Jackson v. Stair, No. 18-2617 (8th Cir. 2019)
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Plaintiff filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action for damages, alleging that the city, the police department, and an officer violated plaintiff's constitutuional rights when he was detained and tased as part of an arrest.
The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the city, because plaintiff failed to provide the evidence to support his claims of municipal liability. In this case, plaintiff has not presented any evidence to suggest that the city has created, adopted, or supported any policy or custom that would demonstrate municipal liability. The court affirmed the grant of summary judgment to the officer on the First Amendment claim, where, as here, speech and nonspeech elements combine in the same course of conduct, a sufficiently important government interest in regulating the nonspeech element can justify incidental limitations on First Amendment freedoms. In regard to the excessive force claims against the officer, the court held that the first and third tasings were objectively reasonable, but there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the second tasing amounted to excessive force. Accordingly, the court reversed in part and remanded for further proceedings.
Court Description: Before Erickson, Author, with Wollman and Grasz, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Civil rights. In this suit filed following an incident in which Jackson was tased and arrested by City of Jacksonville police officers, Jackson failed to present any evidence that the City has created, adopted or supported any policy or custom which would demonstrate municipal liability; to the contrary, the City produced its relevant policies and training materials, showed defendant Stair received specific Taser training and established that it investigated the incident and took further action with respect to Stair's discipline and training; defendant Stair was entitled to summary judgment on Jackson's claim that his actions violated Jackson's First Amendment rights; Jackson's first and third tasings were objectively reasonable as a reasonable officer could have viewed Jackson's actions as threatening, resisting arrest and endangering officer safety; however, the second tasing could be a constitutional violation, and the district court erred in ruling that Stair's conduct as a whole was reasonable without considering whether the second tasing could be a constitutional violation on its own; the matter is remanded for further proceedings as to whether this second tasing amounted to excessive force. Judge Wollman, concurring and dissenting. [ September 11, 2019
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on December 3, 2019.
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