Locksmith lawsuit should be dropped, motions say

A wrongful-death lawsuit brought by survivors of a locksmith killed alongside a deputy sheriff in 2012 should be thrown out before trial because Stanislaus County sheriff’s officers could not predict that a “mentally unstable killer” would open fire during an eviction, say new pleadings in federal court.

Despite warnings of an occupant’s angst and military-grade weapons, his “outrageous murder-suicide could not be reasonably foreseen,” reads one of several motions filed recently by various parties hoping for dismissal.

Gunman Jim Ferrario “cowardly executed both Deputy Robert Paris and the civilian locksmith, Glendon Engert,” on a “quiet morning at the well-groomed residence on Chrysler Drive in Modesto,” the briefs reads. No one knew Ferrario was inside with an arsenal of deadly weapons, that he would fire an assault rifle without warning, engage in a lengthy standoff with “two hundred-plus federal and state” responding officers or burn down the fourplex while still inside, the papers say.

The documents suggest a united defense strategy to this point by the remaining parties: The county and supervising Lt. Cliff Harper are represented by a Sacramento law firm; Paris’ estate and Deputy Mike Glinskas, who was not shot and has since retired, have separate attorneys from Sacramento; and a Gold River firm represents supervising Sgt. Manuel Martinez, who also has retired.

Sheriff Adam Christianson was released from the lawsuit a few weeks ago, and the fourplex’s then-new owner paid $230,000 in an out-of-court settlement before trial, which is scheduled for August.

The lawsuit was brought by Engert’s widow and parents, who note that two investigations blistered the Sheriff’s Department for allowing the eviction to go forward after receiving information spelling danger.

The new property owner had hired Paul Tunison, an eviction agent who unsuccessfully ran for City Council in 2011, to take possession of one unit in the fourplex. Tunison had no luck in 15 tries at contacting the occupant, but neighbors sunning themselves told him Ferrario was a “weirdo” with bombs in his garage and M-16 assault rifles, Martinez’s brief says.

Martinez had a clerk put warnings in bold print, circle them in red ink and post them on both sides of an information packet given to the deputies, who underwent safety training a few short hours before Paris, 53, and Engert, 35, were slain.

Although Harper had some responsibility for training officers serving evictions, he knew nothing about the particulars of the Chrysler visit, his brief says. Martinez did what he could to alert the deputies and should be allowed discretion to trust them to do their jobs, and all four officers should be shielded by immunity afforded public servants under California law, the briefs say.

The lawsuit’s claims that Engert’s constitutional rights were violated would not stand up at trial, the papers say, because the deputies did not force the locksmith to do the job – he was hired by the new owner – and the deputies’ actions “did not create a danger.”

“The hidden danger was Ferrario sitting inside the house, waiting with a loaded gun,” the deputies’ brief says. “Although this eviction was undoubtedly calamitous in hindsight, it was the violent act of a third party – Jim Ferrario – who was responsible for the two deaths that day,” the brief says.

The deputies “never gave (Engert) any representations that the property was safe or vacant. They allowed him to perform his job, but did not place him in any more danger than he would have otherwise been,” the document says.

To fault the officers with “deliberate indifference” requires action that would “shock the conscience,” the papers say, citing case law based on “malicious and sadistic” conduct with the purpose of causing harm. In the Chrysler case, the deputies directed Engert to seek safety at the side of the home when, while disabling a security door lock, Engert paused at hearing something inside, the briefs say.

The lawsuit contends that the deputies ultimately told Engert to resume drilling the lock, after which he and Paris were shot. The deputies’ brief says Paris would not have stood in harm’s way himself if he had had an inkling of the danger within.

“It cannot be shown that a hypothetically more careful assessment would have prevented the attack,” the brief says, contradicting results of both independent investigations.

The briefs do not mention that the investigations found fault with sheriff’s managers for failing to address Paris’ cavalier approach to evictions. When alerted by a clerk to warnings about the Chrysler property, he replied, “Whatever,” according to one investigation. During previous evictions, he was observed whistling, talking on a cellphone and searching with hands in pockets, the probe found.

Significant portions of Harper’s and Martinez’s pleadings were blacked out because the county contends that “confidentiality outweighs the interests in public disclosure” of sheriff’s personnel information. Sections partially redacted raise questions about the department’s response to safety concerns of other officers.

An investigation commissioned by Christianson suggested that authorities might have been more cautious had they done a background check, which would have turned up Ferrario’s felony conviction for receiving stolen property, multiple other arrests and involvement in at least 13 police reports from 1997 to 2008. But property records bore the name of Ferrario’s father, who had died, and they didn’t even know the son’s name, the new documents say.

Harper’s brief cites three previous evictions that turned violent in this county. In 2001, a renter opened fire, injuring the owner before perishing in an inferno. In 2010, off-duty sheriff’s detective Kari Abbey shot and killed a woman at Abbey’s rental property; Abbey claimed self-defense and criminal charges were dismissed. In 2011, Martinez ordered backup units to help with an eviction involving a group of tax protesters connected to the 1994 beating and sexual assault of former County Clerk-Recorder Karen Mathews.

None was similar to the Chrysler circumstances in 2012, Harper’s brief says.

The papers note that the new property owner had asked Engert not to start the eviction before the owner arrived, but Engert apparently ignored that, suggesting he, too, expected no problems. They don’t say how the owner’s presence might have altered the outcome.

This story was originally published March 23, 2015 at 3:20 PM with the headline "Locksmith lawsuit should be dropped, motions say."