Why Two Hours in Custody Can Be Worth Six Figures: How Damages Work in a Civil Rights Case

My client Sky Miller was in custody for about two hours. He was never charged with a crime. The matter still resolved for $100,000. If your first reaction is that something must be missing from that story, you are asking a fair question and the honest answer is that the two hours were never the number that mattered.

I have spent years suing police officers who cross constitutional lines, and the question I hear most, from clients and strangers alike, is some version of “how much is my case worth?” People usually ask it apologetically, as if they need to justify even bringing it up. They assume that without a serious physical injury or days in jail, there is nothing to evaluate. That assumption is often wrong, and Sky’s case is a clean example of why.

The short answer

The value of a civil rights case is not set by a clock. Duration matters, but it is only one factor among several: how clear and serious the constitutional violation was, how strong the evidence is, how publicly and intrusively the arrest happened, whether there were physical or medical consequences, whether the person suffered fear or humiliation, whether the facts support punitive damages against an individual officer, and whether the applicable civil rights laws let a winning plaintiff recover attorney’s fees.

Compensatory damages have to trace to an actual injury. A jury cannot award money just because a constitutional right is abstractly important. But “actual injury” is broader than most people assume, it covers documented non-economic harm: mental anguish, humiliation, fear, and the loss of liberty itself. Stack those against a strong evidentiary record and a two-hour detention can become a six-figure case, not because of the two hours, but because of what happened inside them.

GREG KIRAKOSIAN’S LEGAL EYE VIEW

Clients often lowball their own case because they’re doing hourly math: two hours, therefore small case. I do different math. I ask what a jury sees when the body camera plays: a hotel guest handcuffed in his own hotel’s lobby, put in a patrol car, and then having an asthma attack while the deputies held his inhaler. None of that requires a broken bone to be real damage. When the proof is strong and the harm is documented, the clock stops being the story.

What two hours in custody at the Catalina Canyon Inn actually looked like

On March 27, 2024, Sky Miller was a guest at the Catalina Canyon Inn in Avalon, on Catalina Island. He and his girlfriend, who held the room reservation, had an argument. She left, but not before giving the hotel permission to issue Sky a new room key. The front desk was already handling it. The hotel later confirmed to responding deputies that Sky was a welcome guest, there was no trespassing issue, and the deputies themselves agreed he would get his key and go to his room.

Before that happened, Sky ended a phone call when asked and calmly asked the two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies on scene for their names, badge numbers, and whether their body cameras were on. He never refused to identify himself. Shortly after he asked that question, the deputies arrested him under Penal Code § 647(f) for alleged public intoxication. By both officers’ own testimony and the body-camera footage, Sky stood upright, never stumbled, was coherent, and had cooperated fully with the hotel’s key process.

That arrest is what the other posts in this series analyze. This post is about what happened next, because that is what a damages case actually measures. Sky was handcuffed in the hotel lobby, in front of hotel employees, at the hotel where he was a paying guest. Deputies told him the arrest was his own fault. He was placed in a patrol vehicle and taken into custody. While in custody, he had an asthma attack. He asked for an inhaler (one the deputies already had, taken from him during a search) and did not receive it when he said he needed it. He was eventually taken to a medical facility for treatment. He was issued a citation and then spent time not knowing whether he would be prosecuted, until the District Attorney reviewed the matter and declined to file charges.

That is not “two hours.” That is a hotel guest turned into a handcuffed arrestee within minutes, in public, followed by a medical episode while under government control, medical treatment, a citation, and the anxiety of a pending charge that never came.

The rule in plain English

Picture two unlawful arrests, both lasting exactly two hours. In the first, the person is detained, released, and goes home shaken but physically fine. In the second, the person is handcuffed publicly, transported in a patrol car, has a medical emergency while confined, is taken to a hospital, is cited, and is left not knowing whether they will be prosecuted. The duration is identical. The harm is not. Damages follow the injury the violation caused, not a fixed hourly rate.

Civil rights statutes are also built to make enforcement possible at all, not just to compensate proven injury. Punitive damages can punish and deter especially bad conduct. Attorney’s-fee statutes can make it economically viable to litigate a valid claim even when compensatory damages alone would not cover the cost of years of litigation. Neither is guaranteed, but their possibility changes how both sides value a case before it reaches a jury. The more useful questions are: How clear was the violation? How strong is the proof? What harm did the person actually experience, and can it be documented? What claims and defenses remain, and what would the defense risk at trial? Run Sky’s case through those questions and $100,000 stops looking surprising.

The law behind it

The Supreme Court set the baseline in Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247 (1978): the basic purpose of § 1983 damages is to compensate people for the injury the deprivation of their rights actually caused. In that procedural-due-process case, plaintiffs who proved a violation but not actual injury were limited to nominal damages. The Court reinforced the same point in Memphis Community School District v. Stachura, 477 U.S. 299 (1986), holding that compensatory damages cannot rest on a jury’s sense of how important a constitutional right is in the abstract the award has to compensate for injury the violation caused.

That doesn’t shrink the category of “actual injury” the way it sounds. Loss of liberty deserves its own attention, because people undervalue it. An unlawful arrest takes away a person’s ability to decide where to go, what to do, who to talk to, and when to leave. Courts have treated that loss as its own compensable harm — Kerman v. City of New York, 374 F.3d 93 (2d Cir. 2004), is a frequently cited example, though as a Second Circuit case it is persuasive rather than controlling authority in California’s federal courts. Nobody needs a broken bone or a lost paycheck to have suffered real harm. For Sky, the loss of liberty is what set everything else in motion: the public handcuffing, the transport, the custody, the asthma attack, the inhaler request, the medical treatment, the citation, and the uncertainty about prosecution.

Punitive damages sit on top of that and serve a different purpose: punishing and deterring especially culpable conduct rather than compensating a specific loss. Under Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30 (1983), a jury may consider punitive damages in a § 1983 case where an individual officer’s conduct shows reckless or callous indifference to federally protected rights, or is driven by evil motive or intent. They are never automatic, and a violation alone doesn’t guarantee them, the evidence has to support it. And then there is the fee-shifting piece that changes the economics of the whole fight: under 42 U.S.C. § 1988, a court may award a prevailing party reasonable attorney’s fees in a § 1983 action, and California’s Bane Act, Civil Code § 52.1, carries the same kind of fee-shifting for a successful plaintiff. Fee statutes exist precisely so people can enforce their rights even when the compensatory number alone wouldn’t cover years of litigation.

How the value was built: proof first, then harm and exposure

I want to be candid about how a case like this gets to six figures. It is not a formula, and it is not the length of the detention. It is three things stacked together.

The proof came first. As the other posts in this series lay out, this case never depended only on Sky’s word. Body-camera footage and deposition admissions supported that the deputies lacked probable cause, that Sky’s lawful question immediately preceded the arrest, that no new fact appeared between agreeing to let him go to his room and arresting him, and that the deputies’ own statements suggested his questions or perceived rudeness factored into what they did. Once the evidence supports that story, the other side can no longer treat the case as just one person’s account against another’s.

The harm gave the case its weight. Sky was not merely delayed. He was publicly handcuffed in a hotel where he was a welcome guest, told the arrest was his own fault, transported and confined, affected by an asthma attack while in custody, taken for medical treatment, issued a citation, and left facing uncertainty about prosecution. Those are exactly the facts a damages analysis is built to weigh.

The legal exposure set the stakes. Beyond compensatory damages, the evidence supported potential punitive damages against the individual deputies, statutory attorney’s fees, mounting litigation costs, and the risk of an adverse jury verdict built on recorded video. A short detention that is hard to defend, tied to documented harm and real exposure, is a serious case. That combination (not a preset hourly value) is why the matter resolved for $100,000.

What to preserve after a wrongful arrest

• Seek medical attention first if you experienced any injury or medical episode, and keep every treatment record, discharge instruction, prescription, bill, and photograph.
• Preserve the citation, any booking documents, court notices, and proof that charges were declined or dismissed.
• Keep pay records showing missed work, and any hotel, travel, or transportation records tied to the incident.
• Save messages you sent shortly after the event and the contact information of any witnesses.
• Write down the emotional and practical effects honestly and specifically sleeplessness, fear of police, avoiding certain places, embarrassment, anxiety about prosecution, or trouble returning to work.
• Try to get the names, badge numbers, and agency of the officers involved, plus incident and booking numbers, body-camera footage, dispatch recordings, and any surveillance footage.
• Do not accept a case value from an agency or insurer that is only counting minutes. A real evaluation looks at the full harm, the evidence, the claims, and the litigation exposure.
• Watch the deadlines. A California government claim generally must be presented within six months of the incident, and federal and state civil rights claims run on their own separate clocks. Don’t assume; ask promptly.