Alan Thibault v. Edward Wierszewski

695 F. App'x 891
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedJune 9, 2017
Docket16-2021
StatusUnpublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 695 F. App'x 891 (Alan Thibault v. Edward Wierszewski) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Alan Thibault v. Edward Wierszewski, 695 F. App'x 891 (6th Cir. 2017).

Opinions

MARTHA CRAIG DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judge.

Acting in his official capacity as a public safety officer for the City of Grosse Pointe Farms (Michigan), defendant Edward Wi-erszewski arrested plaintiff Alan Thibault for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or drags. When results of breathalyzer and blood tests revealed that Thibault had neither alcohol nor illicit drugs in his system at the time of the arrest, city prosecutors dismissed the charges against Thibault, leading him to file suit against Wierszewski under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from arrest without probable cause. Wi-erszewski, raising an affirmative defense of qualified immunity, filed a motion for summary judgment in his favor. The district court denied that request, in pertinent part ruling that a jury resolving myriad factual disputes in plaintiff Thibault’s favor could determine that defendant Wierszewski’s conclusion that he had probable cause to make the arrest was not a reasonable one. Wierszewski now appeals, arguing that Thibault’s inability to perform various field sobriety tests properly provided him with the probable cause necessary to justify the arrest. Given the disputes of fact surrounding the existence of probable cause [892]*892to arrest, we find ourselves without jurisdiction to hear this appeal.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

At approximately 2:00 a.m. on December 5,2014, Alan Thibault, driving an 18-wheel, tractor-trailer rig, attempted to make a scheduled delivery of supplies to a Wendy’s Restaurant on Mack Avenue in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. Travelling north on Moross Road, Thibault noticed a break in the median separating the lanes of traffic on Moross, and, mistakenly believing that the break marked the intersection of Moross and Mack, began to execute a left turn with his vehicle. As he did so, he noticed that Mack Avenue actually was the next intersection up Moross and so attempted to turn the tractor-trailer back onto Moross to travel the rest of the short block. In doing so, however, the tires on the driver’s side of the 48-foot trailer hit the curb on the median in front of him. Unfortunately for Thibault, as the trailer hit the curb, two public safety officers, Edward Wierszewski and Veronica Cash-ion, were travelling south on Moross in separate vehicles and observed what appeared to the officers to be reckless driving on the part of the rig’s operator.

The two officers pulled behind Thibault, who immediately stopped his truck and activated its hazard lights. According to Wierszewski, upon parking behind the tractor trailer, he also “observed the trailer did not have a license lamp to illuminate the plate, and a trailer clearance light was not properly working.” Armed with the evidence of those equipment violations, as well as the knowledge that Thibault had driven the rig in such a manner as to allow the trailer to travel onto the curb of the median, Wierszewski activated audio and video recording devices and approached Thibault to ask him for his license, his medical card, and his log book. When he reached the cab of the truck, the officer noted that Thibault had previously rolled down the window despite the chilly temperatures, that the truck’s radio was blaring, that “[t]he driver had an unlit cigarette he was attempting to smoke,” that the driver then attempted to extinguish the unlit cigarette, that the driver “appeared disoriented and spoke with slow speech,” that the driver’s face was “flushed and red,” and that after exiting the cab, Thibault was shaking, even though the cab in which he had been sitting was heated.

Wierszewski did not see any alcoholic beverages or containers in the cab and did not detect an odor of alcohol; nevertheless, Wierszewski claimed that his earlier observations led him to conclude that Thibault had been operating the truck while under the influence of either alcohol or drugs. He thus instructed Thibault to perform various field sobriety tests, some of which Thibault performed without difficulty and others of which, according to Wierszewski and other officers who also arrived on the scene, Thibault struggled to complete as instructed.

Believing that the inability of Thibault to perform each of the field sobriety tests perfectly made it more probable than not that he was under the influence of some intoxicating substance, Wierszewski arrested Thibault for a violation of Michigan Compiled Law § 257,625 and directed that he be transported to the Grosse Pointe Farms station house. Once there, officers again subjected Thibault to additional field sobriety tests and to a breathalyzer test. Even though the breathalyzer test resulted in blood-alcohol-content reading of 0.000%, Thibault remained under arrest, and Wierszewski, Cashion, and Sergeant Holly Rrizmanich later asserted that they observed a white powder-like substance in the plaintiffs left nostril. However, no at[893]*893tempt was made to obtain a sample of the alleged substance, to document its existence, or to have it tested.

More than three hours after Thibault first was taken to the police station, officers transported him to a local hospital where blood was drawn from the plaintiff in an effort to ascertain whether any nonalcoholic intoxicants were present in his bloodstream. Months later, the state police laboratory finally reported that the blood samples were free of any detectable amount of “amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, cannabinoids, cocaine metabolites, meprobamate, methadone, opiates, tramadol, zolpidem or any other acidic, neutral or basic drugs.” Furthermore, immediately after being released on bail, Thibault contacted his employer and provided a urine specimen for additional testing. Results from that test were received a mere eight hours after the plaintiffs arrest on December 5, 2014, and proved negative for the presence of marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, and phencyclidine (POP).

When all charges against him eventually were dismissed, Thibault filed suit against Wierszewski pursuant to the provisions of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, raising both a claim of malicious prosecution and a claim alleging that Wierszewski had arrested him without probable cause. Following a period of discovery, Wierszewski filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that the doctrine of qualified immunity protected him from liability in this matter. The district court rejected that argument, however, concluding that “the circumstances surrounding the stop and arrest are riddled with important factual disputes.” Furthermore, the district court noted that even the “authenticated video and audio recording of Thibault’s detention and arrest” did not necessarily support the conclusion that Wierszewski was objectively reasonable in believing he had probable cause to arrest the plaintiff. According to the court’s written ruling, the ambiguous portions of the video, the deposition testimony of Thibault himself, and the deposition testimony of Thibault’s expert that some of the field sobriety tests were administered incorrectly “require that a jury make the ultimate determination as to whether Wierszewski lawfully arrested Thibault.”

DISCUSSION

Probable-Cause Standard

The legal principle is well established that the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States require probable cause to justify an arrest of an individual. See, e.g., Crockett v.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
695 F. App'x 891, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/alan-thibault-v-edward-wierszewski-ca6-2017.