Fired cop loses federal lawsuit

A federal judge last week dismissed the remaining claims in a $4 million civil lawsuit filed by a former Cloquet detective, but left open the door for continued action in state court.

Scott Holman, a detective and K-9 officer who had worked for the Cloquet Police Department for 22 years, was fired by the city council in June 2019. Holman’s complaint claimed that the detective’s termination was the result of a Brady policy created by the Carlton County Attorney’s Office for “sanctioning” police officers without due process.

The term “Brady” refers to a 1963 Supreme Court Case that requires prosecuting attorneys to disclose any material that could help exonerate a defendant of guilt, including misconduct findings involving law enforcement officers. Such officers are sometimes called “Brady cops” because the identified past misconduct means defense attorneys can bring up the behavior, and cast doubt on their testimony.

In Holman’s case, after identifying past misconduct issues that could affect his ability to be a credible witness in court, the county attorney’s office alerted defense attorneys and the police chief that it would not charge any cases “that rely on the testimony of Detective Holman.”

Represented by attorney Mike Padden, Holman originally named four defendants in his lawsuit: the City of Cloquet, Carlton County, Carlton County attorney Lauri Ketola and Cloquet city councilor Kerry Kolodge.

The civil lawsuit made a number of claims, among them:

- That the Brady procedure was used to justify Holman’s termination without any due process and that Ketola and Kolodge conspired to get him fired;

- That Kolodge failed to protect Holman from Ketola’s “illegal conduct,” which the lawsuit claimed included creating “false and defamatory evidence,” then branding him untrustworthy to testify in court. Point 5 of the lawsuit alleged that Holman was not given the opportunity to respond or argue the designation.

“The taint of Brady and the City’s firing served the goal of destroying Holman’s law enforcement career then and into the future,” the lawsuit stated, adding that the action should be declared unconstitutional under both state and federal law.

In June 2020, Chief U.S. District Court Judge Patrick Schiltz dismissed the claims against both Carlton County and Ketola as its county attorney, because prosecutors are “absolutely immune” for claims arising out of the exercise of their legal judgment in assessing witness credibility prior to charging a defendant.

That left claims against Cloquet City Council member Kerry Kolodge, the city of Cloquet, and Ketola in a past role — when she served on Cloquet’s Citizen Advisory Board, which works with the police department on hirings, firings and disciplinary matters — still afloat.

On Aug. 16, Judge Schiltz dismissed the rest of the lawsuit.

In granting a request for summary judgment on the final claims against Ketola and Kolodge, the judge dismissed with prejudice Holman’s claims that he was retaliated against for exercising his First Amendment rights — to post critical comments on Facebook under an alias regarding former police chief Steve Stracek — noting that Holman received only an oral reprimand for his actions.

“An oral reprimand — without more — is not an adverse action,” Schiltz wrote.

The judge stated that while losing his job was definitely an adverse action, neither Ketola (in her CAB role) nor Kolodge caused that termination, so they couldn’t be held liable. Kolodge’s vote to terminate was only one of four council votes, and Ketola did not have any power to terminate Holman’s job as a CAB member. Even a request by the CAB for suspension without pay was denied by the city.

“The record is clear that the City’s decision to terminate Holman had nothing to do with his two-year-old Facebook posts and everything to do with the fact that the County Attorney had just announced that she would not prosecute any case in which he was involved,” the judge wrote.

Judge Schiltz also dismissed Holman’s claim that he was dismissed without due process in violation of the 14th Amendment. Adequate process in the context of government employment, the judge wrote, means that before termination, an employee is entitled to oral or written notice of the charge against him, an explanation of the employer’s evidence and an opportunity to present his side of the story. Holman got all those things, the judge said, including an opportunity to appear before the council with attorneys and a union representative in a public hearing, and “four single-spaced pages of explanation” from then city administrator Aaron Reeves.

As for Holman’s claim that his due process rights were violated because there was little chance he could persuade the council not to terminate, the judge said the argument was “akin to a criminal defendant arguing that his trial was unfair because the evidence against him was so overwhelming that a jury was bound to convict him.”

The city had little use for a detective that couldn’t testify in court “and no amount of notice or hearing would change that fact,” he added.

Although the judge also dismissed the state law claims — including defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent training and supervision and negligent maintenance of employee personnel files — included in the lawsuit, he did so without prejudice. That means those claims could be refiled in state court in the future.

Reached on Wednesday, Holman’s attorney, Mike Padden, said that they plan to litigate in state court.

“We feel very good about the defamation and other claims against Ms. Ketola,” he wrote to the Pine Knot. “She left her fingerprints all over everything, so to speak. Her conduct was motivated by malice, specific intent, and clearly defamatory,” he added.