A Brooklyn Civil Court judge has set aside a $15 million jury award to a woman who claimed post-traumatic stress from finding a picture of her missing adult son in a book of dead “John Does” a month after the New York Police Department refused to search for him.
Judge David I. Schmidt held that the City could not be held liable for the police department’s exercise of discretion in refusing the mother’s request to issue a missing persons report. He turned aside the plaintiffs’ argument that the filing of a missing persons report would have been mandatory in her son’s case.
