Ayala v. Rosales

• Decision Date: 08 July 2015
• Docket Number: Case No: 13 C 4425
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois
• Parties: Michael Ayala, Plaintiff, v. Chicago Police Officer Rosales, et al., Defendants.

Michael Ayala, Plaintiff, v. Chicago Police Officer Rosales, et al., Defendants.

Case No: 13 C 4425

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

July 8, 2015

Judge Ronald A. Guzmán

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

For the reasons stated below, Plaintiff's motion for a new trial [127] is denied.

STATEMENT

Plaintiff filed a lawsuit alleging false arrest, excessive force and failure to intervene against several Chicago Police Officers related to his arrest on May 8, 2012. After a trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the defendants. Plaintiff moves for a new trial under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(a), asserting several bases for relief. The Court assumes knowledge of the general facts of the case.

Standard of Review

Under Rule 59(a), a "court may only order a new trial if the jury's verdict is against the manifest weight of the evidence, . . . or if for other reasons the trial was not fair to the moving party." Willis v. Lepine, 687 F.3d 826, 836 (7th Cir. 2012) (citation omitted). In instances where the issue is whether the Court erred by admitting or excluding evidence, the conclusion "turns on an analysis of the evidentiary ruling in the context of the entire trial record." Barber v. City of Chi., 725 F.3d 702, 705 (7th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). District courts have wide discretion in determining whether to grant a motion for a new trial, Mejia v. Cook Cnty., Ill., 650 F.3d 631, 634 (7th Cir. 2011), and the Court's evidentiary rulings are given particulardeference. See Jordan v. Binns, 712 F.3d 1123, 1137 (7th Cir. 2013) (evidentiary rulings are reviewed for an abuse of discretion).

Before addressing Plaintiff's claims, the Court notes that he failed to provide relevant portions of the transcript in support of certain assertions of error. Defendants have provided some transcript excerpts in support of their opposition to the motion for a new trial, but Plaintiff's failure to provide all of the necessary record citations makes it impossible for this Court to properly address his claims of error. Parr v. Nicholls State Univ., No. CIV.A. 09-3576, 2012 WL 1032905, at *3 (E.D. La. Mar. 27, 2012) (on a motion for a new trial, noting that "without the benefit of citation to the trial transcript, the Court has no basis for determining that any error occurred"). Thus, while the Court has attempted to the best of its ability to address Plaintiff's claims on the merits in the analysis that follows, any arguments lacking necessary record support are, in the first instance, denied as waived. Ratliff v. City of Chi., No. 10-CV-739, 2013 WL 3388745, at *1 (N.D. Ill. July 8, 2013) (in addressing motion for new trial, stating that "to the extent that citation to the record would be necessary to support a position, Defendants' failure to cite to the trial record or the pretrial conference record will not be excused"). See also Hicks v. Avery Drei, LLC, 654 F.3d 739, 744 (7th Cir. 2011) (in challenging evidentiary admissions in lower court, failure to cite to transcripts results in forfeiture).

Prior Arrest and Lawsuit

Plaintiff first argues that the Court improperly granted the defendants' eighth motion in limine, restricting Plaintiff from offering testimony regarding his prior civil rights lawsuit against other Eighth District police officers. Plaintiff contends that the defendants' argument that allowing such testimony would essentially insert a Monell claim into the case withoutPlaintiff having pled one was a "red herring." But the Court did not grant the motion based on the concern of creating a Monell claim; rather, the Court stated:

THE COURT: . . . Well, here's my ruling. I'm trying to balance the probative value of all of this evidence as to prior relationship between the parties in this case against the rather strong likelihood in this particular case, given all the facts that have been thrown around here, that if we allow all of this in, this will be a case that will be tried based upon what happened ten months ago and a lot of irrelevant and barely relevant evidence and not about the issues that are at the core of the case before me at this time.

Plaintiff can elicit however it wants, through his own testimony or cross-examination of officers or whatever means within the rules of evidence, that the plaintiff was previously arrested by officers of this same district; that he was charged, that he filed a lawsuit against them; and, that the lawsuit was settled. That's all.

(Defs.' Resp., Ex. A, Dkt. # 132-1, at 41.) After some further discussion, the Court amended its ruling, stating that no testimony regarding the results of the prior lawsuit would be allowed. (Id. at 43.)

Plaintiff acknowledges that he was permitted to offer testimony that he had been previously arrested and criminally charged, he prevailed at trial on the criminal charges against him, and he filed a civil rights lawsuit against those officers.¹ He then conclusorily asserts that "he was denied the opportunity to fully explore his theory of the case and delve into what occurred in that [prior] matter for several reasons[,] including his state of mind and manner in which he acted, the Defendant Officers['] actions and the Defendant Officer's [sic] credibility regarding their knowledge" of Plaintiff. (Pl.'s Mot. New Trial, Dkt. # 127, at 4.)

Plaintiff, however, fails to specify how this led to the denial of a fair trial. Indeed, theCourt notes that it expressly stated at the pretrial conference that "[P]laintiff can argue that these officers must have known [of Plaintiff and the prior civil rights lawsuit] because they're from the same district" and thus had motive to arrest Plaintiff without probable cause and use excessive force during the May 8, 2012 arrest, and "[t]he officers can argue they didn't know." (Defs.' Resp., Ex. A, Dkt. # 132-1, at 43.) Plaintiff was permitted to ask the defendants at trial whether they knew other officers in the Eighth District. Plaintiff does not attach a transcript of his closing argument nor can the Court recall with any specificity the content of that argument. Nevertheless, the Court permitted Plaintiff to argue that the officers who conducted the arrest at issue must have known him and that he had filed a civil rights lawsuit against officers in the Eighth District.

Accordingly, the Court denies this basis for relief.

Defendants' Knowledge of Plaintiff from Publicity Regarding Prior Arrest and Lawsuit

At the pretrial conference, the Court stated that:

[I]f the officers deny that they knew the plaintiff, [he] can bring out any direct evidence of knowledge, such as statements made the day after or during the event by these officers that would indicate that they knew who the plaintiff was. No evidence as to . . . press conferences, YouTube, speeches by the superintendent of police, or anything else [will be permitted].

(Id. at 41-42.)

Plaintiff argues that it was improper for the Court to bar him from questioning the defendants about the publicity that his prior arrest and civil rights lawsuit received because it precluded him from challenging the defendants' testimony that they did not know who Plaintiff was when they arrested him. According to Plaintiff, he had a right to impeach the defendants with evidence of the media coverage of the prior arrest and contends that "the fact that thePlaintiff was deprived of this essential opportunity to adequately cross examine Defendants was an abuse of discretion . . . depriving [Plaintiff] of a substantial right." (Pl.'s Reply, Dkt. # 140, at 5.)

As indicated in the portion of the final pretrial conference quoted above, the Court denied Plaintiff's request to elicit testimony as to the defendants' knowledge of the publicity on the ground that its probative value was substantially outweighed by the concern regarding irrelevant satellite litigation and that the jury would improperly decide the case based on facts that occurred ten months before the arrest at issue. At a sidebar during the trial, Plaintiff's counsel again argued that he wanted to elicit testimony from Plaintiff that he had taken a video of the prior arrest, posted it on YouTube and was subsequently contacted by numerous television stations, which broadcasted the news. (Defs.' Resp., Ex. B, Dkt. # 132-2, at 38.) The Court reiterated that it had already decided the issue and stated that "[i]t's clear that if we go into this line of inquiry, we're going to end up retrying the excessive force case that [Plaintiff] filed before this and having all sorts of testimony about what was seen on the video, what could have been seen on the video, [and] who did what to whom." (Id. at 40.)

While arguing that the publicity evidence had probative value and his inability to question the officers about it denied him a substantial right, Plaintiff wholly fails to address the Court's countervailing concern that the probative value was substantially outweighed by the danger of distracting and misleading the jury with irrelevant information and needlessly prolonging the trial were the evidence admitted. The Court finds no basis on which to conclude that its balancing of the probative value with concerns of wasting time and misleading the jury under Federal Rule of Evidence 403 was in error.

Plaintiff asserts at length that he was prejudiced by the Court's ruling excluding the publicity evidence because he was not allowed to testify that on the night of the incident, "he drew a correlation between the 8^th District officer calling him out by name and the negative publicity he had brought to the officer's intra-district colleagues [with respect to his prior arrest], compelling him to flee." (Pl.'s Mot. New Trial, Dkt. # 127, at 7-8.) In other words, Plaintiff asserts that he ran away from the defendant officers in this case because he feared that they were angry with him for having posted on social media videos and/or comments related to his prior arrest that may have placed...