"False Arrest! I'll sue you!" Lehto's Law - Ep. 5.92

hello welcome once again to Latos well I'm Steve lay till today we're talking about false arrest what is false arrest can you sue somebody for false arrest when can you sue somebody for false arrest I'm bringing this up because it's a common topic I see people talking about it in the comments below my video is from time to time and I've also seen it in the videos that people get pulled over by the side of the road and when the police officers ask them for information or detain them they'll often start screaming about false arrest so it's important that we know what false arrest is and when in fact you can sue somebody for it so I'm gonna direct your attention to a case out of Michigan that's interesting a jury in a US district court has awarded a Harper Woods Man three point five million dollars six years after he was mistakenly arrested by Detroit police in connection with a drive-by shooting the payout to 43 year old Marvin seals is thought to be the largest award for a wrongful arrest case in Michigan history seals lawsuit was filed in 2012 but the city's bankruptcy Detroit went through bankruptcy and numerous appeals stalled the case to where it only got tried in the summer of 2018 on Friday following a four-day trial an eight-member jury took less than two hours to deliberate before unanimously awarding seals 3.5 million dollars which is also possibly gonna get larger because it could increase by as much as a million dollars if the judge Awards the attorney fees to the plaintiff seals his attorney is James Harrington and I have to double-check that because I had a student named James Harrington a few years ago and if this is James congratulations Mike my good student he said it was a gross injustice of what happened to his client and here's how it went down in 2012 members of the Detroit fugitive apprehension team arrested seals at his job at a food service in Warren in connection with a 2010 drive-by shooting police insisted seals is using a fake identification card and they claimed his real name was Roderick signer the man investigators thought was responsible for the shooting one of the aliases that seiner was known to use was Marvin seals seals lost his job repeat he told the officers they'd got the wrong guy and according to the lawsuit this stuff was all made known to the police so um seals was charged with assault with intent to commit murder he's set in Wayne County Jail for 15 days before a preliminary examination and during the hearing the victim got a look at seals and told the prosecutors that's not the guy the lawsuit accused arresting officer Tom Burke hot and Wayne County Jail staff of failing to look at an available mug shot they had of seiner which would have shown them they had the wrong guy at the time of Marvins seals arrest a mug shot and further identification of Robert signer was available to the zubur cot but according to the lawsuit Wayne County Jail officials had access to the mug shot but didn't bother looking at it after seals was released signer was actually arrested in July of 2012 and charged with assault with intent to commit murder those charges were later dismissed and a 2015 signer who at the time was on probation in Alabama for an unrelated crime filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming he'd been falsely arrested for 2010 shooting also but his lawsuit was dismissed okay so keep that in mind seals lawsuit has taken several twists and turns when the city declared bankruptcy in July the suit was stayed is reopened in 2015 and the city then filed several appeals as the birkut argued during one appeal that at the time it was reasonable to conclude that seals was the person identified in the warrant and that the arrest was not unreasonable seizure rising to the level of a civil rights violation that went up to the u.s. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and they ruled that the lawsuit could proceed they sent it back down for trial and the Sixth Circuit opinion reads there's no evidence that the officers made any attempts to verify seals identity nothing suggests that the officers checked seals fingerprints photographs or biographical information against the information that they had on signer so the jury awarded seals $750,000 because his Fourth Amendment rights were violated $500,000 for their wrongful imprisonment 250 for the false arrest and $500,000 for gross negligence in 1.5 mm and ours and punitive damages so that all adds up to 3.5 million dollars the wrongful arrests so what really got me thinking about this in the first place though is I see these videos on YouTube and I also get comments below in my videos where people say well and the police officer pulls me over I'm an assumed for false arrest and I also see videos of people when the police officer pulls them over and says you know k see your driver's license and registration they go am i under arrest and they go no they go well my free to leave no you know I'm detaining you too I can determine whether you have a driver's license or not and then the person will say well I'm gonna sue you I'm gonna sue you for false arrest and I'm gonna win and I get all kinds of money you know and and it's funny because they always say they're going to but of course they never do or if they do the lawsuits get thrown out but you need to understand a couple things about false arrest and like I said you know a lot of legal terms get tossed around they get bandied about and many people don't know what it means so generally speaking a false arrest is when one person holds another person against their will you might say does that sound a lot like kidnapping well kidnapping is a slight variation on that that's what you hold me against their will and then you move them against their will at least at common law but generally speaking the more the more common false arrest you hear about is where one person takes another person into custody without consent and without legal justification so if you consent to it it's not a false arrest but the key here is without legal justification what is the legal justification to take another person into custody and so you're often hearing about the cases of false arrest being made against police officers and often against private security companies you know you're at the mall and a mall cop walks up to you and says hey you know I think you did something wrong I'm going to arrest you and you know we're gonna consider that like a citizen's arrest which I've talked about before also or whatever and they hold you against your will well if they did that without legal justification it could rise to the level of false arrest and and by the way when I told you the facts of the case where the man got 3.5 million dollars remember there were egregious facts there besides the fact that guy got locked up and charged with a crime and the wrong guy you know if somebody detains you for five minutes and then lets you go yeah that's five minutes your life you can't have back but are you gonna be able to sue and get three point five million dollars for it probably not okay so so we're always talking about liability and damages but again the idea is somebody takes you into custody without consent or without legal justification for doing so and so there are some elements to this but you have to remember one thing and that is that there's a false arrest concept that comes from the federal statutes okay it's a USC action in some of the United States code 42 USC 1983 you'll often hear people say a 1983 action and I'll get to that second but there's also the possibility of a common law cause of action for false arrest and in Michigan they've actually got a common law action called unlawful imprisonment circumstances and so violation becomes a felony and so on it's got penalties and so on but that's an actual state statute but you're also going to have in every state the possibility of a federal action under 1983 assuming that the person who's doing this to you is a government actor so I tried to explain this in previous videos not everything that anyone does to you qualifies as a constitutional violation the Constitution generally restricts the federal government and then by the Fourteenth Amendment state governments from taking away your liberties and rights okay and it speaks to the government as an actor there are some situations where you can make out a case but but generally speaking so if if a total stranger comes up to you for no reason and and grabs you and hold you and says I'm you know I'm taking you into custody and they're not a police officer they're not a security guard they're not doing it under any color of law they're just doing it okay that's not gonna qualify as a 1983 action however it would qualify as an unlawful imprisonment action under state law so even if you don't qualify under the federal law it doesn't mean you have a cause of action it just means you don't have that cause of action so if somebody confines you okay the defendant confines you and you become aware that you are confined and you say that's a weird distinction but I'll get that back I'll get back to the second and and you did not consent to being confined and there's no excuse for the confinement there's no privilege there then you have a facial prima facie case to make out against somebody for you know false arrest if they are a government actor you can then seek to go after them for your you know violation of your civil rights under 1983 but if they're not a government actor you go after them under state law okay so somebody confines you okay that can be a very broad term as I locked you in a room i handcuffed you things that nature you've got to be conscious of the confinement and and a lot of law professors and and scholars will make up hypothetical situations and once in while they happen in real life but there's oddball stuff but let's suppose that you broke into my house and you were drunk broke into the wrong house and and you went and you fell asleep in my bedroom not realizing that that it wasn't your bedroom and I come home and I his estranged weirdo sleeping in my bed so I lock the door and I call the police please come and haul you away and as you're as you're wearily waking up you realize wait I was locked in that room for six hours well you didn't know it so you can't go after me for false arrest or false imprisonment so you gotta be aware of it you must not have consented to it but the confinement was not privileged and the privilege that somebody would have to arrest you is generally speaking if they're a police officer and they've got probable cause or if they have a warrant because as you know searches and seizures are unlawful if they are without probable cause or without a warrant but if they've got a warrant or they got probable cause then you can't claim you were falsely arrested okay so the idea obviously stems from the notion that you know we can't go around locking people up for no reason and it makes complete sense but if you are going to claim that the police officers arrested you wrong the first question you got to ask is did they have a warrant and if they didn't did they have probable cause so they have a warrant that's a yes or no did they have a warrant yes okay they gotcha unless of course they got the wrong person with the warrant so the warrant better apply to you and all right now I'm pointing at the article from the Detroit News but probable cause is actually the the greater area so that's suppose someone calls the police and goes hey there's a guy in my front yard and he's attacking somebody and they described you and the police show up and there's only one person that meets that description and they they talk to you and they talk to whoever it is it called it in they go yeah yeah that guy's been attacking people he's beating people up he's hurting people and the police arrests the person based on the statements made to them by witnesses that appeared to be credible that this person's attacking people or what or what have you and that's probable cause to arrest somebody if somebody says yeah I'm you know I'm a witness I saw it what I'm saying you seems credible and and a police officer could arrest somebody based on that okay they examine this the circumstances and facts and I go yeah we got probable cause but you hear about these cases where the police didn't quite have probable cause and they show up there do a little investigation and they just you know arrest somebody and so the question is going to be come did they have probable cause and I'm not gonna get really heavily into it probable cause is because number one NOLA agree with me if I do and number two it's not really that important except that you understand that the probable cause is recognized by the courts is having a gray area meaning that what you might consider a probable cause and what I might consider a probable cause might be slightly different okay and so the police have what they call qualified immunity and and they do get some discretion now they don't get complete discretion they can't just say you know something I walk down the street this guy gave me a dirty look and I arrested him because I think he committed a crime and and I had probable cause because he gave me a funny look well obviously that's so far beyond what any reasonable person would think you know would make sense that that's gonna be beyond the realm of their discretion but but the courts recognize that police officers are actually dealing situations in the streets figuratively speaking where they're out there dealing with criminals and crimes and crime scenes and and and and and the accused and so on and so sometimes they might make a slight error in one direction or the other and if they make an error that hurts you the question then becomes did they make a reasonable but mistaken judgment about something in other words was reasonable even if it was mistaken wasn't reasonable but it does not protect the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law so a police officer cannot just act in competently and say well I rested the wrong person Oh a mistakes are made know that that's gonna be that's any problem but the question is did they make a reasonable what mistake in judgment about something and that's going to the question so so if a police officer mistakenly arrests you but I had a good reason for doing it that could that could be looked at as being a probable cause then you're gonna lose the lawsuit if you file it so this idea that a police officer pulls you over and walks with your window and says hey driver's license and registration and you go why the police officer says well here in Michigan you've got to provide that when I ask you to provide it if you say well am I free to go police question are free to go yet show me your driver's license registration and proof of insurance they say well I'm not free to go I must be under arrest then right police officer goes no you're not under arrest I'm simply detaining you so traffic stop and I'm trying to ascertain whether you have a driver's license as required by state law and what happens then is people will often say well this is a false arrest I'm gonna sue you and I'm gonna own everything you own and you better have a bond and bla bla bla bla bla and imma sue you under 1983 now 1983 is a section of the u.s. code 42 USC where it says every person who under color of a statute ordinance regulation customer usage subjects are causes to be subjected any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction to the deprivation of any rights privileges or immunities secured by the constitutional laws shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law except that any action brought a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such austere judicial capacity injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory degree was violated a declaratory relief was unavailable for the purposes of the section any act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia she'll be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia but basically speaking anybody acting under color of law or authority of law who violates your constitutional rights is violating that section you can sue them under that so as we go back to the original case I talked about the man who was locked up when he Clues the wrong guy they didn't look to see who's the right guy yeah his rights have been violated he can sue under that but if it's not a state actor it's simply somebody who falsely imprisoned you well like I told you before there's a state statute on that Michigan and probably in your state as well MC l75 0.34 9b a person commits the crime of unlawful imprisonment if he or she knowingly restrains another person under any of the following circumstances the person is restrained by means of a weapon or dangerous instrument the person restrained was secretly confined the person was restrained to facilitate the commission of another felony or to facilitate flight after commission of another felony and a person who commits unlawful imprisonment is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 15 years or a fine if not more than $20,000 or both so this section does not prohibit the person from being charged with convicted ever sentenced for any other violation of law that is committed by that person while violating this section so if you fall asleep prison somebody in Michigan and you're not a state actor you can still be charged with this and it's a felony for which you can go to jail I believe there's also a civil side to this meaning even sue somebody if they falsely imprisoned you you'd be suing them under a state law not under federal law so the real question is again talking about false imprisonment and wrongful arrests and so on is did they take another person into custody that's you without consent or without legal justification to do so and so they have to have taken you into custody without legal justification and by the way in case you're curious failure to display your driver's license at the side of the road in some states can get you arrested so they'll you into custody for not displaying your driver's license and you can then go into court and scream and yell all you want about how you've been wrongfully arrested and you want 3.5 million dollars in action and punitive damages and the court will throw your case up because they'll say couldn't you avoid this by simply displaying your license as you are required to by law so that's what you need to know about wrongful arrest it's obviously a bad thing you hope it never happens view but know when you get pulled over the side of the road and a police officer asks you for your driver's license that's not a wrongful arrest questions or comments fire my way otherwise talk together you

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 58,506

Rating: 4.8859801 out of 5

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, false arrest, police

Id: qaVa4jnUA-U

Length: 18min 35sec (1115 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 20 2019