Thomas MacMillan file photo
Plaintiff’s attorney John Williams: Looking for “fair and reasonable compensation” for client.
A New Haven man is seeking financial damages in a newly filed civil suit against a Seymour police detective who admitted to improperly searching a law enforcement database and then sharing that ill-gotten information with the man’s estranged, soon-to-be ex-wife.
Those accusations are laid out in a newly filed complaint in the case Emmanuel Sergentakis v. Steven Ditria.
Arguing on behalf of the plaintiff, New Haven civil rights attorney John Williams wrote in the complaint that Sergentakis was subjected to “needless and meritless criminal and civil litigation, was needlessly required to expend substantial sums of money for legal representation, and suffered severe emotional distress,” all because of Ditria’s actions.
“It was an admitted abuse of power,” Williams told the Independent in a Monday afternoon phone interview. Ditria “confessed to what he did. He was disciplined. There’s really no dispute as to the wrongdoing.” This new case is about asking the court to determine what is “fair and reasonable compensation” for the alleged harm inflicted by Ditria’s actions.
Asked for a response, a Town of Seymour representative told the Independent that the town does not comment on ongoing litigation.
The case points back to a September 2018, when Sergentakis and his then-wife were in the midst of getting divorced.
According to this New Haven Register article from September 2019, Sergentakis’s then-wife reached out to Ditria, whom she knew, for advice in how to deal with alleged threats and domestic violence coming from her then-husband.
The article and Sergentakis’s recent complaint both state that Ditria responded to the call for help by conducting a search of the National Crime Information Center Connecticut On-Line Law Enforcement Communications Teleprocessing (NCIC/COLLECT) database for information about Sergentakis.
The Seymour detective then shared the information that he had gathered from the database with Sergentakis’s then-wife.
“At the time he conducted these actions, the defendant knew that his conduct was prohibited by law and that in doing so he was subjecting himself to termination of his right to access the said database and to criminal and/or administrative investigation, arrest, and/or prosecution and conviction.”
The Register article states that an Internal Affairs investigation by Seymour’s police department found that Ditria had indeed improperly searched the database and shared details with Sergentakis’s wife.
The department suspended the detective for eight days without pay for his actions.
Now, according to this new suit, Williams and Sergentakis are seeking monetary damages for the alleged harm caused by Ditria two years ago.
Williams wrote that Ditria’s actions represent an “invasion of privacy,” “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” and “negligent infliction of emotional distress.” He wrote that Ditria violated Sergentakis’s constitutional right to privacy.
According to state judicial records, Sergentakis’s divorce proceedings with his now ex-wife began in November 2017. The latest court filing in the case dates to March 2020.