Cannon v. Burge

Dist. Ct. did not err in granting defendants-police officials’ motion for summary judgment in section 1983 action alleging that defendants violated plaintiff’s constitutional rights by using torture tactics to extract confession from plaintiff to murder charge and used means to cover up said tactics, where plaintiff had entered into settlement agreement in prior civil action that also sought damages against defendants for using torture tactics to extract confession, in which plaintiff received $3,000 in exchange for broad release that precluded future actions based on incident alleged in said lawsuit. While plaintiff argued that instant action should be allowed to proceed since defendants were guilty of fraudulent concealment of facts demonstrating widespread nature of torture tactics with other criminal suspects that would have altered his decision to settle first lawsuit, Ct. found that: (1) settlement release covered instant lawsuit; (2) plaintiff knew at time of settlement that defendants had been lying about their actions taken against plaintiff; and (3) plaintiff’s counsel in first lawsuit failed to ask during discovery about actions defendants had taken against other suspects. As such, plaintiff could not demonstrate that he reasonably relied on any misstatements made by defendants when executing settlement to support any fraudulent inducement of settlement claim. Fact that other criminal suspects received considerably larger monetary recoveries against instant defendants for similar claims did not require different result. Ct. further noted that, although not raised by defendants, doctrine of res judicata could have been raised to preclude instant lawsuit.