A federal appeals court has ruled that a $5 million jury verdict against San Diego County in a case involving the use of unreasonable force by a sheriff’s deputy and his dog against a handcuffed preschool teacher was “grossly excessive” and should be lowered to $1.5 million or less.
The physical and emotional injuries incurred by plaintiff Mickail Myles during a 2014 traffic stop in Fallbrook, when he was struck in the head by a deputy and bitten by that deputy’s dog, “were not significant enough to warrant $5 million in compensatory damages,” according to the ruling by a three-judge from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court also vacated a San Diego federal judge’s ruling that the county owed roughly $6 million in legal fees to Myles’ attorneys.
The new 9th Circuit ruling comes in an appeal the county filed in Myles’ long-running civil rights lawsuit, which began in 2015 and had quietly become one of the most expensive in county history. The ruling does not vacate a 2022 trial verdict against the county in which a San Diego jury found that both the deputy and the county violated Myles’ civil rights, but it will force Myles to choose between accepting at least a 70% decrease in his damages award or seeking a new trial focused solely on damages.
The 9th Circuit ruled against the county on two other issues it appealed, upholding the San Diego trial judge’s sanctions against county attorneys for “willfully” concealing key evidence in the case and upholding the judge’s decision that the sheriff’s deputy was not entitled to qualified immunity.
A Sheriff’s Office spokesperson declined to comment on the ruling, citing the active litigation. Attorneys representing Myles did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Myles’ lawsuit was centered on an incident from 2014 in which deputies stopped him and his younger brother as he was driving through their parents’ Fallbrook neighborhood and ordered him out of his vehicle. Deputies were in the neighborhood responding to a 911 call about a group of youths who had allegedly tampered with a vehicle and were “doorbell ditching,” or ringing doorbells and running away. A neighbor described the perpetrators as young and Hispanic.
Myles, who is Black, was 26 years old at the time and teaching preschool on Camp Pendleton. According to his lawsuit and a jury’s findings in 2022, he complied with the deputies despite receiving conflicting commands to put his hands up and get on the ground.
After the deputies restrained Myles with his arms handcuffed behind his back, Deputy Jeremy Banks arrived with his Belgian Malinois named Bubo, according to the lawsuit and the jury’s findings. Myles was still handcuffed when Banks struck him once or twice on the back of his head and Bubo bit him on the left side of his chest, the jury found. Deputies who were at the scene later swore under oath that Myles was complying with their demands and did not appear aggressive when Banks struck him and sicced Bubo on him.
A witness told deputies at the scene that Myles and his brother were not the suspects from the earlier 911 call, but Banks arrested Myles anyway on suspicion of resisting arrest — a charge the county District Attorney’s Office declined to pursue.
Myles sued the county in 2015, and following a 19-day trial in late 2022, a jury needed less than a day to reach its verdict in his favor. Among its findings were that Banks used excessive force and falsely imprisoned Myles; that Banks’ use of his dog violated Myles’ Fourth Amendment rights; that Banks and the county were both negligent; and that the county violated Myles’ civil rights by failing to properly train and supervise Banks.
The county first sought to overturn the trial verdict through an appeal to the trial judge, U.S. District Judge John Houston, arguing in part that Banks was entitled to qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that protects police and other government officials from lawsuits unless it can be shown their conduct violated “clearly established” federal law or constitutional rights at the time.
Houston ruled Banks was not entitled to qualified immunity because the trial evidence showed the deputy’s “use of force was unreasonable under the circumstances.”
The county appealed that decision and other matters to the 9th Circuit; the appeals this week affirmed Houston’s denial of qualified immunity.
“Myles’s rights were clearly established,” the appeals wrote. “Myles was handcuffed and not resisting arrest when Banks deployed the police dog on him. Our precedent clearly established that deploying a police dog on a handcuffed and fully compliant suspect constituted excessive force.”
But as to the $5 million verdict, the 9th Circuit found “there was little evidence of lasting physical injury to Myles” and that he did not appear to be suffering from “significant emotional symptoms and problems.” The three judges said they couldn’t find any comparable damage awards in cases with similar facts.
The appeals court said the case will be sent back to Houston “to give Myles the option between … a new trial on damages only” or a remittitur, the legal term for reducing a jury award. The 9th Circuit said the maximum amount that Houston could award to Myles through a remittitur was $1.5 million.
The 9th Circuit also vacated Houston’s award of $5.8 million in attorneys’ fees to Myles, writing that it was doing so “as a matter of course” in connection with remanding the case back to Houston on the issue of damages.
The county had also appealed sanctions that Houston imposed on it before the 2022 trial related to county attorneys withholding evidence from Myles’ attorneys. The 9th Circuit this week upheld Houston’s decision in that matter, agreeing that the county failed to turn over evidence it should have during the pre-trial discovery process.
Houston sanctioned the county in 2022 by taking the rare step of reinstating one of the claims from Myles’ lawsuit that another judge had previously dismissed, saying during a hearing that “it is clear that defendants have acted in bad faith in not producing (the evidence).” He further penalized the county by allowing the jury to be informed as part of its instructions that the county had “willfully concealed evidence in this case.”
The evidence in question dealt with prior uses of force by Banks and training and performance records that showed Bubo was sometimes over-aggressive and had a history in some trainings of not releasing from a bite when ordered. The records also showed that just months after Bubo was sicced on Myles, the dog mauled another man who also sued the county and bit the gun hand of its then-handler, Deputy Trenton Stroh, during a training exercise. Stroh needed surgery to repair tendons in his hand, and when the surgery did not go well, he was forced to retire from the department.
Houston again sanctioned county attorneys during the trial for violating the court’s orders by sharing trial transcripts with their use-of-force expert. The jury was instructed that it could choose to disregard that expert’s testimony because of the violation.
The case will now be sent back to Houston to figure out the lower damages award, though both Myles and the county could seek to have the parts of the appeal ruling that were unfavorable to them reheard en banc by an 11-judge from the 9th Circuit.
