LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Los Angeles veteran was on the phone with an operator at the Department of Veterans Affairs crisis hotline when he became frustrated by her interruptions and warned he would hang up. When he did, she called the Los Angeles Police Department to conduct a welfare check at his home.
Slade Douglas, a middle-aged Black man, welcomed officers Jeffrey Yabana and Jeremy Wheeler into his home on Aug. 27, 2019, and told them he was not a danger to himself or others. But Douglas says the officers didn’t listen and instead became condescending and provoked him.
Douglas asked them to leave. They did not.
When Douglas called 911 to report the officers’ conduct, he says Yabana and Wheeler detained him, mocked him and searched his home before tightly cuffing him to a stretcher and taking him to a hospital. There, Douglas says, he was injected with sedatives and had bodily samples forcibly extracted against his will in an effort to “find something,” he says in a complaint against the police. Douglas claims the officers retaliated against him and violated his civil rights after he attempted to report their conduct.
A federal judge has now rejected the officers’ bid to overturn a multimillion-dollar jury verdict against the city and its officers in Douglas’ favor, finding sufficient evidence to support his negligence-per-se claim and rejecting the city’s argument that the jury’s verdict was inconsistent. The judge also rejected the argument that the damages award was unsupported by the evidence.
Although the judge agreed with the city that the jury had been erroneously instructed on Douglas’ negligent supervision claim, the ruling ultimately did not change the $6.6 million verdict.
“In sum, defendants have not demonstrated that the jury’s $6 million damages award is at odds with a permissible interpretation of the facts in evidence,” U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong wrote Aug. 26.
The city and officers asked her to toss the verdict, order a new trial or reduce the damages.
“Although the negligent supervision claim fails, the jury’s damages award stands and no new trial is needed on that claim or on damages,” Frimpong wrote. “This is because of the manner in which the jury — with the agreement of the parties — was instructed on damages. The parties agreed that the jury should be instructed as follows on damages, and that the jury should not be instructed to calculate damages separately for each claim.”
Substance abuse claims against one of the officers became a major point of contention during the middle of the case’s litigation.
On the eve of the trial in 2024, the city requested a continuance due to Wheeler’s previously undisclosed substance-related issues the city had long been aware of, Frimpong noted in the ruling. This prompted Douglas to reopen discovery and file new negligence claims that the city knew of the officer’s condition before the 2019 incident and allowed him to remain on duty anyway.
The city argued these claims were not fairly brought up in Douglas’ new complaint. The substance abuse was only discovered in 2024. But Frimpong said this was misleading.
“The later allegations merely confirm the city’s prior knowledge of Officer Wheeler’s serious substance abuse and mental illness,” the Joe Biden appointee wrote.
Representing Douglas at trial, attorney Paul Hoffman told jurors the city had prioritized protecting Wheeler over protecting the public.
“Whose interest is really protected here? Not Mr. Douglas’s. Not yours, not mine. Not the community’s,” Hoffman said. “The city chose confidentiality over your safety. They chose to protect officer Wheeler over protecting Mr. Douglas, over protecting you, and it’s your ability to hold them accountable.”
The city argued these comments were inflammatory, but Frimpong rejected this, too, ruling that they were a continuation of previous testimony about the city’s officer confidentiality policies over officer fitness.
The city had been made aware of Wheeler’s substance abuse and mental health issues well before Douglas’ detention, Na’Shaun Neal, an attorney representing Douglas, said. The city had a problem it failed to address, he added.
Douglas claimed nerve damage to his wrists from the handcuffs, as well as an infection in his penis from a catheter that was inserted without his consent, in his complaint. He says hospital staff assisted officers despite his repeated objections. He says he was later released from the hospital and transported back home.
Douglas, who is an advocate for veterans, initially called the VA crisis hotline after discriminatory treatment and ended up becoming the victim of a swatting incident at the direction of VA officers, Neal said.
“I believe what this does is affirm that the jury got it right the first time and that there was no error,” Neal told Courthouse News in a phone interview. “Mr. Douglas suffered from police conduct. The jury heard the evidence and made a determination that they forced him to go to the hospital under false pretenses.”
A spokesperson for the city of Los Angeles did not respond to requests for comment.
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