Federal judges have refused to dismiss a civil rights lawsuit from a man who claims Easton officials failed to train police not to unleash attack dogs on criminal suspects after they surrender.
City officials had sought to dismiss the case without a trial, but the judges refused Friday.
Keith Rosenberg, who is represented by attorney John P. Karoly Jr., says police allowed a police dog to bite him on the shoulder in 1999 after he had lain down on the ground and had surrendered to police, records say.
City authorities dispute this version of events, saying Rosenberg ignored three warnings from police to stop running before they unleashed the dog, which bit him and pinned him to the ground.
In 2000, Rosenberg admitted to driving a stolen car and to eluding a police pursuit after police found the stolen car, records say. He was sentenced to seven to 23 months in prison. Rosenberg subsequently filed a civil rights lawsuit, saying Easton's police were improperly trained on restraining their dogs.
If the allegation is true, it would violate Rosenberg's Fourth and Eighth Amendment rights "not to be attacked by a police dog," the appellate court judges wrote Friday.
The decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania turned on two questions:
The first was whether Rosenberg had presented enough evidence to show a connection between his injuries and city administrator's actions or inaction.
City attorneys said the case should be thrown out because Rosenberg did not present this evidence. But a lower court refused the city's request, and the appeals court ruled Friday it did not have jurisdiction to consider an appeal.
The second question considered Monday concerned whether the city was entitled to "qualified immunity" from Rosenberg's claims. But the court struck down both of the reasons that city attorneys offered for this argument.
City lawyers said Rosenberg did not present evidence that his rights were violated, particularly because police said he had ignored their warnings to stop running away. But the appeals judges said they could not accept the police version of events before a full trial reveals all the facts.
"It is an argument that posits disputed facts, precisely why we have trials," the federal judge wrote.
The city also argued that the administrators must have "active and direct involvement" in the case to be liable for civil damages. The court disagreed:
"In 1989, the Supreme Court concluded that a municipality's failure to train police officers may give rise to liability 'where the failure to train amounts to deliberate indifference to the rights of persons with whom the police come into contact.'"
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