Elhady v. Bradley

• Decision Date: 10 February 2020
• Docket Number: Case No. 17-cv-12969
• Citation: 438 F.Supp.3d 797
• Parties: Anas ELHADY, Plaintiff, v. Blake BRADLEY, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan

438 F.Supp.3d 797

Anas ELHADY, Plaintiff,

v.Blake BRADLEY, et al., Defendants.

Case No. 17-cv-12969

United States District Court, E.D. Michigan, Southern Division.

Signed February 10, 2020

Ahmed M. Mohamed, Astoria, NY, Carolyn M. Homer, Latham & Watkins LLP, Gadeir I. Abbas, Law Office of Gadeir Abbas, Justin Mark Sadowsky, Lena F. Masri, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff.

Benjamin A. Anchill, James J. Carty, U.S. Attorney's Office, Detroit, MI, for Defendants.

OPINION & ORDER GRANTING MOTIONS FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT FOR DEFENDANTS TONYA LAPSLEY (Dkt. 99), DANIEL BECKHAM (Dkt. 100), JOSEPH PIRANEO (Dkt. 100), AND JASON FERGUSON (Dkt. 101), AND DENYING SUMMARY JUDGMENT FOR DEFENDANT BLAKE BRADLEY (Dkt. 101)

MARK A. GOLDSMITH, United States District Judge

Plaintiff Anas Elhady, an American citizen, claims that officers of United States Customs and Border Protection ("CBP") subjected him to unreasonably cold temperatures when they detained him as he attempted to re-enter the country after visiting Canada. Elhady has presented evidence that his core temperature dropped substantially while he was in custody for at least four hours, supporting the inference that he was detained under conditions violative of his due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. While Elhady has presented sufficient evidence that he suffered an unconstitutional deprivation, he has failed to show that the officers were deliberately indifferent to his health and safety, except as to Defendant Blake Bradley. Bradley indisputably spent significant time with Elhady during his detention and would have known about the cell's impermissible conditions if they in fact existed, supporting the inference that he was indifferent to Elhady's plight. Because of Bradley's personal involvement in the actionable conduct, the claim against him may proceed to trial, but summary judgment is granted in favor of the other four remaining Defendants—Supervisory CBP Officer Tonya Lapsley, and CBP Officers Daniel Beckham, Joseph Piraneo, and Jason Ferguson. Elhady has not presented sufficient evidence of their involvement to show that they were deliberately indifferent to the conditions of his cell.¹

I. BACKGROUND

Much of the timeline of Elhady's detainment is undisputed and corroborated by ambulance, hospital, and CBP records. The core factual dispute is whether the temperature in Elhady's cell was unreasonably cold. A review of the summary judgment record on the timeline and temperature follows.

A. The Timeline of Elhady's Confinement, Hospital Visit, and Release

1. Elhady's Seizure at the Ambassador Bridge

Anas Elhady is a United State citizen of Yemeni origin. Pl. Statement of Facts ¶ 1 ("PSOF") (Dkt. 112). Elhady travelled from Detroit, Michigan, to Canada on April 10, 2015, and attempted to return later that night. Id. ¶¶ 1-6; CBP TECS Query, Ex. 1 to Resp. at 2-3 ("TECS Query") (Dkt. 113-1).² After arriving at the Ambassador Bridge primary inspection booth around 1:43 a.m., CBP officers asked Elhady to exit the car, performed a pat-down search, and handcuffed him. PSOF ¶¶ 6-7; Elhady Dep., Ex. 11 to Resp., at 43-45 (Dkt. 114-1). Elhady claims that he was detained and interrogated solely because of his placement on the "federal terrorist watchlist." PSOF ¶ 18. Defendants have neither confirmed nor denied this allegation, and they assert that his status on the Terrorist Screening Database is "irrelevant for the purposes of this motion," Pew Statement of Material Facts ¶ 1 n.1 (Dkt. 96), a view with which the Court agrees.³

After Elhady exited his car, CBP officers escorted him to the secondary inspection building at the Ambassador Bridge, where he was placed in one of the facility's two detention cells at approximately 1:45 a.m. PSOF ¶¶ 19-22; Sosnowski Dep., Ex. 21 to Resp., at 69, 135 (Dkt 114-11).⁴ The officers performed a search, and according to Elhady, the officers took Elhady's shoes, belt, watch, and jacket before removing his handcuffs and leaving him in the cell. Elhady Dep. at 48-58. Piraneo conducted the pat-down, which Beckham witnessed. TECS Query at 10. Elhady maintains that he was left in the cell wearing a shirt, pants, and some thin socks. PSOF ¶ 27. Elhady stated in his deposition that he was also wearing undershorts and an undershirt. Elhady Dep. at 54.

2. Elhady's Secondary Inspection and Detention

Elhady's secondary inspection lasted from approximately 2:00 a.m. to approximately 6:00 a.m. Sosnowski Dep. at 129. CBP records provide only a limited account of Elhady's whereabouts and activity during that timeframe. See Sosnowski Dep. at 79-86, 129-131.

CBP cannot locate the Personal Detention Log Sheets and the Master Detention Log Sheet. Id. at 26, 105. Therefore, CBP was unable to answer, or substantiate answers to, certain questions Elhady asked. For example, Sosnowski testified that he had information that Elhady was removed from his cell to be interviewed at some point during his detention. Id. at 76-77. However, that "information" was the fact that CBP has a practice of not conducting secondary inspections in detention cells. CBP lacks a record of adherence to that practice with respect to Elhady's secondary inspection, because the logs are missing. Id. Sosnowski testified that Bradley's interview of Elhady, which formed the basis of most of the information in the TECS Query, took place between approximately 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., but he could not provide a specific time. Id. at 129. The logs would also have contained records of whether officers followed the policy requiring an officer to check on a detainee every 15 minutes, and which officers performed those 15-minute checks. Id. at 61-62. Any officer on duty could have performed the 15-minute checks. Id. at 61.⁵

CBP produced some information about the detention, and some of the Defendants had partial recollections of the events. Lapsley was the supervisory CBP officer on duty the night of the detainment. See Lapsley Dep., Ex. 20 to Resp., at 16-21 (Dkt. 114-10). Lapsley initially assigned Ferguson and Bradley as case officers to interview Elhady and prepare a report. PSOF ¶ 32; TECS Query at 6. Ferguson said that he told Lapsley that he could not "do [the] case" because he was acting as the "lead-in" officer that night. Ferguson Dep., Ex. 13 to Resp., at 35-36 (Dkt. 114-3).⁶ According to Ferguson, Lapsley told Ferguson to continue doing lead-in and assigned the case to Bradley. Id.

Bradley testified that he does not remember anything from the day Elhady was in CBP custody. Bradley Dep., Ex. 16 to Resp., at 11 (Dkt. 114-6). However, based on his review of the records, he said that he did not doubt that he was the case officer assigned to Elhady's case, meaning that he interviewed Elhady and wrote a report. Id. at 11-12. According to the CBP records, Bradley interviewed Elhady and wrote the Secondary Inspection Report, which he submitted at 9:52 EDT on April 11, 2015. TECS Query at 10-11. Other officers would have interacted with Elhady, either to perform the 15-minute checks or to escort him to an interview room, but only Bradley would have interviewed Elhady. Sosnowski Dep. at 75. Although Bradley denied interviewing Elhady in his cell, he does not appear to deny having interviewed Elhady. Compare PSOF ¶ 37, with Lapsley RCSMF ¶ 37.

Elhady purports to remember the period of detention in more detail than the officers. He testified that the cell was "really cold" from the moment he arrived. Elhady Dep. at 57. "It was colder than outside, colder than the waiting room, colder than the hallway. It just—the more you walk into the cell, the colder it gets." Id. He could not determine whether the cell felt air conditioned, but he said that the cold in the room was "very noticeable." Id. at 58. Elhady testified that he did not complain about the temperature when he was first placed in the cell. Id.

He described the cell as "really small." Elhady Dep. at 54. He said, "There's a door, a seat, metal seat connected to the floor and just big light throughout the whole—most of the ceiling....[I]f I would probably think of the measurement, I would say it was my height, length and—it was basically squared around my height." Id. at 55-55; see also Detention Area Photos, Ex. 4 to Resp. (Dkt. 113-4) (photographs of the Ambassador Bridge facility, including the detention cells).

Elhady described a series of interviews taking place in his cell following the pat-down. When asked to confirm a statement from a previous deposition that four different people came to question him in his cell over a period of time, Elhady stated, "[I]t was [a] bunch. At this point, I can't really recall if I said four. Could be less or more. I'm not sure, but it was more—I saw a lot of faces." Elhady Dep. at 61.

He said he first complained about the cold when the first officer to interview him came to his cell:

I told the officer that it's really cold in here. How—I told them that I feel, you know, really shivering. Can I get my shoes and jacket back at least if they, you know, finished searching those? I mean I didn't think anything there to search about a light jacket or shoe, but I asked him to do that because the floor was the most, you know, freezing part.

Id. at 58.

Although Elhady could not remember the sequence of his interviewers, he described an African-American man as one of the first two officers to interview him. Elhady Dep. at 60-62, 71-72. He has since identified this individual as Bradley. PSOF ¶ 37. Other than Bradley, Elhady has not identified any of the officers he claims interviewed him or interacted with him between the time Piraneo and Beckham patted him down and the time he was released. Other than stating that the other officers who questioned him were white, the only identifying feature Elhady offered was that one of the white officers had "kind of...chubby cheeks" and "was a little bit heavy weight." Id. at 64-65.

Elhady stated that the first questioning session lasted between 30 minutes and an hour, and that he...