BakerHostetler and the ACLU of Colorado achieved a precedent-setting victory on March 1, 2024, when a Denver jury determined that a SWAT team unlawfully raided the home of pro bono client Ruby Johnson in 2022, awarding the 78-year-old grandmother $3.76 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Johnson’s home was wrongfully searched based on the Denver Police Department’s investigation of a stolen truck and its contents. The detective who obtained the search warrant, as well as the sergeant who reviewed and approved it – both of whom were the subject of the lawsuit – did so based on misinterpreted information from Apple’s Find My app, which the truck’s owner used to track an iPhone left inside the stolen vehicle.
The verdict is one of the first under a new Colorado law that allows people to sue individual police officers over violations of their state constitutional rights. The win garnered a Litigator of the Week Shout-Out in AmLaw Litigation Daily for Partner Michelle Gomez and Associate Colby Everett, who served as trial counsel alongside the ALCU attorneys. They were supported by Partner Paul Karlsgodt; Associates Jon Maddalone and Shahnoor Khuwaja; Paralegal Stephanie Bliss; and Assistant Andrea Griffin.