Governmental Liability / Police & Constitutional Claims – Limits on State-Law Remedies

A self-represented plaintiff sued several Meriden police officials, alleging a wide array of federal and state-law claims arising from his 2021 arrest after he assaulted a victim with a baseball bat at a gas station and fled. After removal to federal court and dismissal of the federal claims, the remaining state-law counts—asserting violations of multiple provisions of the Connecticut and U.S. Constitutions, false arrest, negligence, reckless conduct, emotional distress, failure to train, and conspiracy—returned to Superior Court. The defendants moved to strike, arguing that the complaint failed to state any cognizable Connecticut constitutional or common-law claims based on the facts alleged. Applying the familiar motion-to-strike standard, the court accepted well-pleaded facts but not bare legal conclusions, and ultimately granted the motion to strike in its entirety, holding that the plaintiff’s generalized claims did not fit within Connecticut’s limited recognition of state constitutional torts under Binette v. Sabo, and that his common-law theories were either conclusory or barred by governmental-immunity principles governing police functions. For insurers handling police-liability and municipal-defense matters, the case reinforces that Connecticut courts will strictly police the boundaries of state-law constitutional claims and will not allow loosely pleaded “kitchen-sink” complaints to proceed where the operative facts do not support recognized causes of action. “Construing the complaint in the manner most favorable to sustaining its legal sufficiency, the court grants the motion to strike for the reasons set forth below.”  The court also reiterated that “the great weight of authority [states] that the operation of a police department is a discretionary governmental function” and that governmental immunity may be raised on a motion to strike when the governmental nature of the function is apparent from the face of the complaint. Hernaiz v. Wagner, No. NNH-CV-24-5063853-S (Conn. Super. Ct. Dec. 22, 2025).