Court Opinion

ID: 9467992
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:01:22.411642+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:37.549759
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur fully in the Court’s opinion upholding the voluntary settlement and imposing liability on the county (technically a non-party) for payment of the attorney’s fees. As I did in my special concurring opinion in Barrett v. Thomas, 649 F.2d 1193 (1981) I would point out that this illustrates how taxpayers have to foot the bill for flagrant, spectacular unconstitutional acts of an officer-agent of the entity. Indeed, the more crass the conduct the more costly it is to the treasury and innocent unoffending taxpayers. Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978), in its restrictive rejection of Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961), never contemplated such a result.