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Help from our lawyer friends out there…

by TSO••18

First, the story:

Talk about your Monday from hell. Not only did Bridgett Nickerson Boyd‘s car break down on her way to work, but when she pulled over to the side of the freeway, a sheriff’s deputy named Mark Goad pulled behind her, wrote her a ticket for driving on the shoulder, decided to arrest her, followed her to the hospital when her suddenly racing heart prompted a call to paramedics, then took her into custody again after she was treated by doctors and finally drove her to jail.

To make matters worse, Boyd claims in a lawsuit that the handcuffs were put on her wrists painfully tight and that she was forced to listen to conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh “make derogatory comments about black people” all the way to the jail. Boyd is African-American.

Because of the incident, which occurred on Oct. 4, 2010, Boyd filed a federal lawsuit Monday against Goad and Harris County alleging defamation, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Anyway, lawyer types out there, anyone have access to her claim?  Would love to read through it…

 

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18 thoughts on “Help from our lawyer friends out there…”

  1. I find the portion of her suit claiming to be forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh to be without merit. Under custom and tradition that has the force of law and dates back to the very foundation of this great nation, the driver of the car in question has the right to set the radio station. As she was obviously not operating the police cruiser at the time, she has no say in the radio selection.

  3. None of it seems inherently unbelievable to me, but the case itself has to be predicated on some specific harm, and I don’t think a trooper playing Rush while he drives a crazy person to the klink is going to cut it.

  5. Coming from a family of LEOs, they don’t take you to jail for nothing. Only half the story is being told here.

  6. Of that I have zero doubt. this woman was clearly acting like an asshole every step of the way, and he probably warned her 20x to settle down and then just got fed up.

  8. TSO – I did not find anything on Pacer (so she didn’t file in Federal Court) and I did not find anything in the Harris County Clerk’s records either.

  9. The story from the Houston Chronical says that the local magistrate found no probable cause when Boyd appeared. That signals that something may have been seriously amiss. It’s not unheard of for a citizen to act like a jerk and a P/O to respond in kind. The same story related that Boyd’s attorney hopes the matter can be settled w/o going to court. That’s an odd statement for a plaintiff’s attorney to make. It’s usually fire and brimstone play acting on the courthouse steps and the, later, a nice little ‘reluctant’ settlement. So, all in all, this case is weird and would be a total fahgetaboutit but for the mention of Limbaugh.

  10. What struck me as odd (and taking this more seriously than my first post) was this comment at the end of the article:

    “Boyd had hoped the matter would be settled by the sheriff’s department after she filed a complaint”

    If she was hoping the matter would be settled after she filed a complaint, why didn’t she wait longer before filing a lawsuit? If the dates (published and implied) are correct this happened the morning Monday, October third. Lets be generous and say the incident (including trips to the hospital, appearance before a magistrate, etc) was done by noon and she turned right around and filed her complaint that same day.

    By the morning of the fifth, she’s already filed a lawsuit, which means she expected the sheriff’s department to take action in 24 hours.

    Seems a little unreasonable there and that she’s got something else (dare I imply an agenda) going on.

  11. She says this incident started at 8 a.m. Rush Limbaugh doesn’t come on until 11 a.m. in Houston.

    TSO, have Zero check his mailbox for the documents.

  12. @10. Boyd was arrested on 4 October 2010, not 2011. She filed her suit a year later. That’s what prompted the Houston Chronicle’s story.

  15. There’s a whole lot left unsaid in the story. Were there also warrants for her, did she not have license, and never had one? Like AP said, Limbaugh doesn’t start until 1100 in the Central Time Zone, as if she has any control over what’s played on radio in a car she doesn’t own/operate.
    Did she decide to have a “suddenly racing heart” when she found she was going to jail?
    And,”Boyd’s attorney hopes the matter can be settled w/o going to court”? Does that mean that he and she hoped that the shakedown would be enough to pry some cash out of the county, and when it didn’t, he filed a lawsuit somewhere, with someone?

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