Congratulations to my old Board of Bar Examiner colleague Barbara Goodwin on getting a summary judgment vacated and a remand in a 1983 case, Morrelli v. Webster. http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/
You can learn so many life lessons by reading slip opinions. For example, this one teaches that if you are an exotic dancer and you trot off to a hotel room to do your thing, and something smells fishy (rightfully – it was a prostitution sting), as you leave, do not take $20 off the $300 on the bed for your time and aggravation. The next thing you know, the police will be all about, a beefy officer is smooshing you against a wall and you end up with a torn rotator cuff.
The First Circuit affirmed the legality of stopping her (because there was probable cause that her taking the $20 was theft under Maine law), but said she had a viable excessive force claim. If you are an itsy bitsy exotic dancer thought to have, at most, committed a Class E crime, it is unreasonable – for summary judgment purposes- for Officer Six-Foot-Two to engage in the above noted smooshing.
Congratulations, Barbara, along with the MCLU.
