The jury awarded the plaintiff the wonderfully precise sum of $50,000.75 — comprising $30,000 in compensatory damages, $15,000.75 in punitives against one officer and $5,000 in punitives against another — but not before sending an awesome note to the judge, asking if they could make the officers perform 100 hours of community service!

Congratulations to the plaintiffs’ lawyers Jared Kosoglad, Michael Oppenheimer and Bruce Mosbacher on their great work!

In Florida v. Jardines, 11-564, the court is considering whether police officers in Miami violated the 4th Amendment when they brought Franky, a dog trained to identify the odor of narcotics, to nose around the exterior of a private home without a warrant. Franky detected the odor of marijuana, and police obtained a warrant to search the house. That led to felony charges against Joelis Jardines. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the decision to suppress the pot, finding that the police tactic of using Franky to smell around a suspected grow house without a warrant amounted to an unconstitutional search. The U.S. Supreme Court accepted review of the case, which tests the outer boundaries of permissible police use of narcotics sniffing dogs.

In 2005, the Supreme Court approved warrantless drug sniffs of cars during routine traffic stops in the case Illinois v. Caballes. However, the sanctity of the home has always been the core concern of 4th Amendment jurisprudence. During oral argument some justices questioned whether a warrantless house sniff passed the smell test. Justice Scalia, in particular, likened the case to Supreme Court precedent which held that police cannot without a warrant, intrude on the “curtilage” (immediately surrounding areas) of a home to see what they could not see from the public sidewalk.

Other justices likened Jardines to the 2001 case Kyllo v. United States, in which the Court put limits on law enforcement’s use of technology, such as thermal imaging devices, to scan the exterior of a home to obtain evidence that the residents were growing marijuana inside.

Justice Kagan was skeptical of Florida’s argument that there was a fundamental distinction between using Franky’s “god-given” nose to conduct the search as opposed to a mechanical device to gain the same information. Kagan asked whether police could walk up to doors with a “smell-o-matic” device that gleaned the same information as a drug sniffing dog.

Justice Ginsburg, likewise, didn’t like where Florida’s arguments led: She questioned whether, under their logic police could in “a neighborhood that’s known to be a drug-dealing neighborhood, just go down the street, have the dog sniff in front of every door, or go into an apartment building?” Gregory Garre, who represented Florida, agreed that would be constitutionally permissible.

In Florida v. Harris, the court will consider whether drug sniffing dogs are sufficiently reliable that an “alert” from such a dog should be considered probable cause to conduct a search. The Florida Supreme Court held that the government must provide evidence to establish the reliability of the dog’s alert including “the dog’s training and certification records, … field performance records (including any unverified alerts), and evidence concerning the experience and training of the officer.” The Supreme Court seemed disinclined to mandate certain qualifications before a dog could be deemed sufficiently reliable.

A decision is expected on both cases by summer.

Even if preserving tradition were in itself an important goal, DOMA is not a means to achieve it. As the district court found: “because the decision of whether same-sex couples can marry is left to the states, DOMA does not, strictly speaking, ‘preserve’ the institution of marriage as one between a man and a woman. … Law (federal or state) is not concerned with holy matrimony. Government deals with marriage as a civil status–however fundamental–and New York has elected to extend that status to same-sex couples. A state may enforce and dissolve a couple’s marriage, but it cannot sanctify or bless it. For that, the pair must go next door.

The full opinion is available from the Second Circuit’s website.

The court found that this Subsection was unconstitutionally overbroad under the First Amendment and unconstitutionally vague under the 14th Amendment. Judge Flaum wrote for a unanimous panel: “Subsection D may still implicate protected expression because, once triggered, it may be applied to disperse people engaged in peaceful speech or expressive conduct, including on topics of public concern. … Accordingly, to the extent that Subsection D authorizes dispersal when an assembly creates or is threatened by “substantial harm,” it does not improperly infringe upon protected speech. We cannot say the same, however, for authorizing dispersal on the basis of “serious inconvenience, annoyance or alarm.””

The full text of the opinion is available here.

Since the City of Chicago implemented a no-settlement policy for most police misconduct cases in 2010, many small-damages cases have gone to trial in the Northern District of Illinois. Plaintiffs have had mixed success. As predicted, many small cases have resulted in defense verdicts, and case filings are down. The real risk of the city’s policy was that by forcing to trial a case that could be settled for a small amount of money, they could be exposing themselves to a large fee award for the plaintiff’s attorneys, even if the plaintiff only recovered a small amount.

There has been a lot of litigation on fee awards in low or nominal damages cases in the past years since so many of these small cases have gone to trial. The fee decision in the case Aponte v. City of Chicago, 09 C 8082, out today from Judge John Darrah, reaches a particularly harsh result.

The plaintiff in that case brought claims against five police officers relating to an August 2009 search of his home. At trial, the plaintiff prevailed on one claim (illegal search) against one officer. In closing arguments, plaintiff’s counsel had requested that they jury award his client somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000. The jury awarded him $100.00 in compensatory damages and no punitive damages.

Relying on the Supreme Court decision in Farrar v. Hobby, the court decided not to award any attorneys fees to plaintiff’s counsel, finding that although the plaintiff technically “prevailed” the victory was de minimis when compared to the recovery sought by counsel.

In my humble opinion, the decision runs contrary the purpose of Section 1988—that is to compensate attorneys who take on and win cases that vindicate a citizens’ constitutional rights, even where the financial recovery is not great. This result (and similar recent decisions) will create a serious barrier to justice and access to the courts. If skillful attorneys such as counsel in Aponte get nothing at all after winning a case like this, how could any attorney bear the risk of taking on civil rights cases? That leaves an individual like Mr. Aponte, whose constitutional right to be secure in his own home was violated, without legal recourse. That is not what the law requires.

The full text of the decision is here.

In FAA v. Cooper, Cooper lost his pilot license after the FAA was told by the Social Security Administration that he had received disability benefits because of an illness.  The records were disclosed to the FAA as part of an “Operation Safe Pilot” probe targeting medically unfit pilots.  At the time Cooper was receiving benefits, the FAA did not give licenses to anyone taking medication for the AIDS virus.

Cooper’s suit did not allege economic harm in his complaint.  He did however sue for “humiliation, embarrassment, mental anguish, fear of social ostracism, and other severe emotional distress.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Alito stated that the Privacy Act of 1974 provides for “actual damages” if the United States intentionally or willfully violates the law.  However, the term “actual damages” varies based on the statute being interpreted, and under the Privacy Act damages can only be recovered for pecuniary loss.

In a vigorous dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority opinion “cripples the Act’s core purpose of redressing and deterring violations of privacy interests.”  She criticized the majority’s interpretation of actual damages, as the majority conceded that its interpretation was not compelled by the plain text of the Act nor required “by any other traditional tool of statutory interpretation.”

You can read the full opinion here.

Gina M. Spada is an attorney practicing in Chicago and the surrounding counties handling privacy related matters for both individuals and businesses.  You can learn more about her here: www.gspadalaw.com.

Rep. Elaine Nekritz introduced a bill to amend the statute. Her bill, H.B. 3944, would have brought Illinois in line with other states, which, by and large, permit audio and video recording with the consent of one party to the conversation. Moreover, the bill reflected the reality that police officers really shouldn’t have an expectation of privacy when they perform public duties in public places. But, disappointingly, opponents of the bill shot it down in a 59-45 vote.

Meanwhile, on March 2, Cook County Judge Stanley Sacks found the eavesdropping law unconstitutional in the case of the artist Christopher Drew who was charged with a felony under the law for having a friend videotape his arrest. Judge Sacks noted: “The Illinois Eavesdropping Statute potentially punishes as a felony a wide array of wholly innocent conduct. A parent making an audio recording of their child’s soccer game, but in doing so happens to record nearby conversations, would be in violation of the Eavesdropping Statute.”

> William Whelehan was fired for throwing a bag of dog feces on his neighbor’s porch and pointing a gun at the neighbor after a 2009 argument about whether Whelehan’s dog had urinated on the neighbor’s lawn. Whelehan is also a defendant in the case Geinosky v. City of Chicago, in which he and other officers in Unit 253 of the CPD issued two dozen false parking tickets to Mark Geinosky. Whelehan had been recommended for termination in connection with the Geinosky investigation, but the feces/aggravated assault case came up first.

> Two officers were fired for carrying their guns around while drunk. Dale Prince shot a gun in his backyard while he was drunk and off-duty in 2007. When other (on duty) officers came to investigate the gunfire, they found seven unregistered guns in Prince’s home. Prince said he was investigating a possible intruder. Brian Gentzle was carrying his duty weapon around while drunk in 2008 when police stopped him and another armed man in an apartment building near Fullerton and Clybourn.

> Kevin Carey was driving drunk when he pointed a gun at a civilian in another vehicle. When on-duty officers arrived, they ordered Carey to drop his gun, which he refused to do. Carey, whose BAC was determined to be more than twice the legal limit, called the man he was chasing a racial epithet. He was charged with DUI and aggravated assault, and ultimately pled guilty to the DUI only.

> The weirdest one is Matthew Riley. He was present during an illegal raid of a home with officers from the disgraced Special Operations Section in 2004. Without a warrant, officers broke down a door and searched a Northwest side home and stole $13,000 from the residents. Ultimately, though, Riley wasn’t fired for his role in the illegal search but rather for allegedly lying to investigators about the presence of a supervisor on the scene.

City council approved a settlement of more than $2 million in the case Cobige v. City of Chicago, 06 C 3807. Patricia Cobige died in the CPD’s 25th District lockup on June 12, 2006, two days after her arrest on drug charges. Her cell mate testified that Cobige was repeatedly asking for help and complained of severe abdominal pain, but was ignored by lockup personnel. Testimony at trial showed that the officers refused to take Cobige to bond court because she was so ill. According to court documents, medical evidence at trial established that Cobige had uterine tumors that would have caused pain. A doctor testified that her severe pain elevated epinephrine levels in her system, aggravating her pre-existing heart condition, and ultimately causing her death.

A Northern District jury awarded Ms. Cobige’s adult son Maurice $5 million after a jury trial before Judge Amy St. Eve. The city appealed to the Seventh Circuit, which upheld the verdict on liability, but remanded for a new trial on damages, finding that certain evidence of Ms. Cobige’s criminal history should have been admitted as relevant to damages. The Seventh Circuit opinion is available here. Rather than roll the dice again, the City settled.

City Council also approved a $1 million settlement in McMullan v. City. In that case, a 52-year-old man died in CPD’s central detention. He was found dead in full rigor mortis, hours after he passed away. According to news reports, other people in the lock up were prepared to testify that he had been screaming in pain for a long time, but received no medical attention.

Tribune coverage here.