A.J. v. Tanksley, No. 15-1536 (8th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseThe Estate of Robert Jason Johnson, who was killed in a motorcycle and car accident, filed suit against the St. Louis Board of Police, various police board officials, and three police officers, alleging civil rights violations stemming from the police’s handling of the accident. The district court dismissed the police board and the police board officials from the case and granted summary judgment in favor of the three police officer defendants. The court concluded that, because the record contains no evidence that defendants materially falsified the accident report or failed to conduct a constitutionally-required investigation, the district court properly granted summary judgment to defendants on the substantive due process claim. The court's conclusion that the accident report was not materially false is also sufficient to dispose of the estate’s claims for violation of the Equal Protection Clause and conspiracy to violate civil rights. Finally, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion for sanctions where the district court viewed both parties partially at fault, and considered the dispute at issue to be a scheduling matter better resolved by the parties themselves than by the court. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.
Court Description: Kelly, Author, with Loken and Gruender, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Civil rights. In action alleging defendants violated the estate's due process and equal protection rights by filing a false accident report and by failing to conduct an adequate investigation of the accident in which A.J. was killed, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment for the defendants as the estate's allegations regarding the minor discrepancies in the report did not establish that the defendants prepared and filed a materially false accident report; similarly, the court did not err in granting defendants summary judgment on the estate's denial of access to the courts; as the accident report was not materially false, the district court did not err in granting defendants summary judgment on the estate's equal protection and conspiracy claims; the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying the estate's request for sanctions regarding missed depositions.
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