La Cañada resident Brian Mulligan sues LAPD for $20 million

A former Deutsche Bank executive has filed a suit against the Los Angeles Police Department, alleging that two officers dragged him to a motel last year and severely beat him when he tried to escape.

Brian C. Mulligan, a resident of La Cañada Flintridge, is seeking $20 million in damages from the May 15 incident in Highland Park, in which he suffered a fractured nose and broken shoulder blade. The lawsuit, which was filed on Feb. 6, also names the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Police Protective League as defendants.

Mulligan claims he was walking around the Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock to visit a dispensary for medical marijuana products around 10 p.m. on May 15 when James Nichols and John Miller, two LAPD officers, approached him.

The suit alleges that the officers illegally detained Mulligan at Highland Park Motel, threatening death if he left, and then beat him to the point that he required surgery. The suit also claims that Mulligan lost his job at Deutsche Bank after the Police Department gave false information to the media and painted him as a “delusional drug addict.”

The Police Department and Police Protective League “engaged in a coordinated and systematic effort to destroy a man’s career and his life,” the lawsuit states.

In an emailed statement, Police Protective League spokesman Eric Rose said Mulligan “thrust himself into the public eye by holding a press conference to discuss his wild and lurid allegations against LAPD officers.”

“The unedited version of Mulligan’s tape-recorded conversation with another law enforcement agency is at odds with the tale he wove, but the tape speaks for itself,” Rose stated.

Mulligan admitted to a Glendale police officer days before the May 15 incident that he suffers from paranoia and had used “white lightning,” a type of the synthetic drug called bath salts, at least 20 times, according to a police recording.

In the recording, Mulligan told the officer that he hadn’t used the drug in two weeks, but said he felt like people were following him and that he heard helicopters.

“We don’t have a helicopter up in Glendale right now,” the officer replied.

The officer advised him to seek help from a doctor and not use the drug again.

The lawsuit also calls one of the officers involved in the confrontation — Nichols — a “serial predator” with a “history of using threats, fear and his badge to abduct and assault people.”

In January, the Los Angeles Times reported that Nichols was one officer being investigated for forcing women to have sex with him under the threat of arrest.

During the May 15 confrontation, Mulligan claims that Nichols told him, “You’re going to die tonight of a heroin overdose” before attacking him with a baton.

Skip Miller, an attorney representing Mulligan, said his client was injured physically and psychologically. “It’s been devastating,” Miller said.

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