Johnson v. Thibodaux City

• Decision Date: 17 April 2018
• Docket Number: No. 17-30088,17-30088
• Citation: 887 F.3d 726
• Parties: Jackalene Rosa JOHNSON; Dawan Rene Every, Plaintiffs–Appellants, v. THIBODAUX CITY; Chris Bourg ; Adrian Buchanan; Jeremy Gaudet; Rebecca Shaver; John Sutton; Paul Thibodeaux; Stephen Amador, Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

887 F.3d 726

Jackalene Rosa JOHNSON; Dawan Rene Every, Plaintiffs–Appellants,

v.THIBODAUX CITY; Chris Bourg ; Adrian Buchanan; Jeremy Gaudet; Rebecca Shaver; John Sutton; Paul Thibodeaux; Stephen Amador, Defendants–Appellees.

No. 17-30088

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

FILED April 17, 2018

Nelson Dan Taylor, Sr., Esq., Chief Counsel, J.K. Haynes Legal Defense Fund, Thibodaux, LA, for Plaintiffs–Appellants.

Michael G. Gee, Attorney, Porteous, Hainkel & Johnson, L.L.P., Thibodaux, LA, for Defendants–Appellees.

Before REAVLEY, SMITH, and OWEN, Circuit Judges.

JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge:

Jackalene Johnson and Dawan Every sued the City of Thibodaux and seven officers—in their official and individual capacities—for unlawful arrest and excessive force under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The jury returned a verdict for the officers. The district court denied plaintiffs’ motion for judgment as a matter of law ("JML").

We reverse and remand the denial of JML as to Johnson’s unlawful-arrest claims against Stephen Amador, Adrian Buchanan, Paul Thibodeaux, and Jeremy Gaudet; in all other respects, we affirm.

I.

Johnson and Every were riding in a truck with Kelly Green and Latisha Robertson, the driver. Officer Amador of the Thibodaux Police Department recognized Robertson and knew she had an outstanding warrant. He stopped the truck, asked Robertson to exit, and handcuffed her. Amador could not put Robertson into his car because his dog from the K-9 unit was in the backseat.

While Amador was tending to Robertson, Every opened her door. Amador told her to get back in, and she complied. A few minutes later, several more officers arrived, including Buchanan, Gaudet, and Thibodeaux. An officer (it is unclear which one) then placed Robertson into the back of a patrol car.

Amador and Buchanan approached the truck and asked the passengers for identification. Green said she did not have any, but she provided her name and birthdate. She was not arrested. Johnson and Every refused to identify themselves; instead, they sat in the truck, using their cell phones. The officers arrested them for resisting an officer by refusing to identify themselves during the course of a supposedly lawful detention, an alleged violation of Louisiana Revised Statute 14:108.

The officers pulled Johnson and Every from the truck and forced them to the ground. According to Every, Buchanan pulled Every from the truck by her head and hand. Johnson said that Buchanan opened her door, yanked her from the truck, and slung her to the ground. Gaudet and Thibodaux testified that they came over to assist in the arrests.

Though the officers said that Johnson and Every yelled obscenities throughout the encounter, Johnson maintains she was silent. Buchanan said that as he handcuffed Every, she kicked, yelled, and threatened to have him fired. Officer Christopher Bourg, who only then arrived, walked Every to his car after she had been subdued and placed on the ground. On the way there, Every began to run, so Thibodeaux used his Taser to subdue her. Officer John Sutton, a supervising officer, arrived to prepare a use-of-force report. The officers took Johnson and Every to jail.

II.

Plaintiffs brought several § 1983 claims against the city and, in their official and individual capacities, Amador, Bourg, Buchanan, Gaudet, Rebecca Shaver, Sutton, and Thibodeaux (collectively the "officers"). Against the officers, plaintiffs averred that their Fourth Amendment rights had been violated by the allegedly unlawful arrest and excessive use of force. Against the city, plaintiffs claimed that the excessive use of force was the result of the city’s failure to train.

Before trial, plaintiffs filed several motions in limine seeking to exclude the reports and testimony of the city’s two expert witnesses, Dr. Christopher Cenac, Sr., and George Armbruster. Cenac was an expert in the field of orthopedic surgery; Armbruster was an expert in arrest techniques, police procedures, police training, and use of force. As to Armbruster, the district court denied plaintiffs’ motion, and Armbruster testified at trial. As to Cenac, the court denied plaintiffs’ first motion in part, permitting Cenac’s report and testimony generally but prohibiting Cenac from testifying as to plaintiffs’ drug use, prior incidents with doctors or law enforcement, or the facts of the present case. Accordingly, Cenac testified only by video deposition. After taking the deposition, plaintiffs moved to exclude it, raising largely the same claims included in their first motion to exclude. The district court denied that motion as untimely and cumulative.

The city moved for summary judgment on all claims. Regarding municipal liability, it contended that plaintiffs had failed to show any evidence on failure to train. Plaintiffs’ response raised a new theory of municipal liability: an allegedly facially unconstitutional policy of "stop-and-identify." The court granted summary judgment for the city only on plaintiffs’ Monell claims¹ and on the official-capacity claims, reasoning that plaintiffs had established only a single incident, which was insufficient to establish a custom or policy. Plaintiffs’ individual-capacity claims—unlawful arrest and excessive use of force—proceeded to trial.

The jury returned a verdict for the officers. For the excessive-force claims, the jury found that plaintiffs had failed to prove (1) an injury; (2) that excessive force caused the injury; (3) and that the excessive force was objectively unreasonable.

For the unlawful-arrest claims, the jury found that plaintiffs had failed to prove that any officer had arrested them without probable cause. Plaintiffs filed a renewed motion for JML or, in the alternative, a new trial. The district court denied that motion, and plaintiffs appeal (1) the denial of JML as to the individual-capacity claims of unlawful arrest and excessive force, (2) the summary judgment as to municipal liability, and (3) the denial of the motion in limine to exclude the expert witnesses.

III.

We start with plaintiffs’ motion for JML. Our review is de novo . Heck v. Triche , 775 F.3d 265, 272 (5th Cir. 2014) (citation omitted). We are "especially deferential" to jury verdicts, and "we draw all reasonable inferences and resolve all credibility determinations in the light most favorable to the non-moving party." Id. at 273 (citations omitted). Accordingly, we uphold the verdict "unless there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find as the jury did," id. (citation omitted), or "if the legal conclusions implied from the jury’s verdict cannot in law be supported by those findings," Am. Home Assurance Co. v. United Space All., LLC , 378 F.3d 482, 486–87 (5th Cir. 2004). Although there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find for the defendants as to excessive force, the unlawful-arrest verdict was predicated on an erroneous legal conclusion.

A.

On the excessive-force claim, the jury specifically found that plaintiffs failed to prove there was an injury or that excessive force caused the alleged injuries. To prevail on a Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim under § 1983, plaintiffs must prove "(1) an injury that (2) resulted directly and only from the use of force that was excessive to the need and that (3) the force used was objectively unreasonable." Flores v. City of Palacios , 381 F.3d 391, 396 (5th Cir. 2004). We need only address causation to see that the verdict was supported by sufficient evidence.

First, Johnson alleged injuries to her right arm, right shoulder, and neck, and mental anguish. But after defense counsel impeached her with deposition testimony and introduced her medical records, Johnson admitted that she had suffered from neck pain and right shoulder pain for several years, had sought medical treatment for that pain, and had been receiving treatment for depression and anxiety.

Similarly, Every alleged injuries to her neck and lower back and fear of the Thibodaux Police Department. Yet on cross-examination, the city introduced Every’s medical records, which showed that she had sought treatment for neck pain and lower back pain before the arrest. The city also impeached Every’s testimony with some of those documents, including instances in which Every called the Thibodaux police for help after the arrest. The jury was thus free to mistrust Johnson and Every and credit the city’s claims that their injuries predated their encounter with police. Accordingly, there was ample evidence for the jury to find that plaintiffs had failed to prove a necessary element of their excessive force claims—causation. See Flores , 381 F.3d at 396. Plaintiffs were not entitled to JML on excessive force.

B.

The same cannot be said for most of the unlawful-arrest claims. Plaintiffs sued each of the seven officers, and the jury found for each. It is necessary to examine the actions of the plaintiffs and some of the officers separately.

1.

Every is precluded from seeking damages under § 1983 for her allegedly unlawful arrest because she pleaded no-contest to resisting arrest. Under the favorable-termination requirement, if a judgment in a plaintiff’s favor would necessarily imply the invalidity of her conviction, the plaintiff can recover only by showing that the conviction was reversed on direct appeal, expunged, declared invalid by an authorized state tribunal, or called into question by a federal writ of habeas corpus. Heck v. Humphrey , 512 U.S. 477, 487, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994).

Every’s no-contest plea is considered a conviction under Louisiana law. See LA. CODE CRIM. PROC. ANN. art. 552(4) (2017). Accordingly, like an Alford plea, it implicates Heck ’s favorable-termination rule.² And Every’s present unlawful-arrest claim plainly arises from the same facts as her resisting-arrest conviction. Allowing her to recover under § 1983 for unlawful arrest would necessarily imply that any conviction for resisting the arrest was invalid.³ Finally, there is no...