United States Eighth Circuit

In an action based on plaintiffs' arrest for trespass and subjection to a strip and visual body cavity search in the course of their protest at the 2004 Republican National Convention, partial judgment for plaintiffs is affirmed in part where: 1) the district court's evidentiary rulings were not abuses of discretion and did not substantially impact the jury's answer to the probable cause inquiry; and 2) because an officer did not commit a constitutional violation in arresting plaintiffs, it necessarily followed that he could not be held liable for any damages arising from the unlawful searches that followed the arrests. However, the judgment is reversed in part where the district court failed to calculate how much a $75,000 award for an incident that occurred in 1978 would compare to an incident that occurred in 2004 after adjusting for inflation.

Appellate Information

• Decided 06/30/2010
• Published 06/30/2010

Judges

• BYE, Circuit Judge

Court

• United States Eighth Circuit

Counsel