Cumings v. City of Muncie

• Decision Date: 30 September 2021
• Docket Number: 1:19-cv-04406-TWP-MPB
• Parties: TAYLOR CUMINGS, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF MUNCIE, and RYAN MCCORKLE, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Indiana

TAYLOR CUMINGS, Plaintiff,
v.
CITY OF MUNCIE, and RYAN MCCORKLE, Defendants.

No. 1:19-cv-04406-TWP-MPB

United States District Court, S.D. Indiana, Indianapolis Division

September 30, 2021

Jeffrey S. McQuary

BROWN TOMPKINS LORY

Casey C. Stansbury

FREEMAN MATHIS & GARY, LLP

Tia J. Combs

FREEMAN MATHIS & GARY, LLP

Daenayia Hudson

FREEMAN MATHIS & GARY, LLP

Matthew L. Kelsey

DEFUR VORAN LLP

James R. Williams

DEFUR VORAN LLP

ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS' MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

Hon. Tanya Walton Pratt, Chief Judge United States District Court

This matter is before the Court on a Motion for Summary Judgment filed pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 by Defendants City of Muncie ("Muncie") and Ryan McCorkle ("Officer McCorkle") (collectively, "Defendants") (Filing No. 39). Plaintiff Taylor Cumings ("Ms. Cumings") filed this lawsuit for civil rights violations following her arrest for neglect of a dependent. Following discovery, the Defendants filed a Motion for Summary Judgment on Ms. Cumings' claims, arguing that probable cause existed to support her arrest, so her claims fail as a matter of law. For the following reasons, the Court grants the Defendants' Motion.

I.BACKGROUND

The following facts are not necessarily objectively true, but as required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, the facts are presented in the light most favorable to Ms. Cumings as the non-moving party. See Zerante v. DeLuca, 555 F.3d 582, 584 (7th Cir. 2009); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255 (1986).

Ms. Cumings is an adult citizen who resides in Delaware County, Indiana. She is a single mother of two boys. Her sons were ages seven and four at the time of the events giving rise to this case. Muncie is a government unit located in Delaware County, Indiana. It operates the Muncie

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(Indiana) Police Department. Officer McCorkle is an adult citizen who resides in Delaware County, Indiana, and is employed as a law enforcement officer for the Muncie Police Department (Filing No. 1 at 2-3; Filing No. 11 at 2-3, ¶¶ 7, 8, 15).

In 2018, Ms. Cumings worked as a youth support specialist at the Youth Opportunity Center (the "YOC"), a residential facility for troubled youth in Muncie. The YOC was approximately fifteen to twenty minutes from Ms. Cumings' home. She was scheduled to work her regular shift on December 18, 2018, but the day before, her four-year-old son had a fever of 100º. His school required him to stay home for twenty-four hours after the fever ended. By December 18, 2018, Cummings' four-year-old son felt fine, but he was not yet able to attend school. Her seven-year-old son was not sick. Although the YOC gave its employees a generous amount of time off, Ms. Cumings had already exhausted the amount of time she could take off without advance notice. She was worried that if she called in to take the day off, without giving YOC advance notice, she would be fired (Filing No. 46-1 at 5-8, 24).

Knowing that her youngest son was unable to attend school on December 18, 2018, Ms. Cumings called everyone she could think of the day before in an effort to find a babysitter. Her Aunt Amanda as well as her son's grandmother could not babysit. Because she could not find a baby sitter and could not lose her job, Ms. Cumings decided to have to leave her children at home alone. She confided in Aunt Amanda and others that she was going to have to leave the children at home because she could not get a babysitter, and none of them expressed any concern that this was dangerous. Ms. Cumings believed that they were not concerned because they knew her children and recognized that they were smart and mature for their age. Ms. Cumings had left the boys alone once before, and nothing had gone awry. Id. at 13-16.

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On the morning of December 18, 2018, Ms. Cumings explained to her sons that she could not find a babysitter and she could not miss work. She explained to her seven-year-old son that he would have stay home from school to be in charge of his younger brother (the four-year-old). She told him to prepare food for them if they got hungry. She left her cell phone with them, and she instructed her older son to call 911 in an emergency but that his first contact should be with her. They also could call Aunt Amanda. She instructed them not to answer the door if anyone knocked but to call her or Aunt Amanda. She told them that she would return home after lunch.

Ms. Cumings left her house to go to work around 6:40 a.m. She called from work at least every hour to check on the boys. Id. at 8-9, 15-16. Later that afternoon, a coworker informed Ms. Cumings that the police were on the telephone. She accepted the call and was instructed by a dispatch officer to return home. She asked what was happening, but they refused to tell her. Ms. Cumings was too hysterical to drive herself and asked a coworker to drive her home, which they did. Id. at 9.

Shortly after 12:30 p.m., a concerned neighbor had called the Delaware County Emergency Communications, stating that a seven-year-old child was left home to take care of a sick four-year-old child. At that point, Ms. Cumings' children had been home alone for approximately six hours. Officer McCorkle was dispatched to Ms. Cumings' house in Muncie on the report from the anonymous citizen that the boys were home alone. When Officer McCorkle arrived at the house, the children refused to open the door to him, one of them looked out the window, and the older son called their aunt and told her the police were at the door. Aunt Amanda arrived at the house, and the children opened the door for her. Officer McCorkle did a welfare check on the children and a sweep of the house; the children appeared nervous, the younger child was coughing, and the older child appeared to be healthy. He observed that the children had access to food, water, and

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toys. There did not appear to be anything dangerous in the house other than normal household items such as kitchen utensils. He observed that no adults were inside the home with the children. Officer McCorkle had dispatch contact Ms. Cumings, who eventually arrived at the house. Officer McCorkle described Ms. Cumings as nervous and scared but cooperative (Filing No. 1 at 3; Filing No. 11 at 3, ¶ 15; Filing No. 46-2 at 6-7, 9; Filing No. 46-1 at 8; Filing No. 41-2 at 2).

The interactions and conversations among Officer McCorkle, Ms. Cumings, the two children, Aunt Amanda, and the grandmother who had arrived at the home before Ms. Cumings arrived were recorded on Officer McCorkle's body camera video. The body camera video recording shows that, once Aunt Amanda arrived and convinced the children to open the door for her, Officer McCorkle and Aunt Amanda entered the home. Soon after entering the home, Aunt Amanda asked the older child why he was not at school and then asked, "Your mom left you here to take care of your brother?" (Filing No. 43, Manually-filed Video at 12:49-12:59.) While Officer McCorkle was doing a sweep of the home, he asked police dispatch to have somebody from the Department of Child Services ("DCS") call him on his cell phone. Id. at 13:35. The grandmother arrived while Officer McCorkle was doing a sweep of the home. When she entered the house, she asked...