GCG Attorneys Successfully Defend Police Officer’s Use of Taser

CONCORD, NH — Attorneys Caroline Leonard and Charles Bauer of Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell, P.C. successfully obtained summary judgment for a police officer against Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment excessive force claims involving the use of a taser on a stairway.

In this federal court case — Dixon v. Somersworth, 2015 D.N.H. 190 (Oct. 5, 2015) — the plaintiff sued a police officer for using excessive force, a taser, to effect his arrest. Given the circumstances, which include the officer’s objectively reasonable belief that the plaintiff was evading a felony arrest by descending an outdoor stairway to a platform before jumping fifty feet into a fast-flowing river, the police officer was entitled to qualified immunity from the plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment excessive force claim.

Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell is a leading business and litigation law firm located in Concord, New Hampshire.

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