Brown v. City of Detroit

Opinion

ORDER DENYING MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION AND DENYING REQUEST FOR CLASS DECERTIFICATION

Plaintiff Jonathan Aaron Brown was arrested without a warrant on September 21, 2007, in the city of Detroit. He claims that he was mistreated while in custody: that he was held for about 60 hours with no mattress, that he was not provided a probable cause hearing before a neutral magistrate, and that he was not provided two meals a day. Asserting that Defendant City of Detroit routinely treats arrestees this way, Brown filed suit on behalf of himself and thousands of others.

On April 28, 2011, the Court entered a default as to liability against the City of Detroit. [*2] ¹ ECF No. 27. The Court denied the City's subsequent motion to set aside the default as to liability because it determined that the "sanction remain[ed] necessary to advance the case." ECF No. 33. After multiple rounds of briefings, the Court granted class certification to two classes: Class I consisted of those arrestees who had been detained "overnight"² without a mattress/pillow/blanket and Class II consisted of those arrestees who had been detained for longer than 48 hours without a determination of probable cause.³ In certifying these classes, however, the Court made clear that it was certifying for liability purposes only; that is, the Court bifurcated the issues of liability and damages as permitted by Rule 23(c)(4). After a careful and extensive review of the City's records, Plaintiff believes that there are approximately 160,000 people in Class I and 40,000 in Class II with some overlap between the two classes. The Court further determined that the default ran to both putative classes, ECF No. 60, and determined that the City had conceded liability for both classes.

On May 15, 2013, the City filed a motion for relief from the default order or for reconsideration of class certification.⁴ ECF No. 76. The City requests two forms of relief in its motion: (1) that the default should be set [*4]  aside, and (2) that the classes should be decertified in light of Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 133 S.Ct. 1426, 185 L. Ed. 2d 515 (2013). Id.

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