Leonard v. St. Charles Cnty.
| Decision Date | 05 November 2021 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 4:19-cv-00927-MTS |
| Parties | Jamie LEONARD, Plaintiff, v. ST. CHARLES COUNTY, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri |
Steven A. Donner, Thomas Richard Applewhite, Aektra Legal LLC, Gary K. Burger, Jr., Burger Law LLC, Saint Louis, MO, for Plaintiff.
Drew A. Heffner, Bryan Edward Wise, St. Charles County Counselor Office, Saint Charles, MO, for Defendants.
This case involves the criminal justice system managing a mental health crisis, and the particulars of the case are difficult. Indeed, at first blush, a listener hearing about the events that transpired could possibly conclude that the government officials involved in the case could partially be at fault and are partially to blame. And, to an extent, some of their actions may be blameworthy to some degree. But this Court does not stand in judgment of whether state actors do their jobs well or whether they could have done their jobs differently to bring about a better result. Rather, in this case, the Court decides whether Defendants violated Plaintiff's clearly established constitutional rights. After watching the videos of the events at issue, reviewing the undisputed facts and the briefing, and applying the established legal standards, the Court concludes that no Defendant violated Plaintiff's clearly established constitutional rights. Accordingly, Defendants are entitled to judgment as a matter of law on all counts.
Plaintiff Jamie Leonard has experienced episodes of psychosis
. On July 19, 2017, he experienced one of these psychotic episodes. After an encounter with officers of the Wentzville, Missouri Police Department ("Wentzville"), Wentzville officers took Plaintiff into their custody and, later that same evening, transferred Plaintiff to the custody of the St. Charles County, Missouri Department of Corrections ("St. Charles DOC"). While confined at St. Charles DOC's Justice Center, Plaintiff was sprayed with oleoresin capsicum spray ("OC spray"), a chemical irritant some refer to as pepper spray, during a search of his cell. Officers allowed Plaintiff to rinse off the spray. But a short time later, once alone in his cell, Plaintiff, who had a preexisting eye disease and was mentally unwell, began to touch his left eye. He repeatedly, but intermittently, pulled and scraped at his left eye so severely that he eventually removed it from its socket. Though St. Charles DOC personnel quickly intervened, and emergency medical personnel transported Plaintiff to hospital for treatment, Plaintiff irreversibly had damaged his eye, and a surgeon later removed Plaintiff's left eye altogether.
Based on these events and his time in confinement with St. Charles DOC, Plaintiff brought suit against St. Charles County, Missouri ("the County") and four of its employees, corrections officer Steven Harris, suicide prevention officer Donte Fisher, sergeant Lisa Baker, and nurse Theresa Martin (collectively, the "Individual Defendants"), asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violations of his constitutional rights. In his Fourth Amended Complaint, Plaintiff asserts four counts, which the Court will address out of numerical order. In Count Two, Plaintiff asserts the Individual Defendants violated his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights "to be free from unreasonable seizures of his person and the use of excessive force." Doc. [88] ¶ 208. In Count Three, Plaintiff alleges the Individual Defendants violated his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by subjecting him to "deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs, in violation of his Eighth Amendment rights for inadequate prison care and Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process of law and to be free of punishment prior to adjudication of guilt." Id. ¶ 225. Lastly against the Individual Defendants, Plaintiff alleges in Count Four that the individual Defendants conspired to violate his Fourth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Id. ¶ 231. As for Count One, Plaintiff alleges that Defendant St. Charles, County itself violated his Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. See Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs. of N.Y. , 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). He alleges "St. Charles maintains, condones, and is deliberately indifferent to unconstitutional policies, customs and practices of its Department of Corrections," and that those policies, customs, and practices "directly caused" his "constitutional deprivations." Doc. [88] ¶¶ 197, 202.
Plaintiff moved for summary judgment only on Count One against Defendant St. Charles County, except for the issue of damages. Doc. [99]; see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a) (). Defendants also moved for summary judgment. Doc. [92]. They seek it on all claims against them in their entirety.
Plaintiff has renewed its Motion for Sanctions against Defendant St. Charles because of the County's failure to preserve video footage from one camera outside of Plaintiff's cell. Doc. [97]. Plaintiff requests that the Court "presume that the destroyed information was unfavorable to Defendant when ruling on the parties’ summary judgment motions pursuant to Rule 37(e)(2)(A)" or in the alternative give a proposed jury instruction requiring the jury to presume the information in the video would have been unfavorable to the County. Id. The Court previously denied Plaintiff's Motion for Sanctions without prejudice to allow Plaintiff further discovery to establish the intentionality of the failure to preserve. Doc. [59]; Doc. [85].
As the Court previously noted, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allow for Plaintiff's desired remedies "only upon [a] finding that the party acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information's use in the litigation." Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e)(2) ; accord Morris v. Union Pac. R.R. , 373 F.3d 896, 901 (8th Cir. 2004). In light of all the evidence and circumstances, the Court cannot conclude that Defendant St. Charles intentionally destroyed the recordings of this one particular camera. First, the St. Charles County Justice Center, where the events at issue unfolded, retains recorded video for twenty-eight to thirty days, at which point new video overwrites the oldest video. Thus, the video was overwritten by the system; there is no indication the video was deleted or destroyed in any other way. Second, the County's Department of Corrections maintains over two-hundred individual security cameras throughout the County's Justice Center. The County preserved and provided Plaintiff with all the video it had that showed Plaintiff, including the video of a Defendant spraying Plaintiff with OC spray and the video of Plaintiff self-harming his left eye. The video that has been lost is the footage from outside Plaintiff's cell at the time Plaintiff was inside injuring his eye, which seemingly would have shown officials’ actions during Plaintiff's self-harming behavior. Absent any other indication that the failure to preserve this one camera's footage was nefarious, the Court finds it too great a leap to conclude the County saved and turned over all the plainly relevant footage but intentionally allowed this less relevant, at least on its face, footage to be overwritten with the intent to deprive Plaintiff of its use in this litigation.
Therefore, the Court will deny Plaintiff's Renewed Motion for Sanctions.
Plaintiff also moves to exclude the affidavit of Lauri Smit "for nondisclosure and untimeliness." Doc. [106]. Defendants did not oppose this Motion. Accordingly, the Court will not consider the affidavit in ruling on the motions for summary judgment. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(c)(1).
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, a court must grant summary judgment to a moving party "if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). At the summary judgment stage, facts must be viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, but only if there is a "genuine" dispute as to those facts. Scott v. Harris , 550 U.S. 372, 380, 127 S.Ct. 1769, 167 L.Ed.2d 686 (2007). Mere "metaphysical doubt as to the material facts" is insufficient to defeat summary judgment. Id. A party asserting that a fact is genuinely disputed must support the assertion by citing to particular parts of materials in the record. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c). A district court, however, is not "constrained to view only the evidence submitted by [the moving party] to support its summary judgment motion; the court c[an] consider any evidence in the record." Terra Indus., Inc. v. Nat'l Union Fire Ins. Co. of Pittsburgh, Penn. , 383 F.3d 754, 759 (8th Cir. 2004) ; accord Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)(3) ().
In reviewing the record, a court must not weigh evidence at the summary judgment stage but instead should decide simply whether there is a genuine issue for trial. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. , 477 U.S. 242, 249, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). "Where the record taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the nonmoving party, there is no ‘genuine issue for trial.’ " Scott , 550 U.S. at 380, 127 S.Ct. 1769. "When opposing parties tell two different stories, one of which is blatantly contradicted by the record, so that no reasonable jury could believe it, a court should not adopt that version of the facts for purposes of ruling on a motion for summary judgment." Id. Thus, accurate videos of events in question can allow a court to determine how events transpired without weighing evidence. See White v. Jackson , 865 F.3d 1064, 1077 (8th Cir. 2017) (...
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