The facts behind a San Diego lawsuit now before a federal appeals court are horrific by any measure.
Mickail Myles was pulled over by sheriff’s deputies, handcuffed while being questioned and then beaten in the head by one of them.
The same deputy then sicced his police dog on Myles, even though other deputies testified later that he had been cooperating.
During the civil rights lawsuit that predictably followed, lawyers defending San Diego County revictimized Myles, court rulings and filings in the yearslong case show. County lawyers withheld critical evidence from the plaintiff’s lawyers, a judge found, and they were accused of violating a judicial order during the jury trial.
Even the judge ruled that the County Counsel’s Office “acted in bad faith.”
Myles v. County of San Diego, which began with a routine encounter 10 years ago this September, has quietly escalated into one of the most egregious — and expensive — lawsuits ever brought against the county.
The case features many of the usual allegations leveled against sheriff’s deputies: a tenuous traffic stop, excessive force and a near-total lack of accountability.
Mickail Myles, who formerly taught preschool at Camp Pendleton, won a $5 million jury award after being beaten by a San Diego sheriff’s deputy and bitten by his dog.
(Courtesy of Dicks & Workman Attorneys at Law)
Myles is Black, and the deputy who struck him is White. The San Diego Sheriff’s Department, like many law enforcement agencies, has a history of stopping, searching and arresting people of color more often than White people.
The dubious actions by San Diego County officials did not end there.
Court files show the county hired private investigators to surveil Myles, videotaping him and his lawyers in a possible effort to dig up dirt or induce a settlement. Myles’ lawyers also said in a declaration that the county had tried to strong-arm him into settling by threatening to hold him responsible for its costs if he didn’t win at trial.
Despite holding mandatory settlement talks, the parties were unable to resolve the complaint out of court.
“Over and over again, the county showed a complete disregard for the well-being of Mickail Myles,” said Linda Workman, one of Myles’ attorneys. “They demonstrated a complete disregard for public safety and transparency in government.”
The Myles case ended in October 2022 with a $5 million jury award against San Diego County.
It was one of dozens of recent lawsuits against the Sheriff’s Department that have collectively cost taxpayers more than $60 million for wrongful deaths, excessive use of force, negligence and other deputy misconduct.
Those expenses do not include the cost of outside lawyers hired by the County Counsel’s Office. It’s not clear how much the county has spent on outside legal help, but the department budget has climbed to more than $40 million this year — up almost 50 percent since the 2017-18 budget year.
And the costs to the public continue to rise.
The judge just recently awarded Workman and her law partners more than $6 million in attorneys fees and legal expenses, on top of the award to their client.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted to appeal both the jury award and attorneys fees.
Elected officials often grapple with whether to settle or fight legal complaints. They generally want to protect public funds — but it is not always clear whether a settlement might save money or they might win at trial.
In the Myles case, the county remains on the hook for the more than $11 million — not including interest on the two debts, which is growing by thousands of dollars every day.
Neither the Sheriff’s Department nor San Diego County officials would discuss the facts of the case, its cost or the county’s legal strategy of delaying the case and withholding information from Myles’ lawyers.
But as the 10th anniversary of the Myles traffic stop approaches, the full reckoning of what county employees have done has yet to be calculated — in dollars or broader damages.
“It makes sense to conclude government officials are playing with other people’s money and are therefore more cavalier about financial consequences,” said Michael Braun, who teaches criminal justice at San Diego State University. “It’s easy to spend other people’s money.”
Excessive force by law enforcement, hide-the-ball legal tactics by government lawyers and a preference for fighting lawsuits are not new, said Braun, also an expert in restorative justice.
“I’m unfortunately not surprised (San Diego County officials) would have taken a hard-line stance then, along with believing they could play fast and loose with someone’s rights,” he said.
‘The toe of my boot’
Mickail Myles was 26 years old and teaching toddlers at Camp Pendleton back in 2014, when he was initially pulled over. He had just come from picking up his younger brother from a nearby roller rink.
At the same time, San Diego sheriff’s deputies were on the hunt for a group of Latino teenagers suspected of breaking into cars and playing “doorbell ditch,” according to the lawsuit. Myles had not been a teenager for years, but he was stopped anyway.
Myles was complying with the deputies’ orders as best he could — one had told him to put his hands in the air; another had ordered him to the ground.
The situation grew more fraught after Deputy Jeremy Banks arrived with his dog, a Belgian Malinois named Bubo, whose furious barking added to the confusion. Banks clocked Myles in the head while he was handcuffed; the deputy later testified Myles was non-compliant.
Bubo began biting Myles in the torso, records show.
Myles was taken into custody, although witnesses told deputies he was not one of the teenagers being sought for questioning in the burglaries. Banks nonetheless arrested Myles on suspicion of resisting an officer — a charge prosecutors declined to pursue.
The preschool teacher sued San Diego County in 2015.
In subsequent testimony, deputies who were at the scene swore under oath that Myles had been complying with their demands and did not appear aggressive when Banks struck him and let Bubo loose on Myles.
Nonetheless, the county argued in court that the use of force was appropriate.
Bubo, the sheriff’s dog that bit Mickail Myles, had a history of over-aggressiveness, Myles’ lawyers learned.
(Case exhibit courtesy of U.S. District Court)
County lawyers denied withholding evidence. But Workman later found Banks had at least 17 accusations of excessive force on his record and that his dog had a history of over-aggressiveness.
U.S. District Court Judge John Houston was not pleased.
“The court finds that defendant’s failure to propound requested discovery (and) undue delay in supplementing discovery have effectively hogtied plaintiff’s efforts to defend against motions filed by defendants, to diligently prepare motions for discovery, and to adequately oppose defendants’ motions, and to prepare for trial all creating substantial prejudice to plaintiff,” Houston said from the bench in 2022.
“The court finds that upon a review of the record, it is clear that defendants have acted in bad faith in not producing discovery,” he added.
During the trial, Myles’ lawyers presented testimony from multiple witnesses describing physical abuse they said Banks committed.
One parent described how his son had been beaten by the deputy — pulled by his hair and his head pounded onto a table — after initially being stopped for riding a bicycle without a helmet. The boy was taken into custody on suspicion of resisting arrest.
Banks himself testified that he was involved in a 2013 incident in which a suspect died after being beaten by deputies and bitten repeatedly by the same dog that later attacked Myles. He also admitted pushing a boy he had stopped for jaywalking onto the ground and kicking him in the ribs.
“Yes, on the left side,” Banks testified about that incident during the Myles trial. “Used the toe of my boot. Just like a quick jab…”
Twice in the run-up to trial, the judge sanctioned county lawyers for violating the rules of discovery, the legal process under which plaintiffs and defendants exchange evidence.
And during the trial, Myles’ lawyers accused the County Counsel’s Office of violating a judicial order against providing prior testimony to at least one defense witness.
After the jury awarded Myles $5 million in damages, the county sought a new trial under the legal theory that Banks had “acted objectively reasonably under the totality of circumstances” and “insufficient evidence exists to support the jury’s contrary findings.”
The County Counsel’s Office also asserted that Banks enjoyed qualified immunity, the legal theory that he could not be held liable for damages because he had not violated Myles’ rights.
Judge Houston rejected both arguments.
Millions and millions
Like many public agencies and large institutions, San Diego County gets sued all the time. More than 1,800 entries appear on the San Diego Superior Court public database of lawsuits filed against the county since 2007.
The Sheriff’s Department, a defendant in almost 100 of those cases, has an outsized role in the cost to the public of that litigation. In recent years alone, San Diego County has paid more than $60 million to settle misconduct and other claims against the current and former sheriffs and their deputies.
Legal fees and court costs add millions of dollars to those expenses. The County Counsel’s Office regularly hires outside lawyers and sometimes, as in the Myles litigation, the county also has to pay the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.
One of the most expensive cases involved a claim filed by the family of Lucky Phounsy, who died after being beaten, shocked with a stun gun and hog-tied by sheriff’s deputies.
Two years ago, a jury awarded the Phounsy plaintiffs $85 million in damages. Last year the case was resolved for $12 million in what is believed to be one of the largest civil settlements ever paid by the county.
“Finally, the county has acknowledged responsibility for his death,” the family’s lawyers said at the time.
Also in 2023, the county agreed to pay more than $9 million to Colleen Garot, an Encinitas woman who five years earlier had suffered a debilitating stroke after going days without appropriate medical care in Sheriff’s Department custody.
Garot, a mother of two who now requires around-the-clock care at a skilled nursing facility, was in the process of being evicted from her home when deputies found an outstanding warrant for a DUI arrest in 2017.
She was booked into Las Colinas women’s jail in Santee and repeatedly denied medical care, her lawsuit alleged.
Colleen Garot, left, with her father, Tom Rainey, in 2019. Garot suffered a stroke in jail that her lawsuit argues could have been prevented had deputies and jail medical staff recognized she had signs of a head injury.
(Courtesy of Julia Yoo)
The Sheriff’s Department declined to discuss the settlement last year, but a spokesperson said in a statement at the time that officials strive to provide the best medical care to everyone in county jails.
“Anytime deputies recognize that there is a need for medical care, they are to request an emergency medical response or transport those in need to a local hospital for care,” Lt. David LaDieu said by email.
Lawyers for David Collins, who suffered permanent brain damage in jail after his arrest during a medical emergency, told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the county refused their offer to settle their claim for $3 million. A jury later awarded Collins $12.6 million; the county appealed all the way to the California Supreme Court before being ordered to pay $7 million in that case.
Those outcomes are not one-offs.
Records show the county paid tens of millions of dollars in additional settlements and jury awards in recent years to plaintiffs who were shot, beaten or otherwise victimized or neglected by San Diego County sheriff’s deputies.
One predatory sheriff’s deputy cost the county more than $10 million by himself.
Former deputy Richard Fischer was sentenced to 44 months in custody after admitting to harassing and groping women while on duty and in uniform over several years. Eventually the county settled more than a dozen civil lawsuits filed by Fischer’s victims.
The county also is confronting a slew of additional lawsuits that are likely to cost taxpayers millions more, including claims from the family members of Elisa Serna, Omar Moreno and William “Hayden” Schuck — all of whom died gruesome deaths in sheriff’s custody.
Not a penny yet
Mickail Myles left San Diego County two years after his encounter with Jeremy Banks and the other sheriff’s deputies.
He told his lawyers he no longer felt safe here, that he was still being surveilled by San Diego County law enforcement.
Today Myles is 36 and married. He and his wife are raising three children in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. He still works as a teacher for the federal government and was recently promoted to a supervisory role at the child care center where he works, his lawyer said.
“He has dedicated his 10-year legal battle to his biracial children and all young people of color,” Workman said. “He does not want what happened to him on Sept. 5, 2014, to happen to any other innocent citizens.”
Banks was transferred to the San Diego County courthouse, spending most of the last years of his Sheriff’s Department career serving as a bailiff.
Now 39, he left the county payroll at the end of 2021, according to the Transparent California database of public salaries.
Myles has yet to see a penny of the millions of dollars a jury awarded him two years ago, and there’s no telling when he might collect the damages.
The federal appeals court could issue its ruling on the county’s appeal at any time. Where the case goes after that rests with the county Board of Supervisors.
Source link
Attorneys and law firms can elevate their online presence with professionally written content from SEO Content Writing Services monthly plan. Our team of experienced writers specializes in crafting blog posts, articles, and written content that accurately reflect the expertise and knowledge of our clients in the legal field. With a keen eye for detail and a thorough understanding of legal terminology, we provide high-quality writing that helps our clients stand out from their competition and engage with their target audience. Trust SEO Content Writing Services for one time article writing or monthly written content to handle all of your written content needs and showcase your law firm's expertise.
If you need written content, blog posts, or articles professionally written for your website, we can help. Go HERE to find out more.
or email us here: myseowritingservices@gmail.com
To find out more about our article writing or blog post services, fill out the form, thank you.
