The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled in favor of Logan Owsley, granting his appeal of the dismissal of his lawsuit against Bartholomew County officials over the 2013 death of his father, Cary Owsley. The case has been remanded back to the U.S. Southern District of Indiana federal court.
The federal lawsuit was filed April 7, 2015, by Logan Owsley in U.S. District Court against then-county sheriff Mark Gorbett, then county coroner Larry Fisher, who ruled Cary Owsley’s death a suicide, and current and former sheriff’s deputies E. DeWayne Janes Sr., Dean A. Johnson, Christie L. Nunemaker, Brent E. Worman, William R. Kinman Jr. and Christopher Roberts.
Cary Owsley, 49, was found by his wife, Lisa, in his home April 7, 2013, with a chest wound from a bullet fired from a handgun, police said.
Nearly four months later, three sheriff’s department deputies — E. DeWayne Janes, Dean Johnson and Christie Nunemaker — were disciplined for errors in judgment during the investigation.
Among those errors were allowing Janes, who was formerly married to Cary Owsley’s wife Lisa, to enter the death scene and remove Cary Owsley’s body from the home and allowing him to touch and secure the handgun, according to the lawsuit. Janes helped cut out a section of the rug that was blood-soaked and bagged it for disposal after investigators left, according to allegations in the lawsuit.
On April 3, 2019, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana dismissed Logan Owsley’s lawsuit against the Bartholomew County officials alleging federal civil obstruction of justice in the shooting death of Cary Owsley, a case that had been ongoing for four years.
According to the appeals ruling for Logan Owsley’s lawsuit, the federal court dismissed Logan Owsley’s lawsuit for lack of standing. “Instead of deciding whether the assignment to Logan conferred a valuable interest, the judge wrote that Logan had not suffered any personal injury. And because Logan’s federal claim failed, the judge dismissed without prejudice Logan’s state-law tort claims for infliction of emotional distress,” the ruling stated.
“Dismissal of the federal claims on jurisdictional grounds was a misstep,” the appeals court ruled. “Logan asserts injury and seeks damages. Decedents’ relatives may have damages claims against tortfeasors and Logan also has the benefit of the assignment from the estate. Federal law permits assignees to sue on assignors’ claim”s, the appeals court wrote.
The “first order of business on remand should be to decide whether an access-to-courts claim, the only thing covered by the assignment, can be based on an assertion that the defendant’s concealed or destroyed evidence that could have been relevant, had suit been filed in state court,” according to the appeals ruling.
The lawsuit, which was in amended form, had been pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana since April 7, 2015, the two-year anniversary of Cary Owsley’s death.
In their motion to dismiss the case, the defendants alleged Cary Owsley’s son, Logan Owsley, had no legal standing to assert any claims relating to his father’s death, based on recent state court rulings, including by the Indiana Supreme Court. The motion also claimed qualified immunity, stating the defendants did not violate Cary Owsley’s clearly established rights.
They also alleged the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over Logan Owsley’s claims because the amended complaint failed to state a claim for which relief could be granted. Bartholomew Circuit Court determined there were no claims related to Cary Owsley’s death to be pursued, according to the motion to dismiss.
The case had been on hold in federal court while the state courts ruled on whether Logan Owsley retained standing in his father’s case after Cary Owsley’s probate case was closed in Bartholomew Circuit Court in 2016 by a special judge.
For more on this story, see an upcoming edition of The Republic.
