Jury awards $75K to woman who sued PBSO over excessive force
By Kate Jacobson Sun Sentinelcontact the reporter
Jury rules in favor of woman who sued Palm Beach Sheriff's
Office and former deputy over excessive force
The jury, which reached its verdict Friday, sided with Maria
Paul, awarding her $75,000 on claims that former deputy Michael Woodside
intentionally used excessive force, violated her civil rights and unlawfully
caused her injury.
According to a lawsuit, Paul was pulled over twice by
Woodside on Dec. 25, 2008 in Belle Glade. The first time she was cited for
having a loud stereo system and no registration. She drove away from the
traffic stop and Woodside followed her, the suit said, then he pulled her over
again and said she peeled out.
Paul was removed from her car and was put in a choke hold,
and then she was slammed into the ground. Once in the back of Woodside's
vehicle, she was punched in the face, according to the lawsuit, which also
named Sheriff Ric Bradshaw in his official capacity as the head of the agency.
"For my client, [the ruling] is a vindication that what
she said was true," said Paul's lawyer, Ken Swartz. "It was a
vindication on her part for a nightmare that she went through."
Woodside and his lawyer could not be reached for comment
despite phone calls. Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Teri
Barbera deferred questions to the agency's legal department.
After her arrest, Paul was charged with resisting arrest
with violence, aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and resisting
arrest with violence. In August 2009, all of those charges were dropped,
records show.
Woodside was hired as a deputy in 2008 after serving as an
officer in Jupiter. According to the lawsuit, Woodside was sued in federal
court in 2007 for a false arrest.
While working at the Sheriff's Office, he had three
use-of-force complaints in his file for his first year of work, according to
the lawsuit.
Shortly after Paul's arrest, an internal affairs
investigation began probing into whether Woodside and two other deputies who
worked in the Belle Glade area were beating up people accused of crimes and bragging
about it on the Internet, according to the lawsuit.
The investigation found Sgt. Brent Raban, Deputy Gregory
Lynch and Woodside had violated rules and regulations, records show. Raban was
demoted and Lynch and Woodside were fired in June 2009.
The internal affairs report showed Woodside made
inappropriate comments online about people he had arrested, including one post
where he bragged about roughing up a woman he arrested two weeks before he
arrested Paul, according to the lawsuiy
