Peterson v. City of Pine River

36 F. Supp. 3d 843, 2014 WL 3734254, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 102850
CourtDistrict Court, D. Minnesota
DecidedJuly 29, 2014
DocketNo. 13-cv-1015 (JNE/LIB)
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 36 F. Supp. 3d 843 (Peterson v. City of Pine River) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Peterson v. City of Pine River, 36 F. Supp. 3d 843, 2014 WL 3734254, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 102850 (mnd 2014).

Opinion

ORDER

JOAN N. ERICKSEN, District Judge.

This is a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 case with additional Minnesota state law claims. It is before the Court on the Defendants’ motion for summary judgment. For the reasons discussed below, the motion is granted.

Background

As an initial matter, it must be noted that there are important discrepancies between the facts on which the attorneys argued their positions at the motion hearing and the facts that appear in the record.

Fundamentally, the case arises out of the mistaken arrest of Plaintiff Brenda Peterson by Pine River, Minnesota police officers Nathan Gainey and Chelsey Col-lette during a traffic stop in September of 2012. Officer Gainey made the decision to arrest the Plaintiff, believing that she was the subject of two valid warrants out of Hubbard and Wadena Counties. Officer Collette then transported the Plaintiff to the Sheriff’s Office for processing.

And there were two valid warrants, for the arrest of a Brenda Marie Peterson. But the Brenda Marie Peterson named and described in the warrants was not the Brenda Peterson whom Officers Gainey and Collette arrested. A different officer discovered that mistake within a few hours of the arrest, and the Plaintiff was quickly released from custody.

[847]*847Beyond that broad sketch of the event, counsel stated at oral argument that Officer Gainey was initially led to believe that the Plaintiff was the subject of the arrest warrants because, when he ran the Plaintiffs license plate number through the computer in his squad car during the traffic stop, it erroneously provided him with the vehicle registration and warrant information for Brenda Marie Peterson. Unaware of the computer’s mistake, the • Plaintiff did not dispute that she was the registered owner of the vehicle — because in fact she was. Officer Gainey then contacted his dispatcher to confirm the validity of the two warrants the database showed for the registered owner of that vehicle. When the dispatcher provided that confirmation, Officer Gainey proceeded with the arrest over the Plaintiffs protestations.

Were this what had occurred, the Court would readily conclude that summary judgment for the Defendants is warranted. But this version of the Plaintiffs arrest is not supported by the record. The deposition testimony, affidavits, and documentary evidence before the Court reveal a different set of facts, and it is on that record that the Court must consider the Defendants’ motion. See Engleman v. Deputy Murray, 546 F.3d 944, 947-48 (8th Cir.2008) (“While we view the facts in the light most favorable to [the plaintiff], we must only take as true those assertions properly supported by the record.”). See also Walton, 752 F.3d at 1116 (“District courts must make reasoned ‘findings of fact and conclusions of law’ sufficient to permit meaningful appellate review of the qualified immunity decision.”) (citation omitted).

The centerpiece, of the record is the deposition testimony of Officer Gainey. Nothing in the record contradicts Officer Gainey’s explanation of what led to the arrest, which is as follows.

While on patrol on September 27, 2012, Gainey observed a vehicle on the streets of Pine River and ran its license plate number through eMERTS, a piece of software for searching public records that he could access from the computer in his squad car. The vehicle was being driven by the Plaintiffs son, for whom eMERTS showed an outstanding arrest warrant. Gainey pulled the' vehicle over, confronted the Plaintiffs son about the warrant, and gave him the choice of resolving it by either paying a cash bail or being arrested.

During this stop, the Plaintiffs son made a phone call to his father — the' Plaintiffs husband — who soon arrived on the scene driving a different vehicle. Gainey ran the license plate number of that vehicle and returned his attention to the Plaintiffs son, who chose to pay the cash bail. The Plaintiffs son and husband, then went on their way. With that issue having been resolved, Gainey looked again at the computer in his squad car. By clicking through the various pages that eMERTS had pulled up in response to his inquiry about the vehicle the Plaintiffs husband had driven to the scene, Gainey saw that the vehicle was registered to the Plaintiff, Brenda Peterson, and that the system had connected two arrest warrants to her vehicle registration information.1 Gainey [848]*848made a mental note of the warrants and then completed his shift.

The next day, Gainey observed the Plaintiff driving the vehicle that her husband had been driving the day before. Gainey again ran the license plate of the vehicle through eMERTS, pulled up the driver’s license photo of the registered owner, and saw, as he had the day before, that the system was connecting two arrest warrants to that owner.

Gainey then initiated a traffic stop of the Plaintiffs vehicle. Gainey proceeded to confirm the Plaintiffs identity by comparing her appearance to the photo of the registered owner he had seen on eMERTS. He also checked her driver’s license and proof' of insurance, both of which showed her name as Brenda Peterson, with no middle name. From that investigation, Gainey concluded — correctly — that the Plaintiff was in fact the registered owner of the vehicle she was driving.

Already knowing that eMERTS had connected two warrants to the registered owner of the vehicle, Gainey then contacted his dispatcher. “[T]o make it easy on dispatch,” Gainey gave her the license plate number of the vehicle he had pulled over and asked the dispatcher to run the registered owner of that vehicle. Gainey provided no information to the dispatcher other than the license plate number.

The dispatcher used that license plate number to call up the owner’s registration information. Gainey did not know exactly what steps the dispatcher took next, and there is no deposition or affidavit from the dispatcher in the record, but he speculated that she entered the registered owner’s name, birth date, and driver’s license number into a records database which, just as Gainey himself had already seen twice, connected that owner to the two arrest warrants. (Whether the dispatcher used eMERTS or a different system is not clear from the record.) The dispatcher then informed Gainey of the existence of those warrants.

Gainey next asked the dispatcher to confirm the validity of the warrants by contacting the issuing counties to ensure that the warrants had not already been resolved. The dispatcher subsequently reported to Gainey that the warrants were valid.

Turning to the Plaintiff, Gainey gave her the option of paying the cash bail for the warrants — roughly $800 total — or being arrested. The Plaintiff protested that the warrants were not for her, which Gainey disregarded. Gainey then made the arrest.

After the arrest, Officer Collette, who had arrived on the scene during the traffic stop after hearing about it on her radio, transported the Plaintiff to the Cass County Sheriffs Office. After a short stay there, the Plaintiff was picked up by a different officer to be transported to Hubbard County Jail.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
36 F. Supp. 3d 843, 2014 WL 3734254, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 102850, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/peterson-v-city-of-pine-river-mnd-2014.