Jackson v. Stair, No. 18-2617 (8th Cir. 2019)
Annotate this Case
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.
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on December 3, 2019.