LITIGATION BLUES

A federal judge has ruled that a civil rights lawsuit against the City of Springfi eld and several police offi cers fi led by Calvin Christian III may proceed. But in ruling against the city last week, U.S. District Court Judge Colin S. Bruce opined that Christian may have a tough time convincing a jury that city police targeted him because he has fi led complaints against offi cers and successfully sued the city to obtain internal affairs fi les. In his lawsuit, Christian says that city offi cers pulled him over a half-dozen times for no good reason. But Christian has been stopped by police a lot more than six times, as the judge noted in his ruling. “A quick look at the Sangamon County circuit clerk’s website reveals that a huge number of cases, most of which are traffi c cases, have been brought against Plaintiff over the last few years,” the judge wrote. “This court recognizes that, if Plaintiff was properly stopped for traffi c violations on approximately 69 occasions, it seems somewhat unlikely that six traffi c stops for the same kinds of offenses were in violation of his constitutional rights.” Nonetheless, the law at this stage of the proceedings required Bruce to look only at Christian’s allegations and accept his version of the facts as true, and so the judge allowed the lawsuit to proceed. In any case, Christian is still getting tickets from city police, with the most recent one coming last Saturday, when an offi cer wrote him up for improper lane usage.