Seems like you don't even need to get into the air to make some money!
Federal jury backs woman strip-searched at O'Hare
By Matt O'Connor
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
Published August 22, 2001
A federal jury Tuesday found Customs Service inspectors intentionally inflicted emotional distress by strip-searching a former Chicago woman at O'Hare International Airport and recommended she be awarded almost $130,000 in damages.
The decision isn't binding on U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, though she told jurors she would consider their verdict "very seriously" in reaching her own decision in several weeks.
One juror, Roger Smith Sr., described the 5 1/2-hour deliberations as "a dogfight" and said the women on the panel were upset that inspectors made Kathryn "Kate" Kaniff strip and bend over to see whether she had hidden narcotics in her body.
"That weighed heavily on the women," Smith said as he left the Dirksen Federal Building after the verdict Tuesday evening.
Prosecutors contended the inspectors were just doing their jobs when they patted down Kaniff, strip-searched her and sent her to a hospital for an X-ray after she returned by jet to O'Hare from a four-day camping trip to Jamaica.
Inspectors alleged a drug-sniffing dog "alerted" on her and that a number of her answers raised suspicions that she might be smuggling drugs. No contraband was found.
Kaniff, 36, of Washington Island, Wis., wept when the judge announced the verdict of the four-man, four-woman jury in the civil trial. "Thank God," she said moments later outside the courtroom. "[I'm] just really thankful that they were listening."
"Those people intentionally hurt me," she said of the inspectors. "Maybe they didn't knowingly hurt me, but they really didn't care about me. That's what I get from this."
But in a rare occurrence in federal court, the jury's verdict is only advisory. Kaniff's suit was brought under tort laws that don't entitle defendants who sue the U.S. government to a jury trial, according to lawyers in the case.
Both sides agreed to hold the trial before Pallmeyer and an advisory jury. But the jury didn't know of its advisory role until Pallmeyer told them moments before announcing its verdict.
Pallmeyer asked for legal briefs from both sides in two weeks but set no timetable for her decision.
In closing arguments Tuesday, Kaniff's lawyers, Paul Shuldiner and Deidre Baumann, sought $200,000 in damages.
Jurors sided with Kaniff on all legal fronts, finding that inspectors lacked reasonable suspicion to conduct a strip-search, that their conduct was willful and wanton, that they subjected Kaniff to false imprisonment and that they intentionally inflicted emotional distress.
They then imposed damages totaling $129,750: $112,625 for emotional pain and suffering and $17,125 for future psychiatric care.
Juror Smith said he was sympathetic with the trauma that Kaniff went through, but he also defended the difficult and important job that inspectors must do to try to keep narcotics from entering at O'Hare. He called the verdict a compromise.
The women jurors felt that inspectors should have gone from a pat-down search straight to the X-ray, skipping the intrusive strip-search, according to Smith.
Some jurors didn't think Kaniff's suit was about money, concluding from the testimony that her parents--who attended each day of the seven-day trial--were already wealthy, Smith said.
Other jurors also questioned the veracity of the testimony of the inspector who said she felt something in Kaniff's crotch area while patting her down, Smith said. They also thought the inspector, Olga Martinez, testified with a smirk on her face, he said. "I didn't see it," Smith said.
Kaniff had testified that Martinez and a second inspector who witnessed the strip-search had smirks on their faces after she pulled her pants back up.
Prosecutors defended the actions of the inspectors, saying they grew suspicious at Kaniff's answers, including that she paid cash for her airline ticket shortly before her trip, didn't stay at a hotel and was evasive about who was picking her up.
In his closing argument, Shuldiner, one of Kaniff's lawyers, called the inspectors "poorly trained, careless and very aggressive." But during a break in the trial Tuesday, Robyn Dessaure, Customs Service's director at O'Hare, said the inspectors "acted appropriately and professionally."