Litigation
Jun. 1, 2001
Twice-Cleared Medi-Pot Sellers Sue San Diego Over Arrests
SAN DIEGO - Five people charged and cleared twice for selling marijuana to clients who had doctors' authorizations have sued the city and county of San Diego, alleging police misconduct and civil rights violations.
The plaintiffs also allege false arrest, malicious prosecution, assault under color of authority, interference with economic advantage and infliction of emotional distress, according to the complaint filed May 25 in San Diego Superior Court. California Alternative Medicinal Center v. San Diego, 767980 (San Diego Super. Ct., filed May 25, 2001).
Plaintiffs Carolyn Konow and Steven Rohrer formed the California Alternative Medicinal Center in 1997, according to what they believed were the provisions of Proposition 215, the complaint alleges. The initiative, passed in 1996, allows people with a documented medical need for marijuana to grow and use it.
San Diego police began investigating the center in 1999, after getting a tip from two of its former "employee/volunteers," one of them a client authorized to use marijuana and the other the client's caretaker, the complaint contends.
After the center failed to sell marijuana to an undercover sheriff's deputy, authorities framed the defendants - directing the client-informant and his caretaker to create records showing that neither was entitled to receive medicinal marijuana, the plaintiffs alleged.
The complaint contends that the officers, acting on a search warrant based on the allegedly falsified records, then showed up at the clinic pointing their guns at co-plaintiffs Daniel O'Neil and Howard Rogers, keeping them handcuffed and denying them use of a bathroom for hours.
Officers also taunted O'Neil and Rogers about being homosexuals, although only Rogers is gay, the complaint alleges.
Co-plaintiffs Amy Toosley and Rohrer were treated similarly when officers showed up to search their residence, the complaint alleges. An officer allegedly told Toosley, who was pregnant, that she would have her baby in prison and it would be put up for adoption.
Toosley, "out of fear and based upon the representations" of the officer, later had an abortion, the lawsuit alleges.
Assistant Chief of Police George Saldamando, who the lawsuit says was close to the investigation, was not immediately available for comment. A representative for the city attorney's office said it had not been served with the complaint and could not comment.
Deputy County Counsel Nathan C. Northup said his office had not been served with the lawsuit, either.
But he said that the plaintiffs should not feel entitled to civil damages simply because the criminal cases against them were dismissed.
"You don't get a free ticket to eat at the public trough just because you're acquitted," he said.
Criminal charges against the five plaintiffs have been dismissed twice, an indication of the murky legal questions that surround Proposition 215. The measure didn't specify how the drug was to be distributed to users who didn't grow their own.
After a judge dismissed the case against them in September, another judge ordered them reinstated. In January, a third judge dismissed the charges again. People v. Konow, SCD152825 (San Diego Super. Ct., filed Nov. 7, 2000).
The district attorney has appealed.
The plaintiffs alleged in their complaint that, after the second dismissal, Deputy District Attorney Julie Korsmeyer offered to halt criminal proceedings if the defendants waived their rights to civil remedies. The plaintiffs said that they refused.
"That's absolutely untrue," Korsmeyer said of the allegation.
Claude Walbert
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