Smith v. Ray (Lawyers Weekly No. 15-01-0267, 24 pp.) (Traxler, J.) No. 12-1503, March 18, 2015; USDC at Norfolk, Va. (Miller, J.) 4th Cir. Holding: A Virginia Beach police officer accused of grabbing a woman, who merely answered his knock ...

Tagged with: Excessive Force Qualified Immunity

Johnson v. City of Fayetteville (Lawyers Weekly No. 15-02-0230, 60 pp.) (James Fox, S.J.) 5:12-cv-00456; E.D.N.C. Holding: Given the differences between the accounts of parties and witnesses as to the events leading to plaintiff Darwin Johnson’s arrest, summary judgment would ...

Tagged with: Excessive Force

Ledbetter v. City of Durham (Lawyers Weekly No. 15-16-0056, 9 pp.) (Chris Dillon, J.) Appealed from Durham County Superior Court (Howard Manning Jr., J.) N.C. App. Unpub. Holding: The defendant-police officer said he tackled plaintiff during an arrest because it ...

Tagged with: Excessive Force Immunity

Safford v. Barnes (Lawyers Weekly No. 14-03-1059, 18 pp.) (Thomas Schroeder, J.) 1:14-cv-00267; M.D.N.C. Holding: Plaintiff alleges that the defendant-deputy sheriff used excessive force in removing plaintiff from a courtroom. Because the alleged excessive force occurred before plaintiff was in ...

Tagged with: Excessive Force

Stevenson v. City of Seat Pleasant, Md. (Lawyers Weekly No. 14-01-0181, 28 pp.) (Floyd, J.) No. 12-2047, Feb. 21, 2014; USDC at Greenbelt, Md. (Titus, J.) 4th Cir. Holding: A civil rights complaint of excessive force that alleged defendant officers, ...

Tagged with: Excessive Force

Attorneys for the family of a former Florida A&M football player filed a lawsuit Tuesday, targeting the officer who shot him to death and saying the department used excessive force after the unarmed man was shot 10 times.

Tagged with: Charlotte Police Excessive Force Shooting

A Wilmington police officer has been cleared after he was questioned about using excessive force when a police dog bit a suspect.

Tagged with: dog bite Excessive Force

Hill v. Crum : A correctional officer who allegedly assaulted a restrained inmate who was changing cells has qualified immunity from the inmate’s suit alleging excessive force, the 4th Circuit says; although the law changed in 2010, the governing standard for an excessive force claim in 2007 applies and medical records showed no more than a de minimis injury to plaintiff.

Tagged with: Excessive Force

When Henry Spell was hauled into the Fayetteville Police Department in the 1980s on charges of drunken driving and drug possession, little did he know that his ordeal would pave the way for one of the most important decisions on excessive force claims in the past quarter century.

Tagged with: Excessive Force

Former Salisbury police officer Kareem Puranda was up against seemingly insurmountable odds while standing trial for using excessive force. Not only had he been filmed body-slamming a man and punching another in the head, some of his fellow officers crossed the blue line and testified against him in U.S. District Court in Greensboro.

Tagged with: Excessive Force