trial in this case is scheduled for September 16 of this year. We are looking forward to it

Police Assault on Video

On June 1, 2018, our client was awarded $3,000,000 in compensatory and punitive damages with respect to the NYPD’s use of excessive force against him on April 23, 2014. See here and here. Unfortunately, this was not the last time Thomas Jennings would be assaulted without justification by police officers.

On July 7, 2015, Thomas Jennings walked into a bodega. He walked in and and began a conversation with an employee behind the counter. Moments later, NYPD PO Lenny Lutchman walks in, his retractable baton in hand. He ordered our client to the ground. Mr. Jennings, his arms outstretched and palms empty, asked repeatedly what it was that he had done. Seconds later, PO Pearce Martinez rushed in and immediately begins punching Mr. Jennings in the head. Lutchman jumps in, driving the butt end of his baton into Jennings’ body several times. A bloodied and beaten Thomas Jennings is then escorted from the store.

Luckily for Mr. Jennings, and much to the officers’ later surprise, this act of police brutality was captured on video.

The officers, unaware of the video, went back to the station house and completed arrest paperwork in which they stated that no force was used in making the arrest. Thomas Jennings’ injuries, Martinez wrote in his memo book, must have come about accidentally.

As for the arrest itself, it was based on a claim that Mr. Jennings and another man had robbed a local takeout restaurant at knifepoint earlier that afternoon. However, there was video of that supposed “crime” as well. That video, which was, in fact, several videos taken from different cameras, made clear that there was no robbery, no knife, no violence, no threats of violence, and no crime committed by Thomas Jennings. All of the criminal charges against him were dismissed shortly thereafter.

Mr. Jennings’ civil lawsuit against the officers is continuing.