RICHMOND (LN) — The Fourth Circuit on Wednesday affirmed summary judgment for the Town of Sunset Beach, North Carolina, holding that a woman who alleged she was sexually assaulted by a patrol officer could not hold the municipality liable under Section 1983 because the department's prior incidents of on-duty sexual misconduct all involved consensual conduct — not coercion — and therefore never put policymakers on notice that an assault was likely.
Shannon Mullen alleged that Officer Isaac Krammes, who first encountered her during a 2020 traffic stop, visited her home about four times while on duty between March and June of that year, exposed himself, pressured her to engage in sex acts, and that she had sexual intercourse with him at least once in exchange for leniency on her driving violations.
Mullen argued the town should be held liable because Chief Kenneth Klamar knew that three other Sunset Beach officers had engaged in on-duty sexual conduct before Krammes joined the department in 2019 — including one officer who stopped a woman for a traffic violation, later texted her asking to meet in a remote area, and had consensual sex with her. That pattern, Mullen contended, was enough to put the department on notice that its failure to adopt a written sexual misconduct policy or provide specific training would lead to a constitutional violation.
The Fourth Circuit rejected that argument. Senior Circuit Judge Barbara Milano Keenan, writing for a unanimous panel, drew a sharp line between consensual on-duty affairs and coercive assault, holding that the prior incidents did not involve coercion or abuse of authority to compel sexual activity and therefore did not place department policymakers on notice of a repeated problem of sexual assault that would require a response by those policymakers.
The panel also found no evidence that Klamar knew or should have known about Krammes' conduct while it was occurring. Both Mullen and Krammes testified in depositions that no one in the department knew about the alleged assaults. The first moment department officials could have had any awareness, the court found, came during an unrelated drug search of Mullen's home in October 2020 — months after the alleged conduct had ended — when Mullen told Krammes, "Oh, I got stuff on you." Krammes resigned two months later.
On Mullen's state law negligent hiring claim, the panel acknowledged that Krammes' pre-employment file contained a prior employer's statement that his "temperament needs to be closely monitored," a psychological exam flagging a "high risk" for "integrity problems," a past domestic violence complaint that was later dismissed, and a note that another jurisdiction had declined to hire him after a polygraph examination. But the court held those generalized concerns fell short of the notice required under North Carolina law, which demands evidence that the employer knew of a prior propensity for the same or similar misconduct that injured the plaintiff.
Nothing in Krammes' application or background, the panel held, suggested a prior history of sexual assault before Sunset Beach hired him, and the court affirmed summary judgment on the negligent hiring, supervision, retention, and negligent infliction of emotional distress claims.
The decision underscores how demanding the deliberate-indifference standard remains for plaintiffs pursuing Monell claims against small departments where prior misconduct, though real, does not closely mirror the constitutional violation at issue — leaving victims of alleged officer assault with their primary recourse against the individual officer rather than the municipality that employed him.
Mullen had already settled her claims against Krammes individually.