Supervisors who let it happen
Under Section 1983 nobody is liable for someone else's conduct. A sergeant, a captain, a warden or a police chief answers only for what he or she personally did, and being in charge is not enough. That rule is strict, and it still leaves real claims: the supervisor who was there and directed it, the one who knew and signed off, the one who kept a dangerous officer on the street. Separately, the city or county can be liable for its own policies under Monell. This page explains both routes and the deadlines.
Sometimes, and less often than people expect. A supervisor is not liable under Section 1983 because an officer under his command violated your rights. He is liable if his own conduct violated them: he ordered it, joined in it, watched it and did nothing, or knew about a specific danger and chose to leave it in place.
There is no separate injury here. A supervisor claim rides on an underlying violation, such as excessive force, a false arrest or abuse in a jail. If that claim fails, this one fails with it. What the supervisor claim adds is a defendant with more authority, and a record of what the agency knew.
How it happens
- The sergeant at the scene. A supervisor is present while officers use force or make an arrest with no basis. He directs it, or stands there with the authority to stop it and does not.
- The signature on the paperwork. A supervisor reviews and approves an arrest report or a use-of-force report that the video plainly contradicts, and the false account becomes the official one.
- Complaints that go in a drawer. The same officer draws complaint after complaint of the same kind. The supervisors who receive them close each one without investigation, and the officer stays in the same assignment.
- An order that invites the violation. A commander tells a unit to clear a corner, make numbers or teach someone a lesson, and leaves the method to the officers.
- The warden who was told. A jail supervisor receives grievances, letters or medical warnings about a specific danger to a specific person and takes no step.
- Rehiring and retaining. An agency hires or keeps an officer whose record of sustained misconduct it already holds, and gives him unsupervised contact with the public.
The claim
Against the supervisor personally
The rule comes from Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009): there is no vicarious liability under Section 1983, and each government official is liable only for his or her own conduct. The Second Circuit applied that rule in Tangreti v. Bachmann, 983 F.3d 609 (2d Cir. 2020): there is no special test for supervisory liability, and the plaintiff must show that the supervisor personally met the elements of the underlying claim.
In practice that means the supervisor is measured against the same standard as the officer. In a force case, the question is whether the supervisor's own acts were objectively unreasonable. In a jail case under the Eighth Amendment, the question is whether the supervisor personally knew of and disregarded a substantial risk of serious harm (Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994)). A warden who never saw the grievance did not know. A warden who initialed it did.
A supervisor who was physically present has a second problem. All officers have an affirmative duty to intervene against constitutional violations by other officers in their presence (Anderson v. Branen, 17 F.3d 552 (2d Cir. 1994)), and in the Third Circuit rank is irrelevant to that duty (Smith v. Mensinger, 293 F.3d 641 (3d Cir. 2002)). The failure to intervene page covers it.
The supervisory liability standards of the Third and Eleventh Circuits are not in this site's verified ledger and are not stated here. Iqbal binds every court.
Against the employer: Monell
The route to the institution is different. Municipalities are "persons" under Section 1983, but there is no respondeat superior: the city is liable only where an official policy or custom causes the violation (Monell v. Dep't of Social Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978)). A failure to train or supervise is actionable only where it "amounts to deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights of persons with whom the police come into contact" (City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378 (1989)), and "a pattern of similar constitutional violations by untrained employees is ordinarily necessary" (Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51 (2011)). In the Second Circuit, isolated acts of excessive force by non-policymaking employees are generally not enough to show a custom (Jones v. Town of East Haven, 691 F.3d 72 (2d Cir. 2012)). The Monell page goes through each route.
The NYPD, under City law: the employer is a defendant by statute
For unreasonable searches, seizures and excessive force by NYPD employees, the City's 2021 civil rights law gives a civil action against the officer and the employer, including for failure to intervene, with no qualified immunity defense and a three-year limitation period (N.Y.C. Admin. Code §§ 8-803, 8-804, 8-806). No policy or custom has to be proved to reach the City under that chapter. The city law page explains it.
What they will argue
He was not personally involved. This is the defense that Iqbal and Tangreti hand to every supervisor, and it is raised by motion at the very start of the case. A complaint that names the commissioner because he is the commissioner will be dismissed as to him. The complaint has to say what this supervisor saw, signed, ordered or was told, and when. Before discovery, that detail comes from public records: disciplinary histories, which in New York have been subject to FOIL since the repeal of Civil Rights Law § 50-a on June 12, 2020, oversight reports, and prior lawsuits. The disciplinary records page explains the requests.
Qualified immunity. A supervisor sued personally can argue that no clearly established law told him his own conduct was unlawful (Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982)).
One incident is not a custom. Against the city, the defense is Connick: a single violation does not ordinarily prove a failure to train. Prior similar incidents, and what supervisors did about them, are the answer.
Prosecutors' supervisors: absolute immunity. A supervising prosecutor stands behind a higher wall. Prosecutors have absolute immunity for advocacy functions (Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409 (1976)), and that immunity extends to supervisors' training, supervision and information-system failures tied to trial (Van de Kamp v. Goldstein, 555 U.S. 335 (2009)). The way around it is the employer: in the Second Circuit the City can be liable under Monell for a District Attorney's office policies on Brady disclosure and summation misconduct (Bellamy v. City of New York, 914 F.3d 727 (2d Cir. 2019)). See the prosecutorial misconduct page.
The State cannot be sued. A State and its agencies are not "persons" under Section 1983; state officials can be sued for damages only in their personal capacity (Will v. Michigan Dep't of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989)). For a state prison or the State Police, the individual supervisor claim is the only federal damages route, which makes the personal-involvement facts decisive.
Who pays
Punitive damages are available against an individual whose conduct shows evil motive or reckless or callous indifference to federally protected rights (Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30 (1983)), and never against a municipality (City of Newport v. Fact Concerts, 453 U.S. 247 (1981)). New York City "shall indemnify and save harmless" its employees for judgments and approved settlements for acts within the scope of employment, a duty that does not arise where the injury resulted from intentional wrongdoing or recklessness (N.Y. Gen. Mun. Law § 50-k(3)). A Pennsylvania local agency must indemnify an employee for acts within the scope of duties, and that right is lost on a finding of willful misconduct (42 Pa.C.S. §§ 8548(a), 8550). The recovery pages go through each state.
What people have recovered
The Patrick Heron settlement
The City of Philadelphia settled claims arising from sexual abuse by an officer whom the department had kept on despite sustained complaints against him. It is the pattern this page describes: the agency held the record and retained the officer.
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer. A public record of someone else's case, not a result of this firm and not a prediction.
This is someone else's case, and it is the only verified matter in this site's ledger that turns squarely on what supervisors knew. Supervisor and Monell theories also run through many of the matters on the public settlements page, where they travel with the underlying force or custody claim. What a case is worth depends on the injury, the evidence and the defenses; the what a case is worth page explains the factors, and the Pennsylvania recovery page lists the other verified Pennsylvania matters.
The clock
A supervisor claim has no clock of its own. It runs on the clock of the underlying violation, and the federal claim needs no notice of claim (Felder v. Casey, 487 U.S. 131 (1988)). Count the days from the incident, not from the day a records request comes back. What the records later show cannot save a case that was filed late.
| State | Federal Section 1983 claim | State-law claim against the employer |
|---|---|---|
| New York | Three years (Owens v. Okure, 488 U.S. 235 (1989); CPLR 214(5)); City-law claim against the NYPD, three years (N.Y.C. Admin. Code § 8-806) | Notice of claim within 90 days (N.Y. Gen. Mun. Law § 50-e(1)(a)); suit within one year and 90 days (§ 50-i(1)). State: Court of Claims within 90 days (N.Y. Court of Claims Act § 10(3)) |
| New Jersey | Two years (N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2); the Civil Rights Act claim needs no tort notice (N.J.S.A. 10:6-2) | Tort Claims Act notice within 90 days, a six-month wait, suit within two years (N.J.S.A. 59:8-8) |
| Florida | Four years (Fla. Stat. § 95.11(3)) | Written claim to the agency within three years, then a six-month wait (Fla. Stat. § 768.28(6)) |
| Pennsylvania | Two years (42 Pa.C.S. § 5524; Kach v. Hose, 589 F.3d 626 (3d Cir. 2009)) | Written notice within six months (42 Pa.C.S. § 5522(a)) |
If a criminal charge from the same incident is still open, talk to your defense lawyer before describing the arrest to anyone, and read the criminal case and civil case page. The New York, New Jersey, Florida and Pennsylvania pages go through each state's rules.
The officers who watched
Every officer present has a duty to step in. What a realistic opportunity means and who decides it.
Failure to intervene →Prosecutors and their offices
Absolute immunity, its limits, and the Monell route to a District Attorney's office.
Prosecutorial misconduct →Sexual misconduct by officers
The claims against the officer, and against the agency that knew and kept him.
Sexual misconduct by officers →Common questions
Can I sue the police chief or the commissioner?
Only if you can show what that person did. The Supreme Court held in Ashcroft v. Iqbal that there is no vicarious liability under Section 1983, and each official is liable only for his or her own conduct. A chief who never heard of you and had no part in the policy that harmed you is not a proper defendant. The city may be, through Monell, and that is usually the better route to the top.
The officer had a long complaint history and they kept him on. Does that matter?
Yes. It matters to a claim against the supervisors who personally reviewed those complaints and did nothing, and it matters to a Monell claim against the city for deliberate indifference. In New York, disciplinary records have been open to FOIL requests since the repeal of Civil Rights Law 50-a in June 2020. Pennsylvania keeps a statewide database of officer separation records under Act 57 of 2020.
What is the difference between supervisor liability and Monell?
The defendant. A supervisor claim is against a person, in his or her individual capacity, for that person's own acts, and the person can raise qualified immunity. A Monell claim is against the city, county or other local government itself, for an official policy or custom that caused the violation. Many complaints plead both and let discovery show which one the facts support.
How long do I have?
The same clocks as the underlying violation. For the federal claim: three years in New York, two in New Jersey, four in Florida and two in Pennsylvania. State-law claims against the employer need a notice of claim within 90 days in New York and New Jersey and written notice within six months in Pennsylvania.
Tell us what happened.
One conversation with an attorney, in your language. We tell you which claims the facts support, which deadline runs first for the agency involved, what evidence to preserve this week, and whether a pending criminal case changes the timing. If it is not a case we can take, we say so and tell you where to go.
(718) 484-7510If a criminal charge is still open, talk to your defense lawyer before you describe the arrest to anyone, including us. English, Russian and Spanish in-house; an interpreter for any other language. Contingency fee, confirmed in writing before we begin.