A Michigan town has agreed to a US$320,000 ($525,000) settlement with a man from Japan who was wrongly accused of drink-driving after a police officer badly misread a breath test, court records show.
Ryohei Akima blew a 0.02 on the test, but it was mistakenly read by the officer as0.22 — nearly three times over Michigan’s blood-alcohol limit for driving.
According to a summary of the case, Caitlyn Peca, who was a rookie officer, told a colleague over the radio: “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
Akima, a native of Yonago, Japan, was in the US on a work visa in 2020. Charges of driving while intoxicated were dropped when a blood sample further showed that he wasn’t drunk.
Akima, 37, filed a lawsuit in federal court, alleging that Peca’s actions violated the US Constitution. A settlement was reached in January, a few months after a federal appeals court said the case could move forward against the town of Fowlerville.
“It would be evident to a reasonable officer that [Akima] was, quite apparently, sober,” Judge Jane Stranch said. “So a reasonable jury could conclude that [the] arrest was not supported by probable cause and that Officer Peca was not entitled to qualified immunity.”
Fowlerville is paying the lawsuit settlement through insurance, records show.
T Joseph Seward, an attorney who represented Peca, claimed that performance on roadside sobriety tests was enough to make an arrest and avoid civil liability in the lawsuit.
