Mucha v. City of Milwaukee

59 F. Supp. 3d 910, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 162578, 2014 WL 6454418
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Wisconsin
DecidedNovember 18, 2014
DocketCase No. 14-C-0303
StatusPublished

This text of 59 F. Supp. 3d 910 (Mucha v. City of Milwaukee) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Wisconsin primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mucha v. City of Milwaukee, 59 F. Supp. 3d 910, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 162578, 2014 WL 6454418 (E.D. Wis. 2014).

Opinion

DECISION AND ORDER

LYNN ADELMAN, District Judge.'

Jason Mucha has filed a complaint against the City of Milwaukee, one of its agencies, and three of its officials. He alleges claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state law. Before me now is the defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings.1

I. BACKGROUND

The following facts are taken from the plaintiffs complaint and the exhibits the defendants have submitted in support of their motion. Those exhibits are referred to in the complaint, are central to the plaintiffs claims, and are concededly authentic; therefore, I may consider them [913]*913without treating the motion for judgment on the pleadings as one for summary judgment. See, e.g., Hecker v. Deere & Co., 556 F.3d 575, 582 (7th Cir.2009).

During the time period at issue in the complaint, Mucha was a sergeant in the Milwaukee Police Department. In 2012, Mucha submitted an application for disability benefits to the City of Milwaukee Employee’s Retirement System (“ERS”), claiming that work-related stress prevented him from continuing to serve as a police officer. As part of its investigation into whether Mucha qualified for disability benefits, ERS had Mucha evaluated by a psychiatrist, Dr. Donald Feinsilver. The evaluation took place on October 17, 2012. On November 5, 2012, Dr. Feinsilver sent a six-page report concerning Mucha to defendant Bernard Allen, the Executive Director of the ERS.

At 5:00 p.m. on November 20, 2012, Allen faxed a heavily redacted copy of Dr. Feinsilver’s report to someone named Mary Hoerig at the Milwaukee Police Department. The date of the report was visible, but almost the entire body of the report was redacted. Only four separate paragraphs of the body were visible, and each visible paragraph was surrounded by approximately one page of white space. The visible paragraphs stated as follows:

He then was speaking spontaneously as he said, “I have had thoughts of suicide. I have had thoughts of suicide by cop. I don’t want to kill myself.” 'He then spoke completely spontaneously, saying, “I think of going to a command staff meeting with a rifle, shooting them until they shoot me.” He did add, “I am not intending to do that.”
He told me that he owns “over ten guns.” This included some rifles, such as an M-14. Another time, he spoke about “twenty two rifles.” He has a “couple of Glocks” that he uses for target shooting and a “380 for carrying off duty.” He does not typically carry this around the street, yet he did get a CCW license.
Toward the end of the evaluation, when I asked Jason Mucha whether there was anything else that he wished to bring to my attention, he said, “I just can’t go back [to work]. I can’t take a chance of them trying to get me. It could have a real bad ending.” When I asked to what he was referring, he said, “Kill myself or them.”
3) However, Jason Mucha is, in a not very veiled manner, threatening to shoot people in police command. He has a considerable stash of firearms. Hearing this, I cannot send him back to work. This is a public-safety issue.

Russell Decl. Ex. A.

The complaint alleges that upon receipt of the redacted report, the Milwaukee Police Department dispatched officers assigned to its tactical-enforcement unit to Mucha’s residence. Defendants Jutiki Jackson and Donald Gaglione were among the officers who arrived at Mucha’s house on November 20th. After speaking briefly with Mucha, Jackson and Gaglione decided to detain him against his will and transport him to the county mental-health facility pursuant to Wisconsin’s “emergency detention” law, Wis. Stat. § 51.15. Under that law, as is relevant here, a law-enforcement officer may take a person into custody if the officer has cause to believe that the individual is mentally ill and that the individual poses a substantial probability of physical harm to himself or others. See Wis. Stat. § 51.15(l)(ar).

After taking Mucha into custody, Jackson and Gaglione prepared a “statement of [914]*914emergency detention.” In that statement, the officers wrote that, on November 5, 2012, Mucha engaged in “dangerous behavior” at the offices of Dr. Feinsilver. Russell Decl. Ex. B. The officers described the dangerous behavior as follows:

On Monday, November 5, 2012, Dr. Feinsilver conducted an interview of Jason Mucha for the purpose of a mental health evaluation. During the interview Mucha made several statements of suicidal thoughts, as well as statements of shooting members of the Police Department. Jason Mucha specifically stated that he has had thoughts of suicide by cop. Mucha stated that he would go to a command staff meeting with a rifle, shooting them until they shoot me. Mu-cha further stated in the interview that “I just can’t go back to work. I can’t take a chance of them trying to get me. It could have a real bad ending.” Mu-cha stated that he has the means to carry out the thought, because he has many guns at home.
Dr. Feinsilver passed the information to the Milwaukee Police Department and I, Lt. Jackson [sic] followed up on the investigation. Upon going to Mucha’s home and speaking with him, he stated “the thoughts of suicide and hurting others were only dreams,” and that he does not have any intent on hurting himself or anyone else. Mucha was then conveyed to Mental Health.

Id.

Upon Mucha’s arrival at the mental-health facility, a physician examined him and determined that he met the criteria for emergency detention. Mucha remained in the custody of the facility for approximately three days—from late Tuesday night until Friday. The intermediate Thursday was Thanksgiving. On Friday, Mucha was examined by another physician, and this physician determined that there was no basis for further detention and ordered Mucha’s release.

In the present action, Mucha claims that defendants Jackson and Gaglione violated his federal right to be free from unreasonable seizures when they took him into custody under the emergency-detention law. He seeks to hold Jackson and Gaglione liable for this violation in their personal capacities and also claims that the City of Milwaukee is liable for the unlawful seizure and the false imprisonment that followed the seizure. Mucha also brings several claims against the ERS and its executive director, Bernard Allen, based on Allen’s disclosing Dr. Feinsilyer’s report to the police department. Mucha alleges that Allen initiated the sequence of events that resulted in the emergency detention “for the purpose of punishing and discrediting Mucha to gain a position to deny his duty-disability benefit application.” Compl. at 2. Mucha alleges that the disclosure of the report violated Wisconsin’s mental-health records privacy law, Wis. Stat. § 51.30, constituted abuse of process, and somehow deprived Mucha of his federal right to procedural due process.

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Bluebook (online)
59 F. Supp. 3d 910, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 162578, 2014 WL 6454418, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mucha-v-city-of-milwaukee-wied-2014.