Mays v. Kne

Background

Otis Mays alleged that Bloomington police officers arrested him on September 25, 2017, used force against him, searched him, and did not promptly obtain medical care after he reported serious arm and shoulder pain. He alleged that a doctor later diagnosed a separated shoulder. Mays also alleged that Officer Andy Plant searched his wallet, announced that Mays had $12,000 in cash, and called him an informant in front of two men. Mays alleged that, after his release, those men assaulted him and took his wallet.

Mays’s operative complaint asserted 16 claims based on alleged violations of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The claims included unlawful arrest, denial of an attorney, warrantless search, denial of access to the courts, failure to intervene, failure to protect, denial of medical treatment, failure to train, excessive force, civil-rights conspiracy, and state-law negligence.

The Bloomington defendants moved to dismiss, as did Hennepin County, the Hennepin County Adult Detention Center, the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, and David Hutchinson. A magistrate judge recommended granting the Hennepin defendants’ motion and granting the Bloomington defendants’ motion as to Counts 1–13 and 16, while denying it as to Counts 14 and 15. Mays filed objections after the deadline. The court considered them, explaining that the deadline was not jurisdictional and that Mays was representing himself.

Court’s analysis

The court reviewed the portions of the recommendation to which Mays objected and reviewed the remainder for clear error. It rejected Mays’s objection concerning Counts 3 and 4, which challenged a warrantless search and seizure, because Mays did not identify a factual or legal error in the magistrate judge’s analysis.

The court sustained Mays’s objections in part concerning failure-to-intervene claims. It held that Mays sufficiently alleged that Detective Dennis Koosman was close enough to observe Officer Matthew Nybeck repeatedly push Mays against a car and apply pressure to Mays’s arm, and that the episode lasted long enough to support an inference that Koosman could have intervened. The court rejected the objections concerning the other failure-to-intervene allegations because Mays did not provide specific facts showing that those defendants knew of the abuse or had an opportunity to intervene. The court therefore sustained the objection as to Counts 6 and 10 against Koosman and overruled it as to Count 11.

The court rejected Mays’s objections concerning Counts 8 and 13. Although Mays alleged that he could not move his arm and repeatedly requested medical attention, the court held that the alleged conduct did not meet the legal standard for deliberate indifference to medical needs.

The court sustained Mays’s objection concerning Count 7 as alleged against Officer Plant. It held that Mays sufficiently alleged a state-created-danger claim: Plant allegedly identified Mays as an informant and announced that he had thousands of dollars, creating a significant and foreseeable risk of immediate harm. The court concluded that deliberately placing a released detainee in danger in that manner could be sufficiently shocking to conscience to state a claim at the motion-to-dismiss stage.

The court rejected Mays’s objections concerning Counts 9, 12, and 16, which alleged failures to train officers regarding medical care, intervention, and searches and seizures. It reasoned that Count 16 lacked an underlying viable search-and-seizure claim and that Mays alleged no supporting facts for Counts 9 and 12. The court found no clear error in the remaining portions of the recommendation.

Disposition

Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright ordered that the August 11, 2022 report and recommendation be adopted in part and rejected in part. The motion to dismiss filed by the Bloomington defendants was granted as to Counts 1–5, 8, 9, 11–13, and 16, and denied as to Counts 6, 7, 10, 14, and 15. The motion to dismiss filed by the Hennepin defendants was granted.