Estate of Romain v. City of Grosse Pointe Farms, No. 18-1316 (6th Cir. 2019)
Annotate this CaseIn January 2010, police found Joann’s car alone in a church driveway and thought the driver might be in the water. Police activated a dive team and contacted the Coast Guard. Joann’s daughter reported that Joann had attended Mass and was not answering her phone. In the following weeks, police questioned people who knew Joann, who saw her at Mass, and who were near the lake. Two months later, a fisherman found her body in the Detroit River. A Canadian coroner performed an autopsy and concluded that Joann drowned. A Michigan coroner performed another autopsy and drew the same conclusions, noting that homicide was “less likely” than suicide because Joann had no significant injuries and that an accident seemed “quite unlikely” because Joann had no reason to be near the water. A doctor at the University of Michigan reported drowning as the cause of death with an undetermined manner of death. Police stopped actively investigating Joann’s death, but the case remains open. Joann’s estate believes that an unknown person murdered Joann and that the police knew about the murder before it happened and botched the investigation to protect the killer, who sold the officers alcohol at prices cheaper than Costco. The Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the defendants. The court acknowledged some “odd facts” cited by the estate but concluded that a reasonable jury could not return a verdict for the estate.
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