Kinzer v. Schuckmann

850 F. Supp. 2d 785, 2012 WL 395493, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15024
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Ohio
DecidedFebruary 7, 2012
DocketNo. 1:11-CV-00168
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 850 F. Supp. 2d 785 (Kinzer v. Schuckmann) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Ohio primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kinzer v. Schuckmann, 850 F. Supp. 2d 785, 2012 WL 395493, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15024 (S.D. Ohio 2012).

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER DENYING DEFENDANT’S MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

S. ARTHUR SPIEGEL, Senior District Judge.

This matter is before the Court on Defendant Officer Russell Schuckmann’s Motion for Summary Judgment (doc. 13), Plaintiff Janie Kinzer’s response in opposition (doc. 14), and Defendant’s reply (doc. 18). For the reasons explained below, we DENY Defendant’s motion

I. Background

The uncontested facts in this cause of action are relatively straightforward. A heavy rain fell on June 12, 2010 in Green Township, Ohio (Schuckmann Dep. at 34, doc. 17). Around noon, Plaintiff Janie Kinzer received a phone call from Jamie Ruggles, her son Brandon’s girlfriend, who was panicked that she and her two daugh[786]*786ters, a seven year-old and a nine year-old, were going to drown because the rising rain water was making its way up her basement steps (J. Kinzer’s Dep. at 24-27, doc. 15). Mrs. Kinzer asked Jamie if she had called 911 for help, and Jamie replied that she had called “several times” (id. at 26). Mrs. Kinzer and her husband, Steven, immediately left and drove to Jamie’s home (id. at 28). Via cell phone, Mr. Kinzer contacted 911 and learned that several calls had been made concerning the flash flood (id. at 30-31). He testified that, on the way there, his wife was “[v]ery frantic” (S. Kinzer Dep. at 32, doc. 16). When Mr. and Mrs. Kinzer arrived, the road leading to Jamie’s home was “blocked from the water,” so they parked their truck up the hill in a commercial parking lot (J. Kinzer Dep. at 29-30, doc. 15). Mrs. Kinzer exited the vehicle before her husband, who was busy putting on his shoes (id. at 31). She began to approach the property on foot (id.). Seeing the flood water, Mr. Kinzer then took his shoes back off and emptied his pockets (id.), apparently preparing to enter the water. Upon reaching the edge of where the water had risen on the street, Mrs. Kinzer testified that her husband, now two-to-three feet behind her, told her “[D]on’t go in the water, I’ll go in and get them” (id. at 32). When asked later at his deposition how he regarded her at the scene, Mr. Kinzer described her to be “just as frantic. I don’t think she was out of control, but she was very worried and concerned about the safety of the kids and the pregnant mom” (S. Kinzer Dep. at 32).

Green Township Police Officer Russell Schuckmann had been dispatched to this emergency (Schuckmann Dep. at 38, doc. 17). His only knowledge upon arrival was that “there was a pregnant lady [Jamie Ruggles] with two children trapped” (id.). At this point, the parties’ version of events diverge.

Mrs. Kinzer claims that Officer Schuckmann, who was standing to the left of the water, silently “reached out, took my right wrist and twisted it, and he was just staring me in the eye, and he scared me so bad that I urinated on myself’ (J. Kinzer Dep. at 32, 34-36, doc. 15). He did so right after her husband had warned her not to go in the water (id. at 34-35). Mrs. Kinzer turned to look back at her husband, and then looked forward, at which time she found herself face-to-face with Officer Schuckmann (id. at 35-36). She denied that he twisted her wrist in a manner to take it behind her back, but, rather, he “twisted it in front of me” (id. at 44). And she stated several times that Officer Schuckmann did not say a word to her (see, e.g., id. at 36). Mr. Kinzer claims to have “stepped in and actually separated the two of their hands” (S. Kinzer Dep. at 26, doc. 16). Seeing that Brandon had rescued Jamie’s daughters and sat them on a grassy patch across the street, Mr. and Mrs. Kinzer went to them to “get them warm and dried off’ (id. at 26-27). Brandon again waded through the flood water to rescue his girlfriend and the family pets (id. at 30, 33-34, 39-40). He also rescued Jamie’s next-door neighbors, both of whom were elderly (id. at 34-35). And, with Officer Schuckmann’s help, he pushed a car that had become trapped in the water, along with its elderly passenger, out of harm’s way (id. at 36-38).

Approximately 45 minutes to an hour after she had arrived on scene, Mrs. Kinzer was on her cell phone talking with her daughter (J. Kinzer Dep. at 69, doc. 15). She states that an officer, who identified himself only as “the supervisor,” approached her and said, “ “You need to hang up your phone. We need information from you.’ ” (id. at 68, 69). She asked what kind of information he needed. In her words, the supervisor said, “I need to have your full name, Social Security number, and I [787]*787want to see your driver’s license.” (id. at 70). She continued to question why he needed the information, and he replied that, if she did not supply it, she would be arrested for disorderly conduct and taken downtown. She declined to give him the information until her husband came back up the hill (id. at 70-72). Mrs. Kinzer then testified:

And I said to Officer Schuekman[n], I said you twisted my wrist, and your behavior was totally inappropriate. I said I’ve been a nurse for 29 years, and 22 of those I spent in psychiatry. I’m crisis intervention trained, and never in my training or any books did I ever read that if somebody is in a crisis situation that you twist their wrist. I said it was inappropriate.
And he looked me in the eye and said I was thinking the same thing.

(Id. at 73). Mrs. Kinzer maintains that Officer Schuckmann’s supervisor dictated to him what to write and told her that she needed to sign the citation. She signed it, “threw it back at him,” and said, “it’s not going to be the end of it.” (id.). While Mrs. Kinzer could not remember how many times she appeared in court in connection with the citation, she recalled a first time to enter a plea and sign a waiver of counsel (id. at 77-79), a second time when her newly-hired counsel appeared on her behalf (id. at 79-80), a third time when a request for discovery was made by her counsel (id. at 81), a fourth time when the supervisor, but not Officer Schuckmann, came and gave her counsel a packet of papers (id. at 81-82), and a fifth time, October 4, 2010, when the charge was dismissed, because, as she recalled, the judge said, “the police should have been there, that so much time had elapsed and he said no, I’m dismissing the charges” (id. at 82).

In contrast, Officer Schuckmann maintains that, when he arrived at the scene and exited his patrol car, Mr. Kinzer “clearly said, can you help me keep her [meaning Janie Kinzer] out of the water” (Schuckmann Dep. at 51, doc. 17). He testified further that Mrs. Kinzer was “trying to pull away from her husband” and, in order to restrain her, “[h]e was trying to hold onto her arm” (id. at 54). Officer Schuckmann described Plaintiff as “very frantic ... just off the wall going, I got to save my grandbabies” (id. at 55). In response to Mr. Kinzer’ s request for help, Defendant told Plaintiff, “I said, ma'am, you’re going to need to go over there,” referring to a small strip mall housing a Subway restaurant (id. at 56). He characterized her response as “belligerent:”

She was really out of control. I need to save my fucking grandbabies. Ma’am you need to go over there. Fuck you, I don’t need to go anywhere. Ma’am, please go over there. Fuck you, I’m not going there.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
850 F. Supp. 2d 785, 2012 WL 395493, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15024, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kinzer-v-schuckmann-ohsd-2012.