Kosmidis v. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Background

Constantino Kosmidis sued the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and Port Authority Police Sergeant Bernard Buckner and Officers Steven O’Shea, Alexander Velez, Jr., and Joseph Riccardi, Jr. The suit arose from Kosmidis’s arrest after a September 15, 2017 flight from Athens landed at John F. Kennedy Airport. A flight captain had asked Port Authority Police to meet the flight after a verbal altercation involving Kosmidis, his movement toward the first-class area, and his carrying an unlit cigarette.

The parties disputed what happened after officers escorted Kosmidis from the plane. Kosmidis testified that several officers attacked him, stepped on him, hit him, and handcuffed him behind his back without provocation. The defendants claimed that Kosmidis yelled, cursed, tried to light a cigarette, moved toward or lunged at Sergeant Buckner, and resisted arrest. They also claimed that an officer treated Kosmidis’s injuries and offered medical assistance; Kosmidis disputed that account and said he requested an ambulance but was ignored.

Kosmidis also alleged that he had a hearing impairment that made it difficult to understand the officers. He had used hearing aids before 2011, stopped using them because he could not afford them, and resumed using them in 2019.

Summary-judgment standard

Summary judgment is appropriate when there is no genuine dispute about a fact that could affect the outcome and the moving party is entitled to judgment under the law. The court must view disputed evidence and reasonable inferences in favor of the party opposing the motion. It may not decide credibility disputes or choose between competing accounts of events at this stage.

Claims that survived summary judgment

The court denied summary judgment on the federal and New York false-arrest and false-imprisonment claims. Probable cause—facts sufficient to lead a reasonable person to believe that a crime was being committed—would defeat those claims. The defendants argued that they had probable cause to arrest Kosmidis for disorderly conduct, but that argument depended on their disputed account that Kosmidis acted aggressively, threatened the officers, or used abusive language before the arrest. Kosmidis’s testimony contradicted those facts. The same factual disputes prevented the court from deciding whether the individual officers had qualified immunity, which can protect officials from damages when reasonable officers could have disagreed about whether probable cause existed.

The court also denied summary judgment on Kosmidis’s Section 1983 excessive-force claim and his state assault and battery claims. Excessive force during an arrest is evaluated under the Fourth Amendment’s objective-reasonableness standard. Whether the force was reasonable depended on disputed facts about whether Kosmidis lunged at or threatened Sergeant Buckner, resisted arrest, or was attacked without provocation. The court also rejected the defendants’ argument that Kosmidis’s injuries were too minor to support the claim, noting that his testimony described bleeding, scrapes, bruises, pain, and dizziness. The court did not resolve the broader legal question about whether a Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim requires more than a minimal injury because the factual disputes independently prevented summary judgment.

The court denied summary judgment on the failure-to-intervene claim because the defendants relied only on their probable-cause argument, and factual disputes prevented a finding of probable cause. It also denied summary judgment on the First Amendment retaliation claim because the defendants relied on probable cause and offered no other argument supporting judgment on that claim.

Claims on which summary judgment was granted

The court granted summary judgment on any punitive-damages claim against the Port Authority. It held that the Port Authority, treated as a municipal entity for Section 1983 purposes, is immune from punitive damages.

The court granted summary judgment on Kosmidis’s municipal-liability claim against the Port Authority, commonly called a Monell claim. Kosmidis argued that the Port Authority failed to supervise or discipline the officers and failed to train them about excessive force and interactions with hard-of-hearing people. The court held that the record did not allow a reasonable jury to find the deliberate indifference required for those theories. Evidence concerning one earlier excessive-force case involving Sergeant Buckner was insufficient, and Kosmidis presented no adequate evidence of a pattern of violations, notice to policymakers, or a specific training deficiency that caused the alleged constitutional injury.

The court granted summary judgment on the negligent-hiring claim after Kosmidis stated that he would withdraw that claim. It also granted summary judgment on the standalone negligence claim because the alleged conduct was intentional conduct underlying his assault and excessive-force claims, rather than conduct that could support a separate negligence claim.

The court granted summary judgment on the Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act claims. Although the court assumed that Kosmidis had a hearing-related physical impairment, it found no evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude that the impairment substantially limited his hearing as required by those statutes. The court characterized his evidence as generalized and conclusory and lacking information about the impairment’s severity or effect on his ability to function.

The court granted summary judgment on the intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim because the alleged conduct was entirely covered by the false-arrest and excessive-force claims, and Kosmidis identified no additional conduct. It also granted summary judgment on any standalone Fourteenth Amendment claim because Kosmidis did not identify such a theory clearly and did not respond to the defendants’ argument that the claim was duplicative or unclear. Finally, it granted summary judgment on the New York state constitutional claims after Kosmidis stated that he withdrew them.

Disposition

The court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment in part and denied it in part. The claims on which summary judgment was granted were dismissed, while the motion was denied as to the remaining claims, including the arrest-related, excessive-force, assault, battery, failure-to-intervene, and First Amendment retaliation claims. The court scheduled a pretrial conference for October 25, 2021, and stated that the order resolved docket entry 88.