HUNTINGTON — A man is suing the Milton Police Department and a police officer claiming he was wrongly arrested after calling the police during a dispute.
The City of Milton was also named as a defendant in the suit.
Caleb A. Dial was arrested on Aug. 27, 2021, by Officer Keith Higginbotham and the narrative drafted by the officer and attached to the official report "is demonstrably false and refuted by a doorbell video camera that caught the interaction between Mr. Dial and Defendant Higginbotham," according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.
Dial claims he was at the residence he shared with his parents in Milton and called the police after a verbal dispute with his father and Higginbotham was dispatched to Dial's residence.
Higginbotham made contact with Dial and, after a brief discussion, placed Dial in the back of his patrol vehicle and went to speak with Dial's father. He informed Dial's father that Dial was under arrest for violating several West Virginia criminal statutes.
"The entire encounter between Mr. Dial and defendant Higginbotham was captured by a video doorbell camera," the complaint states.
Higginbotham's official report, the complaint alleges, was false and contradicted the video doorbell footage.
"As a result of defendant Higginbotham’s unlawful arrest, Mr. Dial spent three days incarcerated in Western Regional Jail and his name and image were subject to a press release by the Milton Police Department that repeated as true defendant Higginbotham’s demonstrably false narrative," the complaint states.
Dial claims the defendants violated his 14th Amendment rights, as well as state and statutory rights. He claims Higginbotham did not have probable cause to arrest him and deprived him of his right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure by arresting him under false pretenses.
Despite being made aware of Higginbotham's misconduct, the other defendants did not terminate his employment, according to the suit.
In their answer, the defendants deny the allegations and seek to have the case dismissed.
Dial is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. He is represented by Tyler Haslam of Haslam Law Firm in Huntington and Bradley D. Dunkle of Dunkle Law in Huntington. The defendants are being represented by John W. Burns of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani in Pittsburgh.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia case number: 3:22-cv-00316