Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller has denied a request that he reconsider his Jan. 27 order dropping Little Rock and a retired police chief from a wrongful death lawsuit set to be tried today.
In the trial, a federal jury will decide whether former Little Rock police officer Joshua Hastings should be held liable in the death of Bobby Moore, 15, in an August 2012 shooting outside the Shadow Lake apartment complex at 13111 W. Markham St.
Hastings was fired after the shooting, which occurred while he was investigating a report of car break-ins at the complex, and he was later tried twice on manslaughter charges in Pulaski County Circuit Court. Both juries deadlocked, leading the prosecutor to decline to try him a third time.
Moore's mother, Sylvia Perkins, sued the city, former Police Chief Stuart Thomas and Hastings in 2015, but Miller dismissed all defendants except Hastings in a January order, which Perkins' attorney later asked Miller to reconsider.
Attorney Mike Laux, who has recently opened an office in Little Rock, called the ruling "unfathomable" and said it ignored "all but a scant portion of the evidence provided."
Attorneys for the city, which is being represented by the Arkansas Municipal League, responded by saying that despite the filing of 2,105 pages of documents, Laux failed to establish that a pattern of unconstitutional conduct by police caused the boy's death. Without an established pattern, they said, Miller was required to dismiss Perkins' claims of failure by the city or Thomas to train, supervise, discipline and screen Hastings.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, but without the city or Thomas as defendants, it is unclear how a significant monetary judgment against Hastings, who has had trouble paying an earlier attorney in the case, could be collected. Hastings is now represented by Keith Wren of Little Rock.
In a 19-page order filed March 24, Miller noted that because of Laux's "grave concerns regarding the reasoning" in the order dropping the city and Thomas from the case, the motion for reconsideration would "be addressed at length."
He began by noting that the order "was based on the law of this circuit and it is the role of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to determine whether the law was correctly applied. It is not the role of this court to determine whether the city of Little Rock or its police department operates perfectly."
He agreed that the evidence submitted by Laux on Perkins' behalf was "voluminous," as Laux had argued. But, Miller said, "with such a substantial record, the decision was necessarily guided by the parties' arguments and citations to evidence, not by an exhaustive review of every page of evidence submitted."
Noting that the plaintiff has the burden of proving that her allegations constitute "a triable controversy," Miller quoted a 2004 8th Circuit case, saying "judges are not like pigs, hunting for truffles buried in briefs."
He said Laux's 214-page brief opposing the dismissals "is full of sensationalistic overstatements and an assortment of irrelevant conduct riddling the LRPD since 1980. ... If Perkins had found compelling evidence somewhere in this voluminous record, it should have been referenced specifically, represented accurately, and organized coherently."
Perkins, through Laux, "has a habit of misrepresenting the contents of evidence," Miller said, adding that it "resulted in a substantial amount of time spent checking and rechecking the accuracy of the factual and legal representations."
He added that the brief "is not as 'well-cited' as [Laux] asserts, as it often cites generally to entire cases or exhibits," without providing specific page numbers, or refers to "portions of the record that have little or nothing to do with the point made."
Miller observed at one point that "painting the LRPD as a bad police department is Perkins's theme," adding, "The standard for municipal and supervisory liability, however, is one rooted in demonstrating deliberate actions that eventually lead to a constitutional violation."
Laux, formerly of Chicago and San Francisco, has filed several excessive-force lawsuits against the Police Department.
Metro on 04/03/2017