Quick-Read Summary: Los Angeles partner and co-chair of Lewis Brisbois' Civil Rights & Police Litigation Defense Task Force, Tony M. Sain, achieved a dismissal with prejudice on behalf of his client – a small central California city – in a police shooting case brought by a nationally known civil rights plaintiffs' attorney. The case stemmed from officers' fatal shooting of an armed man who robbed the same convenience store twice in one night. Based on Mr. Sain's preparation of a compelling defense case, the plaintiffs' attorney agreed to dismiss the case with no settlement payment by the city.
In the middle of the night in a small central California city, a man decided to rob a convenience store twice, using a pellet-gun that everyone at the time believed was a firearm. He threatened to shoot one store clerk in the head during one of his armed robberies. About an hour later, in a second armed robbery, he threatened a relief clerk with the gun and a machete. When local police arrived, the man then ignored officers' at-gunpoint commands to drop the gun and the machete, and he started advancing toward the officers while raising his gun into a shooting position. One of the officers then fired, killing the robber.
The city had previously settled several other unrelated police cases. However, when the city received a lawsuit from a nationally known civil rights plaintiffs' trial attorney, claiming excessive force and wrongful death in the shooting of the robber, the city reached the limits of its patience. Eager to have their day in court at trial, the city turned to Los Angeles partner and co-chair of Lewis' Civil Rights & Police Litigation Defense Task Force, Tony M. Sain, with only one restriction on the defense strategy: no settlements at any price. Focused near-exclusively on preparing the case for federal jury trial in Los Angeles, and applying reverse reptile tactics to the defense case preparation, it took only two depositions by Mr. Sain of the robbery victim store clerks – coupled with the plaintiffs' attorney's long history of knowing how well-prepared our client officers would be for testimony – for the plaintiffs' attorney to realize that this city had the best cards in its hand.
Upon learning that no monetary settlement would be forthcoming, seeing the writing on the wall, the plaintiffs then dismissed their entire case, with prejudice, for free: the first time in recent memory that this nationally recognized plaintiffs' civil rights attorney had ever surrendered on a police shooting death case.