Saman

This litigation arose from the unfortunate fatal shooting of a San Bernardino shopkeeper, Butres Samaan, by a police officer responding to a burglar alarm, and the events immediately following the shooting. Butres Samaan’s survivors and estate, Yousef Saman, Mohammed Alfaorr, and Roufai Samaan, 1 filed civil rights claims against the police officer who fired the fatal shot, several police officers involved in the subsequent investigation of the shooting, various city officials, the City and County of San Bernardino and a deputy district attorney. The court granted several of the defendants’ motions for summary judgment and for judgment as a matter of law until only excessive force claims remained against four of the defendants. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict as to the excessive force claims against officers Michael Blechinger and Mitchal Kimball and those claims were eventually retried to a second jury.

The second jury returned a special verdict in favor of Officer Blechinger and the court entered judgment as a matter of law in his favor. This time the jury returned a verdict against Officer Kimball in the amount of $30,000 compensatory damages and $4,000…