The Nye County Sheriff's Office has been sued for allegedly overdoing things when it subdued an elderly man with electronic Tasers last winter.

Robert and Jeanette Smith held a Las Vegas press conference Monday during which their attorney, Blake Horowitz of Chicago, Ill.,, appeared with them via live video to discuss the complaint against both individual officers of the Sheriffs Office (NCSO) and the office.

The petition was filed electronically in Justice Court here on Robert Smith's behalf Friday, Sept. 22.

The complaint concerns an incident that occurred Valentine's Day during which Smith called 911 because his wife, Jeanette, had slipped and fallen in the bathtub. According to Horowitz, Jeanette Smith suffers from rheumatoid arthritis that did not allow her to get up on her own.

Smith asks unspecified compensatory damages.

Smith dialed 911 but became frustrated with waiting on the phone for so long and instead went to a neighbor's home and received assistance from the neighbor in getting Jeanette out of the bathtub.

Officers John Bergstrom and Joe Casey arrived on the scene initially, at which point Smith told them to leave the premises. Later, four other officers showed up.

Recounting the event, Robert said in his petition, "They pulled up and got out of the car and asked the address and told the neighbor to walk across the street and not turn around. They told me I was under arrest, to put my hands up. I put my hands up and thought this isn't going to happen because I haven't done anything wrong. I put my hands down and started walking towards the house to take care of my wife, and one of them ... said 'Taser him. Taser him. Taser him.' I hit the ground like a ton of bricks."

Smith alleged that he was shot with a Taser device five times by Casey and Bergstrom.

Horowitz said that the exposure to the electrical current from the Taser gun that Smith was exposed to for a "minimum of 20 seconds" directly resulted in Smith having severe arrhythmia in his heart and nearly dying.

Recounting the incident, Smith said, "When this happened that night, it was like a nightmare. I was flopping all over the ground like a chicken with my head off. It was like a nightmare and I'm still living that nightmare today."

He was taken to the hospital and revived successfully.

The Sheriff's Office maintains that the officers believed they were responding to a domestic violence call.

At the press conference, Horowitz said in response, "There are some very easy ways to determine why that's not true. They never spoke to Mrs. Smith; they never asked her any questions ... Robert was never charged with domestic violence. This is simply a cover-up by the sheriff's department to justify their actions."

Horowitz said the confusion that the dispatcher allegedly heard in the background during Smith's call had been misinterpreted as domestic violence and that, in fact, it was a result of Smith being angry about what he felt was the long time it took for the Sheriffs Office to respond to his call.

Smith said, "There was no domestic violence, especially after being married 45 years."

The complaint filed by Horowitz on Smith's behalf alleges that excessive force was used against Smith and that his 14^th Amendment rights were violated when he was illegally seized by the NCSO.

When asked about the fact that the officers had been cleared of the incident by the internal affairs investigation that took place after the incident, Horowitz responded that, "The investigation may have been completely legitimate, but I can tell you this: For anybody to determine, based on the facts of this case, that the force by the officers was legitimate would be perfectly invalid. That's just a typical 'code of silence' approach."

The complaint also alleges that the officers falsified reports and worked with each other to cover up the incident, and that Bergstrom and Casey "acted in collusion and conspiracy against (Smith) in retaliation for his prior criticisms" regarding the officials from the Nye County Sheriff's Office and Pahrump.

When asked about the nature of his previous complaints against the Sheriff's Office, Smith said, "That day and the day before, I had been harassed by the sheriff's department. Three of my collector cars had been stolen previously in the last three or four years. I lost thirty or forty thousand dollars of equipment. The sheriff's department does nothing about that, and I was very frustrated that night with everything I'd been doing."

Part of the complaint is also a Monell claim, which Horowitz at the press conference said "seeks to show that the department in and of itself continued to acquiesce this sort of conduct (and) they're allowing this sort of thing to occur."

When asked what result he would like to see come from the lawsuit, Smith said, "I want to see that this doesn't happen to anyone clear across the United States from one coast to the other. There's been approximately 200 people that have been killed with Tasers, not including the ones who've been injured. They should be eliminated."

Jeannette Smith filed for election to the office of sheriff during this year's campaign season but was soundly defeated in the August primary.