Black jogger’s suit against city OK’D to advance after changes.
But Black man’s lawsuit against the city for bad arrest can move forward in federal court
A Black man who alleges San Antonio police wrongly arrested him after confusing him with a domestic violence suspect can’t pursue punitive damages against the city, a federal judge ruled.
Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia’s decision — in a lawsuit Mathias Ometu filed in 2021 against the two officers who arrested him — is based on a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a plaintiff couldn’t collect punitive damages against a municipality in a federal civilrights suit.
Ometu’s suit, however, remains mostly intact after lawyers from the city moved it from state court in Bexar County to San Antonio federal court in September 2021.
He can still seek compensatory damages.
Ometu, a University of Texas at San Antonio graduate and an insurance adjuster, was arrested in August 2020.
Officers Richard Serna and Devin Day suspected — incorrectly — that he was involved in a nearby domestic assault.
Ometu, who was jogging on the North Side during his lunch break, declined to give the officers his name, which was his right, and a struggle ensued.
A witness later told officers that Ometu was not the suspect. Another man was later arrested in the domestic violence incident.
Ometu was charged with resisting arrest, but the charge was later dismissed.
The case generated international headlines amid claims of racial injustice.
Ometu’s lawsuit alleges that Serna and Day used excessive force and performed an unlawful arrest, violating Ometu’s constitutional rights.
“Mathias Ometu did not pose an immediate threat to the safety of officers,” the lawsuit states, adding that the officers “had no probable cause to suspect that a crime was being committed” or that his conduct during arrest was unreasonable.
Ometu’s lawsuit also named Police Chief William Mcmanus as a defendant, alleging that he “failed to supervise, screen, discipline, transfer, counsel or otherwise control the officers.”
However, in addition to allowing
Ometu to seek punitive damages, Garcia dismissed Mcmanus from the lawsuit.
The judge granted a motion by the city arguing that Texas law precludes suits against both a governmental entity and its employees
In a motion to dismiss filed in October, the city’s lawyers claimed Ometu’s lawsuit fails to demonstrate a pattern of instances where failure to screen, train, supervise, or discipline “was the moving force to the constitutional violations” and instead relies on one isolated incident.