Suggs et al v. Zinchuck et al

Filing 210

MEMORANDUM Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 6/9/2011:Mailed notice(srn, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
LATANYA ALEXANDER, et al.,

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Plaintiffs,
v.
OFFICER ZINCHUCK, et al.,
Defendants.

No.

08 C 6688

MEMORANDUM
At this Court’s request, counsel for the parties in this 42
U.S.C. §1983 (“Section 1983”) action attended a June 8 status
hearing called to address the question whether, as a practical
matter, the amorphous nature of the case--with an extraordinarily
large assemblage of individual plaintiffs opposing a likewise
large assemblage of Chicago police officer defendants--could be
shaped to fit the litigative requirement of identifying one or
more defendants who could be shown to be liable to each
plaintiff.

For that purpose this Court was joined on the bench

by Honorable Jeffrey Gilbert, the magistrate judge who has been
monitoring discovery in the case.
Lead plaintiffs’ counsel Blake Horwitz (“Horwitz”) sought-without too much success--to respond to the questions posed by
Judge Gilbert and this Court.

At the end of the status hearing a

next status hearing date was set for September 8, 2011, with
plaintiffs’ counsel required in the interim to file, as early as
is feasible, a new Amended Complaint that would conform to

Horwitz’ oral description of the results of discovery to this
point.

This memorandum is issued by way of comment on two of the

principal authorities that Horwitz had identified as supporting
theories of recovery that he described orally during the status
hearing.
First, in the Section 1983 context Horwitz placed heavy
reliance on the decision in Cefalu v. Vill. of Elk Grove, 211
F.3d 416 (7th Cir. 2000).

But an examination of the opinion

there, which concluded by upholding a judgment in favor of the
defendant police officers,1 discloses this to be its only
arguably relevant excerpt (id. at 422-23)(citations omitted,
except for the Vasquez case from which the indented quotation is
taken):
As it was articulated at trial, the Cefalus’ conspiracy
claim posited that the defendants had conspired to
cover up their own wrongdoing vis à vis the Cefalus’
arrest. The First and Fourteenth Amendments to the
U.S. Constitution guarantee the right to seek legal
relief for asserted injuries that have a reasonable
basis in fact and in law. Vasquez v. Hernandez, 60
F.3d 325, 328 (7th Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 517 U.S.
1156, 116 S.Ct. 1545, 134 L.Ed.2d 648 (1996).
A corollary of this right is that efforts by state
actors to impede an individual's access to courts
or administrative agencies may provide the basis

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There is really no parallel between the far more limited
universe occupied by the two plaintiffs v. seven officers
situation dealt with in Cefalu and the mass situation involved in
this case. Indeed, only four of the seven officer defendants
were implicated in the direct confrontation that triggered the
lawsuit--plaintiffs joined the others because of their later
involvement in the dispute.
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for a constitutional claim under 42 U.S.C. §1983.
Judicial access must be “adequate, effective, and
meaningful,” Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 822,
97 S.Ct. 1491, 1495, 52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977), and
therefore, when police officers conceal or obscure
important facts about a crime from its victims
rendering hollow the right to seek redress,
constitutional rights are undoubtedly abridged.
At least at this point, it seems highly questionable from
Horwitz’ explanation of the actions (or inaction) of certain
officers--principally their failure to prepare a particular form
of incident report--meets either the level of a conspiracy or the
test announced in the seminal Bounds v. Smith decision.
As for McCottrell v. City of Chicago, 135 Ill.App.3d 517,
481 N.E.2d 1058 (1st Dist. 1985), Horwitz offered that opinion as
assertedly illustrative of a supplemental jurisdiction theory
under state law that could obviate the problems created by the
absence of a viable Monell claim under Section 1983.

But that

reference to the availability under state law of a respondeat
superior concept (verboten under Monell) ignores the obvious
problem that respondeat superior principles can come into play
only if there is a showing that some municipal employee is liable
to some plaintiff before municipal liability can attach--and that
simply returns Horwitz’s clients to the problem identified in the
first paragraph of this memorandum.
As with other subjects discussed during the June 8 status
hearing, this memorandum is not intended to be an ultimate ruling
on the matters dealt with here.

It is rather in the nature of a
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further effort to identify for the litigants some of the
difficulties that appear to be raised by the need to cabin this
action dramatically before the prospect of a trial may even be
considered to be realistic.

________________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date:

June 9, 2011

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