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FARMINGTON — A ruling in 2nd District Court on Thursday denied a motion for a class action lawsuit against former Utah Highway Patrol trooper Lisa Steed.
Steed was fired in 2012 after she was accused of falsifying police reports and using spurrious practices to obtain DUI arrests.
Three plaintiffs have filed lawsuits against Steed for her role in their DUI arrests. Utah attorney Robert Sykes has argued, however, that potentially 1,500 to 2,000 victims were affected by Steed's behavior dating back to 2006.
Sykes argued for the civil accusations against Steed to be converted into a large class action lawsuit during oral arguments at a February hearing in 2nd District Court.
Judge Michael Allphin sided with Steed's and UHP's lawyers in his written decision Thursday, saying the circumstances in the thousands of arrests Steed made are too significant to lump them together in the same lawsuit.
"The proposed class members’ traffic stops occurred over a period of several years, at various locations, at different times of the day, and for differing reasons," Allphin wrote. "These differences must be considered when determining whether reasonable suspicion and probable cause existed under the totality of circumstances of each traffic stop." Email: blockhart@deseretnews.com Twitter: @benlockhartnews
