Louis Gradisher v. City of Akron

794 F.3d 574, 2015 FED App. 0160P, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 12814, 2015 WL 4503208
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedJuly 24, 2015
Docket14-3973
StatusPublished
Cited by43 cases

This text of 794 F.3d 574 (Louis Gradisher v. City of Akron) 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
Louis Gradisher v. City of Akron, 794 F.3d 574, 2015 FED App. 0160P, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 12814, 2015 WL 4503208 (6th Cir. 2015).

Opinion

OPINION

COLE, Chief Judge.

One afternoon, plaintiff Louis Dana Gradisher consumed multiple alcoholic drinks, then made several erratic phone calls to 911 complaining about someone with a gun. When officers from the City of Akron Police Department arrived at his residence and Gradisher locked his door and retreated upon seeing them, they feared that someone inside might need help. The officers thereupon broke down the door and entered the house. They found Gradisher hiding under a sheet in his dark basement. What happened next is subject to debate, but after a few seconds, one of the officers used a taser on Gradisher because he allegedly resisted arrest.

Gradisher was later found guilty of improperly using the 911 system. He filed an action against several police officers and the City of Akron, asserting causes of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for constitutional violations due to excessive force, warrantless entry, and malicious prosecution, as well as several common-law tort claims. After the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court ruled in the defendants’ favor on all claims. At issue is whether the district court properly did so. For the reasons below, we affirm in part and reverse in part.

I.

On September 2, 2011, Louis Gradisher, a white male, met a friend at a bar, Geor-gie’s, where he had three or four beers and a shot of whiskey. While sitting at the bar, Gradisher noticed the outline of a gun in the pocket of a black man sitting to his left. Gradisher commented about the gun to the man, which triggered a heated exchange. Gradisher then left the bar and went to his residence about a quarter-mile away at 402 Kline Avenue in Akron, Ohio. Once there, he drank another three to five beers.

Gradisher then decided to call 911 from his cell phone to report the man with the gun at Georgie’s because Gradisher was upset that the man was “hard and nasty” with him. Gradisher made a total of four calls to 911 that day. On the first call, he refused to give the 911 operator his name and hung up abruptly. The operator called him back. On the return call, Grad-isher and the operator got into a heated exchange, causing the operator to hang up, which prompted Gradisher to call 911 two more times, each time using various obscenities. Gradisher later described his conduct on the call as a “[tjotal” and “utter embarrassment.” He thought the operator was “smart-mouth[ing]” him, hence the return calls and profanity that he later described as “[¡Inexcusable.” Gradisher admitted that he did not call to request emergency services and acknowledged that he “hurt [the operator’s] feelings.” He blamed his calls on the fact that he had a “buzz on” and was angry over a breakup with his girlfriend. He never thought that the police might be dispatched in response to his calls.

Because of Gradisher’s calls, Officers James Craft and Matthew Hackathorn were dispatched to Georgie’s. There, they *579 spoke with the bartender, who told them that a black male and a white male were arguing earlier. She told Haekathorn that the white male said that “he had a gun out in his van for [the black male],” and the white male “wanted him to come out to the van.” The bartender described the van as a “white work van” and the white male as in his 40s, stocky, and wearing a work shirt.

At some point, 911 dispatchers deduced that the first 911 call regarding a man with a gun at Georgie’s was connected to the “multiple unnecessary and vulgar calls to 911” from Gradisher’s residence. Officers were thus dispatched to “respond[ ] to 402 Kline based on multiple 911 calls about a man with a gun.”

Officers Jeffrey Smith and James Lead-better arrived at Gradisher’s residence first, and Officers Haekathorn and Craft arrived later after leaving Georgie’s. En route, the officers checked for any outstanding warrants linked to the address and found a failure-to-appear warrant concerning Gradisher. The physical description of the wanted individual on the warrant matched the generic description of the white male given by the bartender. In addition, the officers saw a white work truck in the driveway, and when they ran a check on the license plate, the results matched the bartender’s description of the white male. At the time, the officers were confused about who had the gun since the 911 caller said that it was a black male, but the bartender said that it was a white male.

While the officers were sent to check on the apparent misuse of the 911 system, given the confusion, the officers wanted “to see if there was a problem or [if] someone needed help at 402 Kline Avenue.” Haekathorn testified,

When someone calls [911] numerous times and they don’t give a reason other than they want to be confrontational on the phone and they’re ... very rude and erratic on the phone[,] [c]ould there be something going on where he might need help and he may not realize it? He may be going through an episode, could be a reaction to something.... [M]y 13 years of experience on my job is when someone calls [911] numerous times usually there’s a reason, they usually need some type of help or they’re going through some type of crisis. So through my training and experience we have to make sure someone is okay....

Smith testified that “with [the 911 caller’s] erratic and irrational behavior, and the possibility of a gun, we had a duty to check his welfare.”

Haekathorn approached the residence, knocked on the front door, and announced, “Akron Police, please come to the door.” He heard someone inside lock the dead bolt. Leadbetter, who went around to the house’s rear, saw a man exit the back door. Leadbetter yelled, “Hey, police,” but the man retreated and slammed the door. Le-adbetter called after the man and said that they just wanted to speak with him, but did not know at the time that the man was Gradisher.

As this transpired, Sergeant Vince Yu-rick, a police supervisor, was listening to radio traffic from the dispatches to Geor-gie’s and 402 Kline Avenue. Yuriek’s “understanding was that there was a guy with a gun at Georgie’s, and somehow this fellow left and was calling now from a different address of 402 Kline, and there were numerous calls of 911 being received from there-And then the officers ... find out that ... there’s a person from that address calling 911, it’s associated with the gun at Georgie’s, a person comes out the back door and goes back in.” Under “all those circumstances,” Yurick concluded that the situation was “very serious and *580 dangerous” and “could be bad.” As he later explained,

[I]n my 17 years of working patrol, [if] we’re getting 911 calls from a house and someone won’t communicate with us, but we know someone’s in there, that’s a problem for me. I need to make sure that we find out why. Is someone being held in there at gunpoint? Has someone been murdered? I mean, that’s just a fact of my job.

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794 F.3d 574, 2015 FED App. 0160P, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 12814, 2015 WL 4503208, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/louis-gradisher-v-city-of-akron-ca6-2015.