A former Powell police officer who sought upwards of $1 million from the city over his 2022 firing will receive nothing, after a judge dismissed his lawsuit last week.

U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl concluded that the undisputed facts of the case didn’t support the legal claims made by former officer Ryan Davis.

Davis worked for the Powell Police Department for roughly six months in 2021 before falling seriously ill with COVID-19. He spent three months on leave and was expected to be out for at least a few more months when the city terminated
his employment.

“It’s an undue hardship on the whole department,” City Clerk Tiffany Brando told Davis at a January 2022 meeting.

According to a transcript of the meeting, Davis agreed his absence was a disservice to both taxpayers and coworkers and said he’d like to be back in uniform, but “I can’t at this point in time.”

The officer asked Brando, then-Chief Roy Eckerdt and City Administrator Zack Thorington to wait and see if he’d be cleared to return to work in March 2022 or qualify for a medical retirement.

However, city officials said they’d be moving forward with “separation,” with either Eckerdt and Thorington saying they were “sorry it had to come to this.”

Davis sued city leaders in Wyoming’s U.S. District Court in late 2023, contending they violated his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for not accommodating his disabling bout with COVID. He also charged the city was retaliating against him because of concerns he’d raised about the department’s policies and training.

However, U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl dismissed most of Davis’ suit last year and threw out the remaining claims in an April 8 summary judgment.

In his 30-page ruling, Skavdahl agreed that Davis had been disabled by his long COVID, but said there was no evidence that the city could have accommodated the ailing officer.

Although Davis suggested he could have been assigned to “light duty,” Skavdahl noted that would have eliminated some of the essential functions of his job as a patrol officer. 

Further, he noted Davis had not been cleared for any work at the time of his January 2022 firing. As a result, Davis’ request for additional leave “would have been for an uncertain and unknown amount of time, and was thus unreasonable,” Skavdahl wrote.

As for Davis’ contention that he was “fired in retaliation for him being sick and costing too much money to the department” — and for his critiques of the department — the judge said those allegations didn’t qualify as retaliation claims under the ADA.

Through his attorney, Dan Wilkerson, Davis also argued that the firing violated his due process rights, contending the city “guaranteed” his continued employment if he received satisfactory evaluations. However, Skavdahl said the city’s personnel manual, other documents and statements from Davis himself made clear the officer was an at-will and probationary employee who could be fired at any time without cause.

Going their separate ways

Davis and his family moved to Powell after six-plus years as a sheriff’s deputy in California. He started with the police department in March 2021 and fell ill with COVID-19 in late September 2021. He spent days in the hospital and wound up developing pneumonia and a rapid heart rate, being put on supplemental oxygen and heart medication. He received worker’s compensation, used all of his allocated leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and tapped into the city’s sick bank, but by early January, he was still too symptomatic to return to work; former Chief Eckerdt recalled in a deposition that, “a decision needed to be made on how long this could go on.”

In his suit, Davis said he’d clashed with some supervisors and colleagues over what he saw as constitutional violations and other issues, including inadequate training; he alleged the real reason he was fired was because “he wanted to clean up what was going on at the department.”

The transcript shows he did not raise that accusation at the January 2022 meeting; during that conversation, Davis agreed that the city had taken good care of him up until that point.

Following the Jan. 7, 2022 meeting, Thorington issued the officer a formal letter of separation, thanking him for his service and wishing him well.

Davis, who was medically cleared for work in March 2022, ultimately returned to northern California and began working on an MBA, court records say.