Gaddis ex rel. Gaddis v. Redford Tp.

Decision Date26 March 2004
Docket NumberNo. 02-1483.,02-1483.
PartiesJoseph GADDIS, by his next friend and guardian, Erma GADDIS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. REDFORD TOWNSHIP, a municipal corporation; City of Dearborn Heights, a municipal corporation; Matthew Bain, in his official and individual capacities; John Burdick, in his official and individual capacities; Richard Duffany, in his official and individual capacities, jointly and severally, Defendants-Appellees.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Justin C. Ravitz (briefed), Sommers, Schwartz, Silver & Schwartz, Southfield, MI, Mark R. Bendure (argued and briefed), Bendure & Thomas, Detroit, MI, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Ethan Vinson, Joseph Nimako (argued and briefed), Cummings, McClorey, Davis & Acho, Livonia, MI, Eric D. Smith (argued and briefed), Christine A. Fisher (briefed), Hopkins, Curran & Smith, Southfield, MI, John H. Dise, Jr. (argued and briefed), Dise & Associates, Southfield, MI, Richard J. Corriveau, Northville, MI, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before: BOGGS, Chief Judge; and KRUPANSKY and CLAY, Circuit Judges.

BOGGS, C.J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which KRUPANSKY, J., joined. CLAY, J. (pp. 777-86), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

BOGGS, Chief Judge.

Joseph Gaddis, a mentally ill man proceeding by his next friend, appeals from the district court's grant of summary judgment to the defendants in his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action. Mr. Gaddis claims that the individual defendants, members of two Michigan municipal police departments, violated his Fourth Amendment rights by stopping his car without justification, and by using excessive force in an ensuing confrontation that culminated in two officers shooting Gaddis. The district court concluded that Gaddis had failed as a matter of law to show that the defendants violated his constitutional rights. For the following reasons, we affirm.

I

Summary judgment is proper when there is no genuine issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). In our de novo review of the district court's grant of summary judgment, we must resolve disputes of fact in favor of the nonmoving party, Gaddis, drawing all reasonable inferences in his favor. Burchett v. Kiefer, 310 F.3d 937, 941-42, 945 (6th Cir.2002). The application of this standard is complicated here by the fact that Gaddis, the only witness to the events at issue apart from the defendant officers and their colleagues, has been stipulated incompetent to testify due to mental illness. As discussed below, the record on appeal includes a videotape that captured many of the events at issue. We have carefully examined this tape along with the witnesses' testimony in reviewing the district court's judgment.

II

Gaddis's encounter with the police began shortly before 4:00 a.m. on April 12, 1999, in Redford Township, Michigan. Defendant Matthew Bain, a Redford Township officer, spotted Gaddis's car while patrolling alone on Telegraph Road. (The mounted video camera on Officer Bain's patrol car yielded the tape that is the chief visual record of the encounter. However, because the car's audio recording system was not working, the tape is silent.) Bain saw Gaddis weaving within the right lane: his car edged to the left to touch the divider line twice in a few hundred feet. Bain testified that Gaddis was also driving somewhat slowly, and the tape tends to confirm this, as it shows other cars passing Gaddis to the left on the sparsely trafficked road.

Bain also testified that he saw Gaddis slumping to the right inside his car as he held the wheel. The videotape neither reinforces nor throws doubt on this testimony. The interior of the car is dark on the tape and Gaddis's posture cannot be made out, but the resolution of the video image is not high, and the camera's point of view is slightly different from the vehicle driver's. Bain pulled up alongside Gaddis's car and confirmed to his satisfaction that Gaddis was leaning to the right, toward the passenger's seat. Bain testified that he suspected Gaddis was driving while intoxicated, a crime in Michigan. See Mich. Comp. L. § 257.625.

Bain pulled behind Gaddis's car and turned on his flashers and siren. When Gaddis failed to stop, Bain also employed his air horn. Gaddis kept driving until he reached a red light. Bain then left his patrol car and approached Gaddis's stopped auto on foot. When the light changed to green, Gaddis turned right and drove away. Bain ran back to his car and pursued Gaddis again, and finally succeeded in pulling him over after about a block.

Bain left his car again and walked over to Gaddis's car. The officer had his sidearm drawn when he stepped out of the car, but holstered it as he walked up to Gaddis's driver side window. Bain asked Gaddis for his license and registration, to which Gaddis replied that his license was suspended (which turned out not to be true), and handed Bain an expired Michigan driver's license. By this time a number of other uniformed police officers had arrived on the scene, including Dearborn Heights Officers John Burdick and Richard Duffany, who had been eating at a nearby restaurant and decided to assist Bain after hearing him drive by in pursuit of Gaddis.

Bain told Gaddis to get out of the car. Gaddis opened the door and stepped out with his hands inside his pockets. Bain testified that he ordered Gaddis to remove his hands from his pockets. The tape shows that shortly after Gaddis emerged, Bain grabbed him by the collar and pulled him slightly away from the car. Gaddis then removed his hands from his pockets, prompting a dramatic reaction: Bain jumped back, visibly alarmed, and he and the other officers drew their sidearms, pointing them at Gaddis. Officers Bain and Burdick later testified that Gaddis had a knife in his hand, while Duffany saw something shiny but wasn't sure what it was. (The videotape image does not permit the viewer to verify directly whether Gaddis was holding a knife, a point we will discuss further in Part IV of this opinion.) At about this time a fourth officer arrived on the scene, Officer Champoux of the Redford Township department. Champoux pointed a shotgun at Gaddis, but testified that he could not tell if Gaddis had anything in his hand.

There ensued a standoff of two to three minutes' duration. The officers testified that they told Gaddis repeatedly to drop his knife, and that Gaddis said something incoherent to Bain along the lines of: "Why are you doing this to me, Chris, like you did to me in California?" None of the officers was named Chris or had ever encountered Gaddis in California. Bain later testified that the "Chris" remark suggested to him that Gaddis was not acting rationally. Officer Burdick testified that he did not hear the remark. On the tape, Gaddis can be seen apparently speaking to the officers during the standoff. He gestures with his hands, but keeps them fairly low at his side.

Gaddis then stated that he wanted to leave.1 Bain stepped forward and sprayed Gaddis in the face with pepper spray. Meanwhile, Officer Burdick had been walking around to the passenger side of Gaddis's car. Seconds after Bain used the pepper spray, Burdick clambered over the trunk of Gaddis's car and tried to grab Gaddis. Gaddis reacted violently: he wheeled and struck at Burdick with his right, then his left hand. Gaddis's right-handed strike was a windmilling motion arguably suggestive of an attempt to stab with a knife. Bain and Duffany testified that they saw Gaddis stab at Officer Burdick with a knife. They both began shooting, firing a total of 16 shots at Gaddis in a single burst. Burdick first heard the shots as he was falling backward over the back of Gaddis's car. Gaddis was struck in the torso, right arm, buttocks, and left thigh, and fell to the ground. Champoux did not fire.

Evidence technicians recovered a knife from the street near Gaddis's car, but did not fingerprint it.

Gaddis was charged with assault with intent to murder and with fleeing and eluding police. On June 8, 1999, he was found guilty in a bench trial of felonious assault (a lesser included offense), and not guilty on the fleeing count. Pursuant to a post-trial motion, however, Gaddis was later adjudged not guilty of the felonious assault charge as well.

Gaddis filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Officers Bain, Burdick, and Duffaney, alleging that they illegally detained him and used excessive force against him in violation of the Fourth Amendment. (He also asserted a claim of discrimination on the basis of his race and his mental illness, which he has abandoned on appeal.) He also sued the municipalities of Redford Township and Dearborn Heights, claiming that they maintained unlawful policies that caused the incident.

Plaintiff introduced the affidavit of James Fyfe, Ph.D., a former police officer and a professor of criminal justice. Prof. Fyfe opined that the officers unreasonably deviated from proper police techniques for dealing with emotionally disturbed persons ("EDPs"). In particular, he testified that officers using correct police techniques would recognize that "techniques of intimidation and force" are not likely to work on EDPs in the way they may work on rational persons. He testified that the police should instead have picked a single officer to talk calmly to the EDP, and should have refrained from unnecessary displays of force. Fyfe criticized Bain's use of pepper spray, and described Burdick's attempt to tackle Gaddis by surprise from behind as a "terrible tactic."

The defendants moved for summary judgment, and the district court granted summary judgment on all claims on February 20, 2002. While the individual defendants had all raised the defense of qualified immunity, the district court did not reach the qualified immunity issue, but held that the defendants were entitled to...

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