(Valley News Live) – The city of Grand Forks, its police department, and county prosecutors have denied wrongdoing in a federal lawsuit filed by a Colorado man who says a flawed investigation led to his wrongful arrest and felony charge.
In an answer filed Monday in U.S. District Court, the defendants admit Deryck Middleton was arrested and charged in North Dakota and that the charge was later dismissed. They deny violating his rights and ask a judge to dismiss the lawsuit. They also demanded a jury.
Attorneys serving as special assistant state’s attorneys for Grand Forks County signed the answer on behalf of all defendants.
What the defendants admit
According to the answer, the investigation began in January 2025 with information about messages of a sexual nature directed toward a minor.
The defendants admit that an officer searched for an email account tied to the suspect, and that the search did not return a match to a user in Michigan. They say the officer then subpoenaed Google using the email addresses police had at the time, and that Google’s records linked the accounts to Middleton.
The answer admits those email addresses “were later determined to contain a spelling discrepancy.” The defendants say no one knew of the error at the time and deny it was intentional or made with reckless disregard for the truth. They also admit information obtained from Zoom was not submitted to Google.
The defendants admit an officer ran a social media search Sept. 4, 2025, and believed the name of Middleton’s dog further linked him to the email address. They also admit that an officer signed a declaration of probable cause Sept. 9, 2025, and that a prosecutor signed an information, the formal charging document, Sept. 22, 2025. The answer says the information was based on a belief that probable cause existed.
They admit Middleton was arrested in Golden, Colorado, on Oct. 9, 2025, and say he turned himself in to authorities in North Dakota. They admit he appeared before a district court judge Oct. 23, 2025, and was told the charges against him.
What they deny
The defendants deny the lawsuit’s claims that they violated Middleton’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights and North Dakota law. They deny that any error was intentional and that any policy or custom caused the harm he alleges.
Defenses the defendants raise
- The officers and prosecutors sued individually say they are entitled to qualified immunity. The prosecutors say they are also entitled to absolute prosecutorial immunity.
- The police department and the state’s attorney’s office are not separate entities that can be sued, according to the answer. It says the lawsuit’s claims against the individuals in their official capacity duplicate the claims against their employers.
- The defendants claim immunity under North Dakota law from the state claims and from punitive damages.
- They say Middleton’s claims are barred by a valid warrant. They also say he failed to reduce his damages and that others’ fault may reduce his claims.
The answer also says the lawsuit misnames the prosecutor’s office. It says the office is the Grand Forks County State’s Attorney’s Office, not a North Dakota state office, and that the lawsuit misspells the name of a former assistant state’s attorney.
What’s next
The order says attorneys for both sides must meet before the conference and submit a joint proposed schedule. It should include deadlines for discovery, experts and motions. The order says the deadline for motions asking the judge to decide the case without a trial should be no later than Oct. 8, 2027, unless the judge agrees to a later date. It says trial is generally set about six months after that deadline. No trial date has been set.
The order says the conference will be held in Fargo if all attorneys are from the Fargo-Moorhead area. Otherwise, it will be held by phone.
The lawsuit’s claims
As VNL reported Oct. 8, Middleton alleges an officer misspelled the suspect’s email address in an early search, and that the error later led police to him. According to the lawsuit, he had no known connection to North Dakota, and the details the suspect gave did not match him. The lawsuit alleges violations of his constitutional rights and claims of negligence, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution.
According to the lawsuit, Middleton was charged with luring a minor by computer, a felony, before the charge was dismissed. The lawsuit seeks damages and a court order requiring the police department and state’s attorney’s office to adopt new training and oversight policies.
Middleton’s attorney, Jake Lilly, told VNL in an email Oct. 19 that the lawsuit seeks $2 million in damages and that Middleton has more than $300,000 in business losses. Lilly said it took “a couple of hours of research/review of discovery to figure out where the police went wrong.” He also said no one has apologized to Middleton “in any way.”
In October, Grand Forks County State’s Attorney Haley Wamstad told VNL her office dismissed the charges after learning information indicating Middleton was not the person who committed the alleged offense. She said the office also took steps to have the arrest record expunged. The answer does not say why the charge was dismissed.
The allegations in the lawsuit are claims and have not been proven in court. The defendants have denied them in their answer.
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