Tarrant v. City of Mount Vernon

Background

Gordon Tarrant brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal civil-rights statute, and New York law based on an April 26, 2018 arrest and related prosecution. He originally asserted seven claims against numerous known and unknown defendants. In opposing summary judgment, he withdrew all claims except two § 1983 claims: malicious prosecution and an unlawful-search claim based on an alleged strip search during his arrest. Tarrant was proceeding without a lawyer, although a legal clinic assisted in preparing his opposition.

The City Defendants moved for summary judgment, asking the court to end the action. The court recounted that detectives conducted an undercover drug purchase in November 2017, that Officer Matthew Lewis identified Tarrant as the seller, and that a felony complaint and arrest warrant followed. Officers Puff and Stewart executed the warrant on April 26, 2018. Tarrant was arraigned and released that day. A grand jury later indicted him, but the criminal charges were dismissed on May 17, 2019, after the prosecutor determined that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt could not be proven because the case rested on Lewis’s identification and Lewis could not definitively say whether he had dealt with Tarrant or Tarrant’s father or brother.

Unlawful-search claim

For a § 1983 claim, a plaintiff must show each defendant’s personal involvement in the alleged constitutional violation. Tarrant alleged that he was subjected to a full strip search, but he did not identify any defendant as having participated in it and offered no evidence connecting any City Defendant to the search. The court held that his general and conclusory allegations did not create a factual dispute for trial. It therefore granted summary judgment to the City Defendants on the unlawful-search claim based on the lack of evidence of personal involvement.

Malicious-prosecution claim

A § 1983 malicious-prosecution claim requires the elements of a New York malicious-prosecution claim, a violation of Fourth Amendment rights, and a sufficient restraint on liberty after arraignment. The court first held that Puff and Stewart could not be liable merely because they executed the arrest warrant; that conduct alone did not establish that they initiated the prosecution or were otherwise personally involved in malicious prosecution. The court granted summary judgment to those defendants on that claim.

The court then held that the grand-jury indictment created a presumption of probable cause. Tarrant did not provide evidence that the indictment resulted from fraud, perjury, suppression of evidence, or other bad-faith police conduct. His objections to Lewis’s identification—including that defendants had not submitted a sworn statement from Lewis and that the identification occurred more than twenty minutes after the drug sale—did not overcome the presumption. Because probable cause is a complete defense to malicious prosecution, the court granted the motion for summary judgment dismissing that claim.

Other claims and disposition

The court deemed all claims that Tarrant withdrew dismissed with prejudice against the City Defendants, except for the unlawful-search and malicious-prosecution claims addressed above. Because discovery had closed and Tarrant had not identified or served Police Officer Brown or John Does #1–3, the court dismissed with prejudice all claims against those defendants. The court had previously granted the County Defendants’ motion to dismiss in a December 1, 2021 order; that earlier ruling was not the ruling classified here.

Judge Philip M. Halpern granted the City Defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The Clerk was directed to terminate the pending motion and close the case.