Obrycka v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 02 June 2011
• Docket Number: Case No. 07 C 2372.
• Parties: Karolina OBRYCKA, Plaintiff,v.CITY OF CHICAGO et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

792 F.Supp.2d 1013

85 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 615

Karolina OBRYCKA, Plaintiff,

v.CITY OF CHICAGO et al., Defendants.

Case No. 07 C 2372.

United States District Court,N.D. Illinois,Eastern Division.

June 2, 2011.

Terry A. Ekl, Patrick Laurence Provenzale, Tracy L. Stanker, Ekl, Williams & Provenzale LLC, Lisle, IL, Gustavo Munoz, Munoz & Wilkes, Ltd., Summit, IL, for Plaintiff.George John Yamin, Jr., City of Chicago, Department of Law, Matthew Alan Hurd, Barker & Castro LLC, Barrett Elizabeth Rubens, Borkan and Scahill, Michael J. Malatesta, Apceilla & Malatesta LLC, Chicago, IL, Kenneth C. Apicella, Apicella Law Firm, LLC, Palatine, IL, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

AMY J. ST. EVE, District Judge.

Before the Court is Defendant City of Chicago's motion to exclude the expert testimony of Dr. Peter Manning pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993). For the reasons discussed below, the Court grants Defendant's motion.

INTRODUCTION

On April 30, 2007, Plaintiff Karolina Obrycka (“Plaintiff”) filed the underlying lawsuit against Defendants City of Chicago (“City”), Anthony Abbate, Jr., Gary Ortiz, and Patti Chiriboga for violating her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.¹ Of particular import to the present motion, Plaintiff also brings a Monell claim against the City. See Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs. of New York, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). Plaintiff alleges that on the night of February 19, 2007, while working as a bartender/waitress at Jesse's Shortstop Inn in Chicago, Defendant Officer Abbate—an off-duty Chicago police officer who had been drinking at the bar that evening—approached Plaintiff after she refused to serve him additional alcoholic beverages. With no warning, Defendant Officer Abbate proceeded to viciously beat, kick, and punch Plaintiff. Plaintiff alleges specific facts which, she contends, unequivocally demonstrate that the City conducted a sham investigation into the incident, in bad faith, and designed to protect Defendant Officer Abbate. She also alleges facts which, she argues, demonstrate that other City employees—including other Chicago police officers—conspired to prevent her from filing charges against Defendant Officer Abbate or from otherwise bringing the alleged misconduct to light. In Plaintiff's Monell claim, she contends, inter alia, that the City has de facto policies and practices of concealing officer misconduct and of investigating complaints against off-duty police officers differently than it investigates complaints against other citizens, and that a “code of silence” exists within the Chicago Police Department (“CPD”). Plaintiff claims that all of these things, individually and collectively, create a culture within the CPD that permits and encourages Chicago police officers to engage in misconduct with impunity and without fear of official consequences.

Plaintiff has disclosed Dr. Peter Manning as one of four expert witnesses to present testimony in support of her Monell claim against the City. Plaintiff is not proffering Dr. Manning to testify on policing in general. Plaintiff specifically retained Dr. Manning to “examin[e] the issue of whether a culture of impunity and a Code of Silence are endemic to the Chicago Police Department” and, if he determines that such a culture exists, to opine on the ways in which that culture “directly cause[s] violations of the constitutional rights of its citizens,” including the violations Plaintiff alleges in this case. (R. 281, Pl.'s Mem. in Opposition to City's Mot. to Exclude, at 1–2, 6.) Plaintiff submits that “Dr. Manning is the perfect man for the job of reliably delivering the important piece that the Chicago Police Culture plays in establishing this point.” ( Id. at 2.)

Dr. Manning issued his expert report on August 31, 2009. As the Court will discuss below, the majority of Dr. Manning's nine-page report is comprised of sweeping generalizations regarding “police organizations,” “police departments,” the police “organizational culture,” and the attitudes and characteristics of police officers. Dr. Manning offers CPD-specific opinions only sporadically in the report. Nevertheless, at the conclusion of his report, Dr. Manning presents the following summary:

The Chicago Police Department permits wide discretion on the job to officers. Their mode of coping with uncertainty is to back each other up, maintain a code of silence, avoid paperwork that is revealing of errors, and emphasize loyalty rather than “rule-following.” The paperwork required is seen as a [ sic ] minimal and a means to justify the officer's decision(s). Supervision is difficult at best, but the level and kinds of complaints sustained, the ritual of evaluation, job control, and the low visibility of deciding means a high degree of tolerance of officers' misconduct as well as a hesitance to investigate complaints and misconduct. These unwritten rules about backing up each other, the code of silence that protects officers from revelations concerning their conduct and administrative laxity are directly a cause of acting with impunity against citizens, as seen in the beating and level of violence seen in the Abbate case. The history of not sustaining complaints also encourages a context of disregard for citizens' rights on and off duty. Finally, the long standing tolerance of misconduct by the top administration of the police department and city also encourages police misconduct. I can state with a reasonable degree of scientific certainty in my field of expertise that the context of the Chicago Police Department and the occupational culture of the patrol officer[ ] contributed directly to the pattern of misconduct in the Abbate case.

(R. 270–1, Ex. A (“Manning Rept.”) at 27–28.)

The City asks the Court to exclude Dr. Manning's report under Rule 702 and Daubert because it is “an academic mini-treatise on issues in policing in general, not a written report related to the Chicago Police Department or Chicago police officers.” (R. 270, Mot. to Bar Peter Manning, at 2.) The City contends that (1) Dr. Manning's opinions are not relevant to Plaintiff's Monell claim and do not assist the trier of fact, (2) his opinions on policing in general “have nothing to do with the City of Chicago and are pure ipse dixit,” and (3) his opinions regarding the CPD and Chicago police officers are unreliable and inadmissible because they are based, in large part, on summaries of data prepared by Plaintiff's counsel, and also rely on the report of one of Plaintiff's other proffered experts, Dr. Steven Whitman, whose expert testimony the City is also disputing. ( Id. at 6–7.) ²

The Court has carefully reviewed Dr. Manning's report, as well as the parties' submissions regarding his report and the transcript of Dr. Manning's November 17, 2009 deposition. The Court also held a Daubert hearing on May 26, 2011, during which Dr. Manning testified for approximately six hours. Based on its comprehensive review of all of the evidence submitted in connection with the City's motion to exclude Dr. Manning's testimony, the Court grants the City's motion.

LEGAL STANDARD

“The admissibility of expert testimony is governed by Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and the Supreme Court's opinion in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993).” Lewis v. CITGO Petroleum Corp., 561 F.3d 698, 705 (7th Cir.2009). “The Federal Rules of Evidence define an ‘expert’ as a person who possesses ‘specialized knowledge’ due to his ‘skill, experience, training, or education’ that ‘will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue.’ ” Banister v. Burton, 636 F.3d 828, 831 (7th Cir.2011) (quoting Fed.R.Evid. 702). Rule 702 also requires that: (1) the testimony must be based upon sufficient facts or data; (2) it must be the product of reliable principles and methods; and (3) the witness must have applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case. Zamecnik v. Indian Prairie Sch. Dist. No. 204, 636 F.3d 874, 881 (7th Cir.2011) (quoting Fed.R.Evid. 702).

“The district court functions as a gatekeeper with respect to testimony proffered under Rule 702 to ensure that the testimony is sufficiently reliable to qualify for admission.” Mihailovich v. Laatsch, 359 F.3d 892, 918 (7th Cir.2004) (citing Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137, 147, 119 S.Ct. 1167, 143 L.Ed.2d 238 (1999)). District courts must employ a three-part analysis before admitting expert testimony: (1) the expert must be qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education; (2) the expert's reasoning or methodology underlying his testimony must be scientifically reliable; and (3) the expert's testimony must assist the trier of fact in understanding the evidence or to determine a factual issue. See Myers v. Illinois Central R.R. Co., 629 F.3d 639, 644 (7th Cir.2010); see also United States v. Pansier, 576 F.3d 726, 737 (7th Cir.2009) (“To determine reliability, the court should consider the proposed expert's full range of experience and training, as well as the methodology used to arrive [at] a particular conclusion.”). As the Seventh Circuit instructs, “ ‘[t]he focus of the district court's Daubert inquiry must be solely on principles and methodology, not on the conclusions they generate.’ ” Winters v. Fru–Con Inc., 498 F.3d 734, 742 (7th Cir.2007) (quoting Chapman v. Maytag Corp., 297 F.3d 682, 687 (7th Cir.2002)). “The goal of Daubert is to assure that experts employ the same ‘intellectual rigor’ in their courtroom testimony as would be employed by an expert in the relevant field.” Jenkins v. Bartlett, 487 F.3d 482, 489 (7th Cir.2007) (quoting Kumho Tire Co., 526 U.S. at 152, 119 S.Ct. 1167).

In Daubert, the Supreme Court offered the following non-exclusive factors to aid courts in determining...