124 F.3d 204 (7th Cir. 1997), 96-3249, McCants v. Village of Broadview

• Citation: 124 F.3d 204
• Party Name: Kevin J. McCANTS, Administrator of the Estate of Darrel Darnell McCants, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. VILLAGE OF BROADVIEW, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Case Date: July 25, 1997
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals, U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 204

124 F.3d 204 (7th Cir. 1997)

Kevin J. McCANTS, Administrator of the Estate of Darrel Darnell McCants, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

VILLAGE OF BROADVIEW, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 96-3249.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

July 25, 1997

Editorial Note:

This opinion appears in the Federal reporter in a table titled "Table of Decisions Without Reported Opinions". (See FI CTA7 Rule 53 regarding use of unpublished opinions)

Submitted July 25, 1997. ^[*]

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, No. 93 C 3657; James B. Zagel, Judge.

Before POSNER, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and MANION, Circuit Judges.

ORDER

Kevin J. McCants, appealing pro se as administrator of the estate of Darrell McCants, sued the Village of Broadview and various police officers for using deadly force without adequate justification under the Fourth Amendment, and for negligent spoliation of evidence. The district court granted summary judgment to defendants, ruling that there was no evidence that defendants used deadly force, and therefore no pertinent evidence which they had a duty to preserve. We affirm.

Broadview police wanted to question Darrell McCants in connection with a burglary. In attempting to evade the police, McCants fled across the Eisenhower Expressway, where a large truck struck and killed him. McCants' relatives maintain that he only "froze" in the path of the truck--and, presumably, therefore failed to make it safely across the expressway--because police shot him in the leg. They maintain that the Village of Broadview threw away the bullet lodged in McCants' leg to make it hard for them to maintain their suit. The medical examiner, however, found no evidence that McCants had been shot. Rather, he found in McCants' leg an oxidized fragment of metal wholly encased in scar tissue which, he concluded, must have developed after an old gunshot wound. Because the old wound played no role in McCants' death, he threw the fragment away. McCants' family maintains that the metal fragment was discarded after the family developed its theory that McCants had been shot, and that the police knew the family wanted to examine the fragment.

After the district court rejected a suit filed by McMants' relatives, on grounds that they lacked standing to sue in their individual capacities, Kevin McCants hired an attorney and filed suit in his capacity as...