DISCLAIMER: Any unofficial case summaries below are prepared by the clerk's office
as a courtesy to the reader. They are not part of the opinion of the court.
153438P.pdf 11/21/2016 Jill S. N. Schaffer v. Bryan Beringer
U.S. Court of Appeals Case No: 15-3438
U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota - Sioux Falls
[PUBLISHED] [Gruender, Author, with Beam and Shepherd, Circuit Judges]
Civil case - Civil rights. The defendant police officers had arguable
probable cause to place plaintiff Callissa under arrest for violating SDCL
Section 32-23-1, and the officers were entitled to qualified immunity on
her claim that they violated her Fourth Amendment right to be free from
unreasonable seizures; where officers have at least arguable probable
cause to perform an arrest, they cannot be held liable for performing a
search incident to that arrest; plaintiffs cannot show that defendant
Foley made any intentional or reckless omissions in the warrant
application; claim that defendants retaliated against plaintiff Jill for
engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment rejected as the minor
discrepancies in the officers' statements did not amount to perjury and
did not rise to the level of an adverse action that would chill a person
from engaging in protected activity; plaintiffs' "existence of a policy
and failure to train" claims against the defendant police chief rejected
as they failed to show the existence of a policy or failure to train and,
even if they did, they failed to show that such policy or failure to train
led to any violation of their rights.