Lawyer in chief’s civil-rights lawsuit files to drop some defendants.
Humphrey’s counsel aims to add names back
An attorney representing Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey in a wide-ranging civil rights lawsuit filed in federal court this fall moved to dismiss the chief’s claims against several defendants in the case on Thursday after failing to meet a judge’s deadline to serve them.
However, attorney Michael Laux said he intended to add the individuals to the lawsuit again in the near future.
In the complaint, which was filed Sept. 30 and later amended, Humphrey claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy meant to oust him from the top police job in Little Rock.
Defendants in the civil suit included leaders of the Little Rock Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge No. 17; two assistant police chiefs who had sued Humphrey; then-officer Charles Starks, whom Humphrey terminated in 2019; and a local blogger.
On Thursday, Laux filed a motion to dismiss, without prejudice, the complaint pertaining to six individuals, plus the body-camera company WatchGuard Video, a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions. The individuals are Shella Atlas Evans, a city human resources official; Motorola employee Matt Murski; local blogger Russ Racop; and Little Rock police personnel Reginald Parks, Kevin Simpson and Kevin Sexson.
Last week, U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr. denied a motion from Laux requesting additional time to serve defendants with the complaint and summons. In his order, Moody gave Laux until Jan. 8, saying the plaintiff had not shown good cause for the failure to serve them.
In a motion for an extension of time to serve the defendants filed on Dec. 30, Laux conceded that he had missed the deadline to properly serve them by Dec. 29, therefore missing the 90-day window after the filing of the original complaint, and acknowledged he did not move in a timely manner for an extension of time in which to serve them.
“For this, [Humphrey], and particularly the undersigned” — i.e., Laux — “offer a sincere mea culpa to the Court and the parties,” the motion stated.
As an explanation for the delay, the motion cited developments related to the chief’s complaint, specifically a proposed no-confidence resolution on the chief brewing within the Little Rock Board of Directors at that time last year, Humphrey’s deposition in another lawsuit and a November Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article on the chief’s text communications with a subordinate. Laux wrote that these developments necessitated another amended complaint.
A second motion Laux filed on Jan. 8 asking the judge for an additional week to serve remaining individuals was denied by Moody with regard to the six individuals whom Laux moved to drop from the lawsuit Thursday. The judge also denied the request for additional time to serve a seventh individual, former Fraternal Order of Police president John Gilchrist, but according to a motion filed by Laux, Gilchrist waived formal service of the complaint.
In a phone interview Thursday, Laux described the motion to dismiss as “strictly procedural.”
“Basically, the judge jammed me on service of process,” he said.
He added moments later, “The judge wrote an order saying, ‘You have this amount of time to serve everybody or else,’ and so the people that remained basically went into hiding for a week,” Laux said.
He said he intended to re-name these individuals in the next month or two after the judge rules on the latest amended complaint Laux seeks to enter, which names attorney Chris Burks as an additional defendant.
Laux described his intention to add the six individuals again as “1,000%.”
His petition for leave to file another amended complaint is pending and remains under advisement, according to an entry from the judge contained in the court docket.
Burks had represented several of Humphrey’s police opponents in the civil rights lawsuit until last month, when he exited the case amid a contempt-of-court dispute in another lawsuit.
The matter arose after Burks provided text messages between Humphrey and another police official to the Democrat-Gazette, an act which a Pulaski County Circuit Court judge found to be in violation of a protective order.
The amended complaint from Humphrey filed in November named 21 individuals as well as two organizations — Motorola Solutions and the Fraternal Order of Police — as defendants.
In the complaint filed in November, Humphrey claimed Murski collaborated with another police official to download video that showed Humphrey’s vehicle at a woman’s residence so the video could be leaked to Racop and then published on his blog.
The purpose of these activities, Humphrey claimed, was to damage the police chief with the false accusation that he was having an extramarital affair. The complaint said Sexson “deleted exculpatory video and audio footage” of Humphrey when Sexson filmed the police chief at the woman’s home.
In a phone interview Thursday, Racop said he expected the lawsuit to be dismissed. Racop said he was improperly served with the lawsuit via a third party, whom Racop described as a receptionist and notary, as opposed to an attorney.
Racop said “these are things that you learn the first year in law school.”
He denied having been in hiding, explaining that throughout the time Laux had to serve him, Racop had been in public at a recent city board meeting and had livestreamed at other locations.
Atlas Evans serves as the city’s labor and employee relations manager with the Department of Human Resources, according to the city’s website.
Humphrey is the appointee of Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr., who tapped him for the job of chief shortly after Scott took office in 2019.