Stemler v. City of Florence
| Decision Date | 13 November 1997 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 96-5993,96-5996,s. 96-5993 |
| Citation | 1997 WL 615760,126 F.3d 856 |
| Parties | Susan STEMLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF FLORENCE; Bobby Joe Wince; Thomas Dusing; and John Dolan, Defendants-Appellees. William CHIPMAN, Administrator of the Estate of Conni Black, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF FLORENCE; Bobby Joe Wince; Thomas Kenner; John Dolan; Ron Kenner, Boone County Sheriff; Rob Reuthe; and Chris Alsip, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Eric C. Deters, Richard G. Meyer (argued and briefed), Deters, Benzinger & Lavelle, Covington, Kentucky, for Appellant.
Jeffrey C. Mando (argued and briefed), Adams, Brooking, Stepner, Woltermann & Dusing, Covington, Kentucky, R. Kent Westberry, David Whalin (briefed), Landrum & Shouse, Louisville, Kentucky, Hugh O. Skees (briefed), Rouse, Skees, Wilson & Dillon, Florence, Kentucky, W. Kenneth Nevitt, R. Thaddeus Keal (briefed), Williams & Wagoner, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellee.
Before: MERRITT, WELLFORD, and BOGGS, Circuit Judges.
BOGGS, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which MERRITT, J., joined. WELLFORD, J. (pp. 875-876), delivered a separate concurring opinion.
In No. 96-5996, the estate of Conni Black (hereinafter "Black") appeals the judgment entered against her on her substantive due process claim against officers of Boone County, Kentucky, and of the City of Florence arising from her death in a car accident on the night of February 18, 1994, shortly after those officers removed her from the car of Susan Stemler and placed her in the truck of her drunk and violently abusive boyfriend, Steve Kritis. In No. 96-5993, Stemler appeals the judgment entered against her on her claims of false arrest, malicious prosecution, and violation of equal protection arising from her arrest at that time for driving under the influence; she alleges that the officers arrested her solely because they believed her to be a lesbian. For the reasons explained herein, with respect to both plaintiffs, we affirm the district court's award of summary judgment to the City of Florence and to the Boone County defendants in their official capacities. However, we reverse the dismissal of Black's complaint against the individual officers, and we also reverse the dismissal of Stemler's complaint against the individual officers with respect to her equal protection claim.
On February 18, 1994, at about 10:45 p.m., Conni Black and her boyfriend, Steve Kritis, arrived at Willie's Saloon in the Ramada Inn in Florence, Kentucky. 1 Both Black and Kritis had been drinking heavily. While line dancing, Black met Susan Stemler. Around 2:00 a.m., the two went to the women's restroom and discussed problems that each had with their respective boyfriends. During this conversation, Black told Stemler that she wanted to leave Kritis. According to one witness, Christine Stillwell:
Steve Kritis then burst into the restroom and slung the door to the restroom hard. He came into the restroom yelling. He stated in part: "If you don't get your fucking sister out of here, I'll kill the bitch." He yelled this at Laura Stemler.
He grabbed Conni Black on the arm as he screamed at her. He slammed her against a toilet stall. He then yanked her out of the restroom. After he left the restroom, I could still hear him screaming outside of the restroom.... Conni came back into the restroom. He yanked her out physically of the restroom a second time.
At this point, I wondered why nobody had called the police. When I went out of the restroom and into the lobby of the Ramada, I observed Kritis pushing Conni around in the parking lot. As I went outside into the parking lot, I observed Kritis still pushing Conni....
Kritis put his forehead against Conni's and put his hands behind his back. For every step Conni took to flee Kritis, Kritis took one forward still pressing his forehead against hers. He then made a fist to hit her. He looked at me and saw that I was watching and released his fist.
According to Stemler, after Kritis removed Black from the restroom, Kritis slammed Black against a concrete wall in the hotel lobby; Black's head hit the wall and she briefly passed out. Black asked Stemler to drive her home, and Stemler agreed. As they were leaving, Kritis struck Stemler in the back of the head with a blunt object. Stemler and Black got into Stemler's car and drove away at about 2:15 a.m. Kritis pursued them in his truck. Kritis did not have his headlights on. At one point during the chase, Kritis rear-ended Stemler's car with his truck in an attempt to make her car stop. A witness, Terry Barker, was driving east on U.S. 42 in Florence at the time; he saw that Kritis was chasing the women and that the women were in obvious distress, and decided to follow the vehicles.
According to Barker, at one point the truck got ahead of the car and forced it down Woodland Avenue, which ends in a cul-de-sac. Stemler pulled her car into a driveway, and Kritis stopped his car behind her to block her access to the street. Fortunately, the driveway belonged to William Minnick, a retired Florence police officer. His wife, Nancy Minnick, heard a horn blowing at about 2:30 a.m. When she opened her door, she saw Kritis standing in her driveway on the passenger side of the car. Kritis was hitting the car window and yelling. The car backed out around the truck and drove up the street. Kritis jumped in the car and again gave chase; according to Barker, he was driving at about sixty miles per hour on the sidewalk of the residential street. By this point, Mr. Minnick was awake and dressed; he called 911, and then got in his car and followed Kritis and Stemler. Barker also continued to follow them.
After the vehicles pulled back on to U.S. 42, they stopped at a light at Tanners Lane. Barker flashed his lights to alert a nearby police officer, defendant Lieutenant Thomas Dusing, an officer of the Florence Police Department, who was responding to the 911 call. When Dusing pulled up to Barker, Barker informed him that there was a "serious problem" with the two vehicles ahead of him, and that Kritis appeared to be a threat to the safety of the two women. After speaking with Barker, Dusing pulled his cruiser in front of Stemler's car and Kritis's truck at the intersection. As he left the cruiser, Stemler jumped out of her car and ran to him. Stemler told Dusing that Kritis was drunk, that he had assaulted both her and Black, that he had threatened to kill her, and that he had placed both of them in danger by chasing after them at high speed. She was obviously emotionally distraught, and cried while she related the evening's events to Dusing. While Dusing spoke with Stemler, four other officers arrived at the scene in separate cars: officers Bobby Joe Wince and John Dolan of the Florence Police Department, and officers Rob Reuthe and Chris Alsip of the Boone County Sheriff's Office. Each of the four would later be named as defendants in this litigation along with Dusing.
During Stemler's conversation with Dusing, Reuthe approached Kritis, who was seated in his truck. According to Reuthe's testimony, Kritis told him that Stemler was a lesbian, 2 and that she was kidnapping his girlfriend. After speaking with Stemler, Dusing approached Reuthe; Dusing would later testify that Reuthe told him at that time that Stemler was a lesbian. Reuthe also told Dusing that Kritis smelled of alcohol, but that he had not tested Kritis for intoxication. Dusing then approached Kritis, who repeated his assertion that Stemler was a lesbian. Kritis also asked Dusing to bring Black to his truck; Dusing told him that he would see what he could do. Dusing asked Kritis whether he had seen Stemler driving the car, and whether he would be willing to testify against Stemler.
Dusing would later submit a police report claiming that he did not smell alcohol on Kritis's breath at that time. This claim is contrary to his contemporaneous statements to Wince and to Mr. Minnick that Kritis smelled of alcohol. A blood test taken over two hours later would reveal that Kritis had a blood alcohol level of .115, which indicates that at the time of the police stop, his blood alcohol level was probably between .155 and .175, at least one-and-a-half times the legal limit in Kentucky of .10. 3 Subsequent observers would also testify that, over an hour after the police stop, it was immediately apparent that Kritis was very drunk. Nevertheless, neither Dusing nor any other officer ever tested Kritis for intoxication, or even asked him to step out of the truck.
At some point, Dusing asked Wince to test Stemler for intoxication. By that time, Wince had already heard Kritis's allegation that Stemler was a lesbian. Wince did not find any of the standard DUI indicators in examining Stemler; she did not have affected After performing the field tests, Wince conferred with Dusing and Dolan. By this time, all three officers had heard Kritis's claim that Stemler was a lesbian. Dusing decided that they should arrest Stemler for driving under the influence, and the other officers agreed. Dusing would later concede that, in deciding to arrest Stemler and not Kritis, he relied on Kritis's version of events more than he did Stemler's. Wince approached Stemler, informed her that she was under arrest, and asked her who she would like to tow her car. Stemler broke into tears, pointed at Kritis, and asked Wince, As she was pointing, Wince grabbed her arm, pulled it behind her, and placed her in handcuffs. 5
speech, impaired balance, impaired walking, or impaired coordination, and she did not seem disoriented. According to Wince, Stemler failed the horizontal nystagmus gaze field test, a test in which uncontrolled movement in a suspect's eyes may indicate...To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Cahoo v. Sas Inst. Inc., Case Number 17–10657
...infliction of injury ... or some other governmental action that is ‘arbitrary in the constitutional sense.’ " Stemler v. City of Florence , 126 F.3d 856, 869 (6th Cir. 1997) (quoting Lewellen v. Metro. Gov't of Nashville & Davidson County , 34 F.3d 345, 351 (6th Cir. 1994) ). However, subst......
-
Mettler Walloon v. Melrose Twp.
...any government interest" and that is "conscience-shocking" in nature. Lewis, 523 U.S. at 849, 118 S.Ct. 1708; see Stemler v. City of Florence, 126 F.3d 856, 869 (6th Cir.1997); Lewellen v. Metro. Gov't of Nashville & Davidson County, 34 F.3d 345, 350-51 (6th Mitchell held that the defendant......
-
Andrews v. City of Mentor
...one of those few-and-far-between cases where the defendant's conduct truly lacks a rational basis. See, e.g. , Stemler v. City of Florence , 126 F.3d 856, 874 (6th Cir. 1997). In City of Detroit and Bower the district court had identified the "likely non-discriminatory reasons" for disparat......
-
Gambrel v. Knox Cnty.
...academy training to reject claims against municipalities that offered little additional training themselves. See Stemler v. City of Florence , 126 F.3d 856, 865 (6th Cir. 1997) ; see also Deruso v. City of Detroit , 121 F. App'x 64, 66 (6th Cir. 2005) ; Franklin v. Messmer , 111 F. App'x 38......
-
Table Of Cases
...Indus. v. Mor-Flo Indus., 883 F.2d 1573 (Fed. Cir. 1989), 58. State Oil v. Khan, 522 U.S. 3 (1997), 125. Stemler v. City of Florence, 126 F.3d 856 (6th Cir. 1997), 194. Stiftung v. Renishaw PLC, 945 F.2d 1173 (Fed. Cir. 1991), 44. Strattec Sec. Corp. v. Gen. Auto. Specialty Co., 126 F.3d 14......
-
Appeals To The Federal Circuit
...a complaint by agreeing, even implicitly, to litigate fully an issue not raised in the original pleadings.” Stemler v. City of Florence, 126 F.3d 856, 872 (6th Cir. 1997). 28. Chamberlain Group v. Skylink Tech., 381 F.3d 1178, 1189 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (“[f]or the purposes of determining Federa......
-
The myth of superiority.
...favor of plaintiffs in gay rights cases since 1977, most of which have emanated from the Ninth Circuit. See Stemler v. City of Florence, 126 F.3d 856 (6th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 118 S. Ct. 1796 (1998) (selective prosecution of lesbian articulates equal protection claim); Pitcherskaia v. ......