PHILADELPHIA – Parent plaintiffs who claimed multiple officers from the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Department violated their civil rights when they executed a search warrant at their home in an attempt to find the plaintiffs’ son – who had been murdered five months before the search took place – have seen their case dismissed by the City per the doctrine of res judicata.
Tysha Melton and Eliacin Juarbe first filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Dec. 28, 2023 versus the City of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff’s Department Chief Rochelle Bilal, Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Byron Hardman and Unknown Sheriff’s Department Officers. All parties are of Philadelphia.
“Travys Taylor, age 28 and plaintiffs’ son, was murdered by a masked gunman at a takeout restaurant in Kensington on Oct. 26, 2021. On Jan. 28, 2022, pending criminal charges against Taylor were dismissed in Pennsylvania court, and the docket was marked ‘Case Dismissed – Defendant Deceased,’ as reflected on Pennsylvania’s Common Pleas Case Management System database. On or about March 25, 2022, defendant Hardman selected an outstanding bench warrant for Taylor to be executed at plaintiffs’ residence. On March 25, 2022, defendant Hardman conducted four database searches, each designed to confirm that the target of a bench warrant likely resides at the target address and is not deceased or incarcerated,” the suit said.
“One of the said databases searched by defendant Hardman includes the CPCMS database, but the type of search ran by defendant Hardman failed to notify him that Taylor had been deceased for 4 months and 27 days, and the CPCMS system did, in fact, note that Taylor was deceased, at least as early as Jan. 28, 2022. On or about March 25, 2022, at 8:30 a.m., plaintiffs were asleep at their residence when there was a banging on the door. Plaintiff Juarbe peeked in their second-floor bedroom window, and viewed and heard various members of law enforcement in black tactical uniform yelling ‘Police! Police! Where is he?”
The suit added that the plaintiffs walked downstairs to the front door and when plaintiff Melton opened the door, more than a dozen officers physically forced their way inside with guns in hand, pushing plaintiff Melton’s lower back into her television stand and directly pointing their guns at the plaintiffs.
“Defendant officers eventually announced they were looking for plaintiffs’ son, Taylor. Taylor had a bench warrant for his arrest for failing to appear in court on marijuana and trespassing charges. Defendant officers searched the upstairs bedroom and found a memorial she built for him: Smiling photos of her son, and a replica of an Eagles helmet atop a box with his ashes,” the suit stated.
“After seeing their warrant was wrongful, defendant officers quickly left the house, covering their badges as they scrambled out the door. On March 25, 2022, and well before said date, defendants Hardman and Bilal were aware of numerous previous instances of the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Department executing search warrants for individuals who were deceased and failed to implement new policies designed to correct said past errors and/or oversights.”
Defense counsel filed a stipulation on Jan. 19 explaining that, along with the wishes of plaintiff counsel, Counts III and IV of the complaint (alleged violations of the Pennsylvania Constitution and negligent infliction of emotional distress) would be dismissed with prejudice, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(ii).
Four days later, on Jan. 23, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Joshua D. Wolson approved the stipulation and issued a judicial order to that effect.
In a Feb. 23 motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, the City argued that the res judicata dismissal of a state court case associated with these same events rendered the instant federal case moot.
“Here, the underlying events giving rise to the various claims in the two actions are the same: they are, in sum, the events surrounding warrant execution. Specifically, in both actions plaintiffs alleged that their son, Mr. Taylor, had died several months before the warrant execution, and yet the defendants failed to learn about his death before executing what was a moot warrant for his arrest. And in both actions plaintiffs alleged that the warrant execution led to plaintiff Melton being pushed into her television stand as the officers entered her residence, and the officers’ guns being pointed at plaintiffs,” the motion added.
“Because the underlying events giving rise to the two actions are the same, it does not matter for purposes of res judicata that, in the previous action, plaintiffs asserted only state law claims – for negligence, assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy/intrusion upon seclusion – whereas in this federal action plaintiffs asserted federal claims for constitutional violations under Section 1983. Again, the ‘specific legal theory invoked’ does not control; the similarity of the underlying facts does. Ultimately, because the claims involved the same underlying events, plaintiffs could have brought their Section 1983 claims based on the warrant execution in the previous action. But they did not do so, and, as a result, res judicata precludes them from doing so in a second action.”
On March 7, the plaintiffs replied to the City’s dismissal motion and contended that the doctrine of res judicata has no bearing on the instant federal court case, since the four underlying conditions needed for res judicata to apply (as cited in Bearoff v. Bearoff Bros.) were not fulfilled.
These are: (1) Identity in the thing sued upon; (2) Identity of the cause of action; (3) Identity of the persons and parties to the action; and (4) Identity of the quality or capacity of the parties suing or being sued.
“The underlying events giving rise to the various claims in the two actions are different. The underlying events in the [Philadelphia County] Court of Common Pleas action surround the warrant execution. In contrast, the underlying events in the instant action surround the fact that defendants failed to train and supervise Sgt. Hardman on how to determine if the target of a search warrant is deceased. In fact, defendants were aware of numerous previous instances of the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Department executing search warrants for individuals who were deceased and failed to implement new policies designed to correct said past errors and/or oversight,” the plaintiffs’ reply stated.
“As the underlying events giving rise to the claims in the two actions are not the same, the instant action is not barred under the doctrine of res judicata. Moreover, as described above, the identity of the thing sued upon, is different between the two actions. Therefore, the facts raised by plaintiffs in their complaint demonstrate a lack a concurrence of the four conditions as outlined in Bearoff and defendants’ motion must be denied.”
UPDATE
Wolson granted the previously-filed motion to dismiss in a memorandum opinion handed down on April 12, concurring with the defense’s rationale that the plaintiffs were trying to re-litigate claims here which had already been dismissed in a state court action, in violation of the doctrine of res judicata and its four tenets.
“The first requirement is met ‘when the same act or occurrence underlies both actions.’ In both actions, Ms. Melton and Mr. Juarbe sue to redress the sheriff’s raid of their home on March 25, 2022. Both complaints allege that law enforcement officers awoke Ms. Melton and Mr. Juarbe and they shoved Ms. Melton when they entered the home. The wrongful act in both cases is allegedly unconstitutional entry into the home and the unnecessary or excessive use of force. Therefore, both cases sue for the same ‘alleged wrongful act.’ Ms. Melton and Mr. Juarbe argue that their municipal liability claims are somehow different because they allege a practice or policy of improper search warrants. But their argument misconstrues the nature of a municipal liability claim. Such a claim arises out of an unconstitutional act by a municipal employee and seeks to recover for that unconstitutional act. The requirement of a policy or custom is a way of attributing an employee’s improper acts to the municipality because the municipality cannot be liable just based on its status as an employer. But that doesn’t change the fact that the liability arises only if there has been an unconstitutional act. In this case, that means that the raid, and not the policy itself, harmed Ms. Melton and Mr. Juarbe. Thus, it’s the same allegedly illegal act at issue in both cases,” Wolson said.
“The nub of both this case and the prior state court action is the raid on the house. It is the officers’ conduct during it that raid that causes all of the harms that Ms. Melton and Mr. Juarbe posit. The witnesses in both cases will be the same (with the exception of some additional witnesses to address the Sheriff’s Department’s customs and policies). Nothing prevented Ms. Melton and Mr. Juarbe from pursuing the claims that they assert in this case during their state court action. The state court had the power to hear all of those claims because federal and state courts have concurrent jurisdiction to hear Section 1983 claims. So, even though the two cases do not assert the same legal theories of liability, they arise from a single cause of action. Ms. Melton and Mr. Juarbe point out that they seek damages and injunctive relief in this case, but they only sought damages in state court. That might be true, but it doesn’t matter. There may be one cause of action even if several legal theories spring from the wrong and allow for ‘different measures of liability or different kinds of relief.’ Thus, seeking injunctive relief in a second suit does not save it from the application of res judicata.”
Wolson added the remaining two res judicata factors were not met, and thus, the case would then be dismissed with prejudice.
“Ms. Melton and Mr. Juarbe do not dispute that the third and fourth requirements are met, nor could they. The parties in each action are the same. The parties have the same capacities to sue or be sued. There was a final judgment on the merits in the prior litigation. Dismissing an action for a failure to state a claim, as the state court did here, is a final judgment on the merits under Pennsylvania law,” Wolson said.
“Plaintiffs sued for the injury they suffered on March 25, 2022, and a court decided those claims. They can’t have a second bite at the apple by asserting new theories of liability. Because res judicata applies to bar their claims in this case, I must dismiss their complaint, and I will do so with prejudice because there’s nothing they could plead that would change the outcome.”
The plaintiffs were represented by Mary E. LeMieux-Fillery of the Law Offices of Eric A. Shore, in Philadelphia.
The defendants were represented by Adam Ross Zurbriggen of the City of Philadelphia Law Department’s Civil Rights Unit.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case 2:23-cv-05148
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com