Minus v. New York City Police Department

Background

Omar Minus had one remaining claim: that Officers Brian Benvenuto and Joseph Tennariello subjected him to an unlawful strip search on April 29, 2015. The officers were identified in the caption as New York City Police Department officers. The court had previously allowed them to file a second motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity, a legal protection that can shield law-enforcement officers from damages when their conduct did not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights.

The officers argued that qualified immunity applied because they conducted the strip search at the direction of a superior officer. The court reopened discovery for the limited purpose of allowing Minus, who was then represented by counsel, to depose the officers. After the depositions, the parties filed supplemental submissions.

Legal standard

Summary judgment is appropriate when the evidence and pleadings show that there is no genuine dispute about a material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The moving party bears the initial burden of showing that no such factual dispute exists. The court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the party opposing summary judgment and draw permissible factual inferences in that party’s favor.

Qualified immunity is an affirmative defense, so the officers had the burden of proving it. In this case, they had to show that they received instructions from a superior officer that were plausibly, apparently, or facially valid when viewed objectively in light of the surrounding circumstances. In other words, they had to provide a basis for concluding that a reasonable officer could have believed the strip search was legally justified.

Court’s analysis

The court held that the officers did not meet their burden because they did not remember anything about the incident. Although the incident had occurred more than five and a half years earlier and may have seemed routine to the officers, their lack of memory left no evidence concerning whether the alleged superior-officer order was plausibly, apparently, or facially valid.

The court also noted evidence from which a jury could conclude that a reasonable officer in the defendants’ position could not have believed that a strip search was legally justified, if the jury first determined that the search was unlawful. Minus testified that the officers participated in searching his car after he was stopped, that the search found nothing, and that he protested the strip search because he had been arrested for a non-felony offense.

Disposition

The court denied the officers’ renewed motion for summary judgment on the strip-search claim. The court stated that the case should settle but, because earlier settlement efforts had failed, ordered the parties to file a proposed joint pretrial order and other pretrial submissions within two months. The court said it would issue a later order addressing the timing of any trial.