City agrees to pay nearly $400,000 in strip search case

The city has agreed to pay $333,500 in attorneys’ fees to the lawyers who represented Leo Hardy, whose federal civil rights suit contending he was illegally searched by Milwaukee police was the first of potentially dozens to go to trial.

If the Common Council approves the deal, the attorneys’ fees will be paid in addition to the $60,000 in damages owed to Hardy, bringing the total to nearly $400,000 — a figure that does not include payments to private lawyers hired by the city to help defend the case.

More than 60 people have filed civil rights suits against the city and Police Department involving improper strip and cavity searches — purportedly for drugs — in police stations and on the street during a five-year period beginning in 2008. Four officers pleaded no contest to crimes, including Michael Vagnini, who is serving prison time for multiple felonies. All were forced to resign.

Milwaukee does not carry liability insurance that covers police misconduct. As a result, payouts in such cases — no matter how high — come out of city coffers.

Only the Hardy case has gone to trial. The jury concluded the officers did not have a reason to stop and search Hardy in March 2012 or to arrest him for resisting. However, jurors did not find that the officers conducted improper searches by putting their hands inside Hardy’s underwear and pulling down his pants on the street, as he contended.

The jury awarded Hardy $506,000, which U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller later reduced, saying the change was necessary in light of prior case law.

At least two other cases have settled for about $90,000 each.

Meanwhile, the attorneys for another man, Angus Wright, have asked U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman to reinstate Wright’s most serious claims against the Police Department. The judge misunderstood Wright’s deposition testimony when he dismissed the claims last month, Wright’s attorneys contend.

Wright was 17 when he said Officer Zachary Thoms reached into his pants and retrieved a plastic bag of drugs from his anus in 2011.

Vagnini was Thoms’ partner, but the search of Wright was not among those that led to Vagnini’s criminal convictions. Thoms, who cooperated in the investigation, was not charged or disciplined in connection with any searches.

Adelman dismissed Wright’s civil claims against Vagnini, two police supervisors, the chief and the city, saying they are not liable because Wright never testified that Thoms penetrated his anus.

In a motion for reconsideration, filed late Tuesday, Wright’s attorneys called that conclusion “manifestly erroneous.” While it may have been difficult to interpret Wright’s deposition testimony from simply reading a written transcript, a video of the testimony shows him demonstrating an anal cavity search, they contend.

“Finding words to describe what was done to Angus was hard for him to say and even harder to hear,” said attorney Robin Shellow, who represents Wright along with the People’s Law Office in Chicago. “All that we ask is for Judge Adelman to hear the words of our client as he describes what no teen should endure.”