Wroth family settles for $2 million in Rohnert Park suffocation death

The city of Rohnert Park will pay $2 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit stemming from the 2017 death of Branch Wroth, a Forestville man who suffocated inside his Rohnert Park motel room after being shocked with a Taser and held face down by the city’s public safety officers.

The settlement after a federal judge last year overturned a jury verdict that awarded Wroth’s family $4 million after finding the jury was given legally faulty instructions, spurring an order to retry the case.

The attorney for Wroth’s parents, Christopher and Marni Wroth, vowed at that time to press the case again, citing the jury’s unanimous June 2019 verdict finding the city’s failure to train its officers partly caused Wroth’s death and that the city was deliberately indifferent to those risks.

A second trial was scheduled for the end of the year, but mandatory settlement talks led the two sides to settle the case, said Izaak Schwaiger, the lawyer representing the Wroth family.

“At the end of the day, I think the most compelling reason to settle was to put this case to bed,” Schwaiger said. Court delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, paired with the slow nature of federal civil rights cases in general, threatened to drag the case on for several more years, he said. “Pursuing it another three, four, five years, I don’t know who can manage that much of a toll.”

The settlement, reached reached Aug. 17, includes payment of the Wroth’s attorneys’ fees and litigation costs, Rohnert Park Assistant City Manager Don Schwartz said. The city’s insurer was in the process of sending the check as of Monday, he said.

The city admits no fault in Wroth’s death as part of the deal and is not required to take any corrective action to change the way its officers use force in such cases, Schwartz said.

Rohnert Park chose to settle the case, filed in September 2017, because “it allows all parties to put the matter behind them, eliminates the risk of further questionable legal rulings, and allows the City to avoid a significant amount of future legal expenses,” Schwartz said in an email.

At the City Council’s behest, and amid a nationwide reckoning this year with police brutality and racial injustice, Rohnert Park is reviewing use of force policies for its oft-embattled Department of Public Safety, which has been the target of several high-profile civil rights cases in recent years that led to multimillion dollar payouts to plaintiffs.

One dealt with officers’ roadside seizure of cash and marijuana from drivers as far as 40 miles outside city limits. The city early this year settled with 8 drivers for a total of $1.5 million.

Another lawsuit stemmed from a 2014 warrantless probation search in which a jury found all three officers involved acted illegally, including one who came through the home’s back door unannounced with his gun drawn. A federal judge ordered an overhaul in how the city trained its officers, criticizing the Department of Public Safety for “systemic problems.” The payout in that case was $1.2 million.

As part of the ongoing police review, the city has held three listening sessions with community members and is preparing a report for the public and the City Council, Schwartz said.

Rohnert Park has paid experts and attorneys roughly $600,000 in the Wroth case, Schwartz said.

Marni Wroth declined to comment Monday afternoon.

Branch Wroth, 41, died on May 12, 2017 after staff at the Rohnert Park Budget Inn asked officers to conduct a welfare check on him.

Officers found Wroth, who was high on methamphetamine, in his room partially naked and afraid that his clothes were poisoned, court documents and video of the encounter showed.

After Wroth resisted officers’ attempts to detain him, the officers got him to the ground, shocked him with a stun gun, hit him with a flashlight and restrained his arms and legs behind him, according to court records and video of the arrest. Wroth, who was face down, told officers “I can’t breathe” moments before he went limp, the footage showed.

He was pronounced dead in the motel room, about 50 minutes after motel staff called police.

A Sonoma County pathologist determined Wroth had a heart attack after struggling with law enforcement officers while under the influence of methamphetamine.

Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch cleared the officers involved in the arrest of criminal wrongdoing, saying Wroth’s death was likely caused by his drug intoxication combined with physical exertion resisting police, a conclusion strongly contested by Wroth’s family.

Their civil rights lawsuit, filed in September 2017, led to eight-day trial that concluded in June 2019 with a unanimous verdict that the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety failed to train its officers to avoid suffocating people when restraining them and was deliberately indifferent to the physical risks posed to civilians in such cases. It found that the city was at fault in the death.

City officials immediately contested the decision in court, arguing the Wroths’ claims about inadequate training of officers were without merit. Six months later, in December 2019, the federal judge who presided over the trial overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial, citing faulty written instructions issued to the jury.

The settlement will be made public once it’s completed, Schwartz said. He could not provide a timeline for when that would happen when asked Monday afternoon.

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.