Jury rules against banker in LAPD excessive force claim
LOS ANGELES — A former banker and movie executive who said police beat him with batons in a bizarre street confrontation lost his $20 million excessive force claim on Friday against the Los Angeles Police Department.
During the three-day trial, Brian Mulligan acknowledged that he had used a drug mixture known as bath salts in the weeks leading up to the May 2012 incident. Police officers said he appeared delusional, wandering the streets with crumpled $100 bills falling out of his pockets and made animal sounds when they confronted him.
"This guy had gone crazy," Officer John Miller told jurors. "He'd lost his marbles. I was a bit scared. I'd never seen anybody frothing at the mouth and growling as an adult human being."
Mulligan, once a globe-trotting executive who logged a million air miles a year, said he was driven to the drug to deal with sleeping problems but denied the substance made him paranoid during the confrontation.
Jurors in federal court deliberated less than three hours before finding that two officers didn't violate Brian Mulligan's federal or state civil rights and didn't batter him...
...Defense attorneys and the officers said they were delighted with the decision.
"I'm just extremely happy," Miller said outside court. "I'm employed. ... We did nothing wrong."
Peter Ferguson, who represented Officer James Nichols, said experts who testified for the plaintiff couldn't persuade the jury because the officers did nothing wrong.
"These officers have had to live with these allegations for the last year or so," the lawyer said. "They're glad they are getting back to work."...
...Mulligan's suit claimed that he suffered a broken nose and shoulder and other injuries along with mental torture from the unprovoked beating, and that the officers bludgeoned him with their batons.
On Friday, jurors left their deliberations room once to examine one of the batons.
The officers testified that they restrained but did not beat him, and Nichols said he hadn't used his baton in 13 years on the force.
The one-time Deutsche Bank official said he had used bath salts at least 20 times — but not on the night of the encounter.
Nichols testified that Mulligan told him he had taken a type of bath salts called "White Lightning" four days earlier and hadn't slept since.
Let me get this straight. The man said he did take Bath Salts, a hallucinogen, hadn't slept for four days which means paranoia probably set in, but he can say he was assaulted with batons. Right! Sounds like a man who hit rock bottom and was looking for a quick lottery win in suing Los Angeles. Thankfully this got killed.
Brings to mind an incident from last week. A woman came in wanting to file a complaint on an officer. After speaking with her for a while, she is adamant she wants a formal complaint against the officer. So I give her the form, which must be filled out by her in her own handwriting and then notarized. I told her a formal investigation cannot occur until it's notarized and we have notaries on site. Well she seems to not want to complete it "just yet", she'll finish it at home. She may want to complain, but she knows what happens if she lies on a sworn document. Kinda refreshes the memory. She decided she would "fill it out at home" and left.
Why do I think this won't been sent in. May have saved the tax payers a few bucks on that one.
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