Napper v. Hankison
| Decision Date | 28 July 2022 |
| Docket Number | 3:20-cv-764-BJB |
| Parties | Chelsey Napper, et al. Plaintiffs v. Brett Hankison, et al. Defendants |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Kentucky |
The many claims raised in this case lie adjacent to the familiar and tragic events that followed the Louisville Metro Police Department's execution of a no-knock search warrant by knocking on the door of Breonna Taylor's apartment. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a weapon in response, hitting one officer. Three officers returned fire, killing Taylor and wounding Walker.
This lawsuit does not seek compensation for Taylor's death or Walker's injury, however. It concerns what happened next door. Shots fired by one of the three LMPD officers entered the neighboring apartment. Inside were Cody Etherton, Chelsey Napper, Napper's unborn baby, and a five-year-old child-all Plaintiffs in this case.
None of those four were hit by bullets or required immediate medical attention for any physical injuries. But one says drywall hit his eyeball, and all allegedly suffered an invasion of privacy, unreasonable risk of death, excessive force, and emotional distress. And they say this is the fault not only of the three officers who fired shots, but also their supervisors, several backup officers at the scene, two detectives who obtained the search warrant, and the Metro Government. All are Defendants here whose actions, at least according to the Plaintiffs, violated a great many constitutional and common-law rights:
• The Metro Government and Louisville Metro Police Department supervisors failed to adequately train officers on proper use of force and warrant execution.
• Officers improperly obtained a no-knock warrant for Taylor's apartment and failed to follow standard operating procedures for its execution.
• Other officers on the scene caused, or at least failed to prevent, the use of force by not intervening and insisting that the execution of the warrant follow standard operating procedures.
• Officers used unconstitutionally excessive force by shooting (or causing the shooting) through the walls of the Plaintiffs' apartment.
• The officers' use of force and their supervisors' failures amounted to assault, battery, false arrest negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
• The Metro Government “indoctrinated the officers as white Christian nationalists,” in violation of the First Amendment's prohibition against the establishment of religion, by including a Bible verse in a 2017 PowerPoint presentation used at a firearms training session.
How do Plaintiffs connect so many legal claims and defendants to the bullets from a single officer's gun? Through an extensive and aggressive theory of causation reminiscent of Robert Penn Warren: ALL THE KING'S MEN (1946). Plaintiffs' own theory of interconnectedness, as the Court understands their pleadings and oral argument, goes like this:
The City's and Police Department's inadequate training and “religious indoctrination” caused officers to ignore the law and act as vigilantes dispensing “God's wrath.” Which led to Detective Joshua Jaynes' improper and unsupervised risk calculation affidavit, and warrant application. Which led the state-court judge to issue a no-knock warrant and excluded SWAT from the scene. Which contributed to the narcotics officers who were there deciding-erroneously in Plaintiffs' view-to knock on the door. Which created a foreseeable risk of a firefight and gave Walker time to grab and fire his gun. Which caused Officers Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove to return fire. Which in turn caused Officer Brett Hankison to “wildly and randomly” fire his weapon at the apartment complex. Which sent bullets into the Plaintiffs' apartment. Which ultimately trapped and terrified Plaintiffs and hit Etherton with drywall.
Warren may have been right about history, but he did not write about law. And under the law, this chain of alleged causation is far too attenuated. It fails to connect the three-year-old PowerPoint slide and any inadequacies in the officers' other training to Hankison's shots. Its emphasis on the errors in the no-knock warrant process ignore that the officers eventually knocked. It doesn't say what any of the supervisors or onlooking officers did or failed to do that caused Hankison's shots to enter the neighboring apartment. It ignores the law that treats Walker's gunfire as an intervening cause separating any earlier mistakes from the return fire that followed. And it never explains how the decision of Officers Mattingly and Cosgrove to return fire caused Hankison to return fire in a manner that struck the Plaintiffs' apartment.
In many other respects discussed below, Plaintiffs' allegations-even accepting them as true-fall short of fundamental pleading standards set forth in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. However terrifying these events must've been for the Plaintiffs, the only relief this Court may offer is vindication of any plausibly-alleged deprivation of their rights under the United States Constitution and Kentucky law. But their allegations, though lengthy, haven't stated a claim to relief under the law-at least not with respect to the Defendants besides Hankison, whose case has been stayed in light of his criminal prosecution. As to the other Defendants, the Court must dismiss the claims alleged in the Second Amended Complaint for failing to assert any legal violation that would entitle Plaintiffs to relief.
A lot has already happened in this case. The Plaintiffs have amended their complaint twice-once in state court and once in this court. See DN 1-2 (initial complaint); DN 1-3 (First Amended Complaint); DN 8 (Second Amended Complaint). The Court granted a motion to dismiss LMPD, which the Plaintiffs conceded was not a proper party. DNs 40, 57.[1] The Court also dismissed claims against Jaynes, whom the Plaintiffs named as a Defendant but failed to link to any of their actual claims. DN 67. And the Plaintiffs have abandoned several claims initially lodged against the Defendants: conspiracy, state constitutional claims, negligent infliction of emotional distress, strict liability, all official-capacity claims, and the Establishment Clause claim against the individual Defendants. Oral Arg. Tr. (DN 91) at 4-6. The false-imprisonment claim and the intentional-tort claims have been narrowed to run against only Hankison. Id. at 5, 23.
Neither those claims nor any of the others against Hankison are at issue in this Order. After a state-court grand jury indicted Hankison for his role in these events, the Court stayed the civil claims against him. DN 50. Since then, the Commonwealth tried Hankison for wanton endangerment and a jury acquitted him. DN 108. So at this juncture the Court does not face the question whether the Plaintiffs stated a plausible claim against Hankison-the only Defendant whose bullets allegedly entered the Plaintiffs' apartment.
Instead, this Order addresses the motions to dismiss filed by Louisville Metro Government and the individual defendants aside from Hankison. DNs 28, 31. That means each Defendant addressed here is one degree or more removed from the shots that entered the Plaintiffs' apartment. Their motions argue the allegations-even assuming their truth-would not establish liability for several reasons. Across the board, these Defendants argue their actions did not cause any injuries suffered by the Plaintiffs. And with respect to the specific federal and state causes of action asserted against them, the Defendants contend the allegations consistently fall short of the standards necessary to establish liability: for an intentional seizure under the Fourth Amendment; for a malicious, sadistic, or conscience-shocking action or failure to act under the Fourteenth Amendment; or for supervisors' deliberate indifference or knowing callousness to officer training or the risk of such violations. And in any event, the officers contend that qualified immunity shields them from liability for any alleged constitutional harm. As to the state claims, the officers argue the claims of negligence fail as a matter of law, and that qualified immunity would shield them from liability regardless.
In measuring Plaintiffs' allegations against these legal standards, the Court accepts the allegations of the Second Amended Complaint as true and views them in the light most favorable to the Plaintiffs. This is their description of the events that allegedly violated their rights and led to this lawsuit.
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Suspecting illicit drug activity, LMPD officers Joshua Jaynes, Wes Barton, and Kyle Meany[2] obtained a warrant to search Breonna Taylor's apartment and cars owned by her and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. Affidavit (DN 8-1) at 1-4. Jaynes signed and submitted an affidavit seeking a “no-knock” entry into the apartment. Such warrants required an identified exigency in order to serve them at night. Standard Operating Procedures (“SOP”) 8.1.19 (DN 33-3). To obtain them, LMPD Standard Operating Procedures at the time required officers to “reference ... any ‘exigent circumstances,'” Second Amended Complaint (DN 8) ¶¶ 51-52, and write “noknock” across the top of the warrant,” ¶¶ 60-61. But Jaynes did not. Instead, preventing the destruction of evidence was listed as the reason for the request. ¶¶ 89-90. Officers also failed to calculate the “risk assessment” contained on the...
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