## Facts

- Stella Romanski, age 72, visited MotorCity Casino to gamble and eat lunch.
- She picked up a stray five-cent token from a slot-machine tray, intending to use it at another machine; there was no evidence she knew of any rule forbidding this.
- Casino security personnel approached, surrounded her, and escorted her to a small, windowless security room without explaining why.
- Marlene Brown, a casino security employee licensed by Michigan as a “private security police officer” with statutory on-premises arrest authority, accused Romanski of theft and treated her as a criminal “suspect.”
- Security personnel counted Romanski’s money, separated out a nickel as “evidence,” copied her identification documents, and photographed her.
- Romanski was detained for about an hour, monitored afterward until her bus departure, prevented from rejoining friends or using the restroom unaccompanied, ejected from the casino, and banned for six months.

## Issues

1. Whether a privately employed casino security officer licensed with statutory arrest power acted “under color of state law” for 42 U.S.C. § 1983 when detaining and effectively arresting a patron.
2. Whether the district court properly instructed the jury that defendants acted under color of law as a matter of law.
3. Whether the punitive damages award violated due process and required reduction or a new trial on punitive damages.

## Decision

- The Sixth Circuit held that Brown and the casino acted under color of state law because Michigan conferred on Brown on-premises arrest power akin to police authority.
- The court affirmed liability under § 1983 and related state-law claims, finding no reversible instructional error on liability issues.
- The court vacated the punitive damages award and remanded for remittitur to $600,000 or, if refused, a new trial limited to punitive damages.

## Legal Principles

- A private employee acts under color of state law when the state clothes the employee with arrest authority and the employee uses that authority in detaining or arresting individuals.
- “Color of law” turns on state-conferred power, not the actor’s characterization of their role as “private” rather than “police.”
- A detention involving escorted confinement in a secure room, inability to leave, investigative processing (e.g., document copying and photographing), and exclusion from premises may constitute an arrest requiring probable cause.
- Punitive damages in civil-rights cases must satisfy due process limits evaluated under the reprehensibility, ratio, and comparable-penalties guideposts; substantial awards may be upheld but not grossly excessive ones.

## Conclusion

The court treated the casino security officer’s statutory arrest authority as sufficient to make her conduct state action for § 1983, upheld the jury’s finding of an arrest without probable cause, and required reduction of punitive damages to a constitutionally permissible amount.


Romanski v. Detroit Ent. L.L.C., 428 F.3d 629 (6th Cir. 2005)