In 1992 and 1993, private attorney Robert Y. Chan, filed two 42 U.S.C. § 1983 civil rights lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, challenging the strip searches of six individuals who were arrested at a local school board meeting by officers with the Dinuba Police Department and the Tulare County Sheriff's Department. The cases (Morales v. Tully, CV-F-93-5001-SMS and Martinez v. Tully, CV-F-92-5236) were consolidated and assigned to District Court Judge Robert E. Coyle.

Details of the case are limited to the PACER dockets. According to the dockets, the parties engaged in discovery and filed numerous pre-trial motions. Claims against the City of Dinuba were dismissed for reasons that are not apparent from the docket. Plaintiffs' claims against the Tulare County Sheriff and Tulare County, however, proceeded to trial. Judge Coyle reassigned the consolidated action to Magistrate Judge Snyder-Hylton for trial. A jury trial began on November 2, 1993 and lasted through November 12, 1993, when the jury returned a verdict in favor of four of the six plaintiffs. Three of the plaintiffs were each awarded $175,000.00 in compensatory damages and $175,000 in punitive damages, for a total of $350,000.00 each. The fourth plaintiff was awarded $225,000.00 in compensatory damages plus punitive damages of $175,000.00, for a total of $400,000.00. Post-trial motions followed.

The parties settled the case on May 26, 1999 on unspecified terms. News accounts reported that the settlement was for about $1 million.

Dan Dalton - 02/05/2008


compress summary