Case Story: Suing the Police for violating our client’s fourth Amendment rights

‍Let’s say the police arrest you and charge you with a crime. But you’re certain the way they did it is illegal—meaning they violated your rights. So you hire a criminal defense lawyer to help you fight the charges.

And they help you.

‍And you are proven right—the cops did violate your rights and the case is thrown out.

‍Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?

‍But it also leaves something to be desired. After all, the police’s illegal conduct resulted in you being charged, you having to hire a lawyer, and you having to fight to clear your name.

‍So sure it feels good to have the charges dismissed, but don’t you deserve something more? Like some money to compensate you for the harm committed by the police?

‍We think so.

‍And that’s what this case is about. When a state court judge agreed with us and said the police violated our client’s Fourth Amendment rights, we used that ruling to sue the offending officers in federal court for their illegal conduct.

‍After about a year of fighting us at every turn, the police settled the case and paid our client $22,500 in damages. Here’s how we did it.

‍The Lawsuit

‍As discussed in an earlier case story, our client was arrested and charged with DWI because officers thought he drove drunk after a day of fishing on a lake near his home. But because officers didn’t actually see him drive, they drove to his house to talk to him and hopefully get him to admit to drinking and driving.

‍The problem, however, is with the way the officers entered our client’s home to talk to him. Seeing an open garage door, and without a warrant, the officers simply walked into our client’s garage without his permission or consent.

‍They knocked on the door leading into his kitchen, and when he opened it, they began interrogating him about his supposed DWI offense. Our client refused to answer the officers’ questions,  so they arrested him.

‍He hired us, we challenged the officers’ illegal entry into his garage, and a state court judge agreed. The case was dismissed. Which was great, but not enough. So we decided to try to make the client whole by suing the officers who entered his garage illegally.

‍Wanting to send a message, and also wanting to be compensated for the damages he suffered at the hands of the police, our client agreed.‍ ‍

The Legal Fight

‍To sue a police officer in this way, you have to file a lawsuit in federal court under a statute called 42 U.S.C. § 1983—often called just Section 1983. And while it is a little bit complicated, the gist is that a person can sue state officials (including police officers) for alleged violations of their civil rights.

‍Here our claim was simple: we wanted our client to be compensated for the officers’ violation of his Fourth Amendment rights by entering his garage without a warrant or consent. To that end, we filed what is called a complaint that laid out our allegations of what the officers did wrong, the laws they violated, and our request for relief.

‍In most Section 1983 litigation, as here, the requested relief is money damages. For the cost of having to hire an attorney, for the cost of missing work to fight the case, for the cost of having to spend time in jail, and for the cost of having your garage entered illegally and your constitutional rights violated.

‍After we filed the case, the officers were appointed lawyers who represent local governments in cases like this. So it was taxpayer money—not the officers’ own pocketbook—that was used to defend the case.

‍And they sure did defend it.‍ ‍

The Motion to Dismiss

Almost immediately, the officers moved to dismiss the lawsuit. They argued two things: 1) despite a state judge already saying so, they claimed they did not violate our client’s Fourth Amendment rights when they entered his garage without a warrant or consent; and 2) even if they did violate our client’s Fourth Amendment rights, the violation was not “clearly established”—meaning obvious—to the officers at the time of the violation.

‍We disagreed with both arguments.

First, we pointed to the state court judge’s ruling and said the federal court judge should just follow that ruling. Second, we pointed to previous rulings by other courts establishing that police officers cannot simply come into a person’s garage without a warrant or permission from the home owner.

And since those cases predated our client’s situation, then the law says that officers “know, or should know” that that type of conduct is illegal—thereby satisfying the requirement of the violation being “clearly established.”

‍After holding a hearing and listening to argument by both sides, the federal judge assigned to our case took the matter under advisement.

The Ruling

‍In a 18-page ruling, the court sided with us.

‍The federal judge said that, at this stage of the case in which the court had to accept everything in our lawsuit as true, there was enough evidence of a Fourth Amendment violation for the case to continue. The court also explained that this type of Fourth Amendment violation was “clearly established” at the time the officers entered our client’s garage without a warrant or consent.

‍In fairness, the court added that it was a close call, and that the law related to when officers can and cannot enter a person’s garage without a warrant depends on the certain, specific facts of the case. And here, the court wanted to know more facts related to our case before making a final ruling on whether the lawsuit could proceed.

‍So to give us more time to determine these facts, the court allowed our lawsuit to proceed to what is called discovery—the portion of a civil case where both sides get to ask the other to produce evidence that either proves or disproves their claims.

‍There, the officers fought just as hard to stop us from holding them accountable. ‍

The Discovery Process

Discovery in civil cases is different than discovery in criminal cases. In criminal cases, you don’t really get that much discovery. And remember, discovery is just a fancy legal term for evidence that you say proves or disproves your case.

‍Also in criminal cases, it is rare that you get to talk to the witnesses before trial. You might get reports about what they have said to the police or others, but you don’t get a chance to talk to them, under oath, before trial.

In civil cases you do.

In something called depositions.

‍So while we were generally excited for the expanded civil discovery, we were especially excited to conduct depositions of the officers who entered our client’s garage.

‍Because most of our work is done in the criminal space, and not the civil space, we partnered on this Section 1983 with a lawyer named Eric Rice. Eric is one of the premier civil rights lawyers in Minneapolis-St. Paul and we have been working together on civil rights lawsuits for years.

‍Given this expertise, Eric deposed the two officers here. And he locked them into their story as to why they entered our client’s garage, that they did not have a warrant, and that they could have gone to our client’s front door and knocked before simply going into the garage.

‍But what’s good for the goose must also be good for the gander.

‍Here, that meant that the officers’ lawyers also had the right to depose our client, to ask him questions about what happened on the day in question.

‍We were responsible for prepping our client and defending him at his deposition. And while it was his first (and likely only) deposition of his life, our client did an excellent job at explaining what happened, why his home had multiple doors inside his garage that led into his home, and his experience in having nobody enter through his garage without permission like the officers did.

‍At the end of discovery, the state again filed a motion renewing its request to dismiss the case. We, too, responded asking for the case to proceed to a jury trial.

‍The Settlement

‍This time, rather than waiting for the court to decide, the lawyers for the officers contacted us and asked if our client was interested in settling his case.

‍We knew they knew we were—as we had offered to settle the case from the very beginning for $30,000. And the reason we were willing was that this was never about money for our client.

‍Sure, the money was nice. But this was about holding the officers accountable for their conduct, especially in the small rural Minnesota county where it happened.

‍So we took the settlement offer to our client, who said he was willing to entertain an offer. After some dickering back and forth, we landed on $22,500. Not as much as the $30,000 we wanted, but more than $0 if the judge ruled against us.

‍We told the federal judge, the lawsuit was dismissed, and our client got paid.

‍Takeaway

‍So the obvious question is—was it worth it?

‍From a purely monetary standpoint, the answer is probably not. Between Eric’s work and our work, we put in many more hours than could ever be compensated by our small portion of the settlement.

‍But just like it wasn’t about money for our client, it wasn’t about money for us either.

‍It was about doing the right thing.

‍And sending a message that officers can’t just do what they want.

‍And that police need to think twice about violating peoples’ rights in small towns across North Dakota and Minnesota.

‍Here, going forward, there is now at least caselaw that establishes that it might cost a county $22,500 if one of their officers enters a person’s garage illegally.

That’s not everything, but it’s something.

Finally, we’re obligated to say that the officers and the county admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement. And that’s true. And that’s fair.‍ ‍

But we still think a message has been sent. And that message is simple: we are watching and we are looking for these types of constitutional violations.

And when we see them, we are going to sue over them.

And as this case shows, we just might recover.

The line in the sand has been drawn.

‍ ‍