Anthony Banaszak and his attorney from Mid-Michigan's Outside Legal Counsel have today filed an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court encouraging the nation's highest court to take up a legal challenge to the "destroy-and-dash" practices of law enforcement, including those from the Saginaw-Bay-Midland region.
Before the country's highest court is a similar case, Slaybaugh v Rutherford County, where a Tennessee SWAT team destroyed a private home to effectuate the arrest of her visiting son. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (which covers federal appeals from Michigan and Tennessee) recently ruled that police have a legal privilege to ruin homes to effectuate arrests and do not need to pay innocent homeowners for damage law enforcement causes. However, other courts have held that such destruction, when caused by the police, requires prompt payment of needed repair and remediation.
As the brief highlights, Banaszak, a Bay City builder and contractor, suffered from the same fate as the Slaybaughs from Tennessee, "despite being several hundred miles apart" from each other.
Banaszak owned a subdivided house on Garfield Avenue in Bay City where one of his tenants, Harold Nielsen, lived in Apartment No. 3. After threatening a process server, law enforcement later returned and Nielsen refused to surrender voluntarily. Officers from Bay City Public Safety and tactical agents and troopers from the Michigan State Police began destroying Banaszak's house to try to force Nielsen out from his individual apartment. Flash bangs, pepperballs, and BearCat tanks were used. Windows and walls were destroyed as part of the October 2022 standoff.
When Nielsen was finally arrested with the use of a K9, the responding law enforcement agencies simply packed up and left leaving Banaszak with hundreds of thousands of dollars of damages that insurance would not cover. Due to the actions of these agencies, the insurance company later refused to renew his coverage.
The amicus brief, known as a friend-of-the-court filing, urges the high court that such destroy-and-dash practices are not one-off events but something that affect everyday home and property owners. Banaszak's brief points out that other courts around the country, including in Texas, Minnesota, and New York, have found that reimbursement for inflicted damages is required.
"We filed with the United States Supreme Court because the nine justices should know that SWAT teams here in Mid Michigan and across the country unfairly leave homeowners, who have done everything right and nothing wrong, with massive repair bills," states Philip L. Ellison, an attorney from Hemlock's Outside Legal Counsel who is representing Banaszak. "SWAT teams ruining private property, and just taking off, is just unfair to innocent homeowners and is, in my view, unconstitutional as well."
