Re: Another denial of qualified immunity!

On 2025-03-18 1:30 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Effective policing by California Highway patrol has deteriorated
substantially since the days of Ponch and Jon. Do they even know
how to disco?
 Note that this does not get rid of the need to perform a qualified immunity
analysis for the facts and circumstances of this case, just that the
analysis was improperly applied.
 Doctrine of qualified immunity protects police officers from liability
unless they violated a federal statutory or constitutional right and the
unlawfulness of their conduct was clearly established at the time.
 A reasonable jury could find the officer committed an unreasonable mistake
of fact or judgment. Therefore, this is a violation of clearly established
law that a person being confined by police or whose liberty is otherwise
restricted is entitled to medical treatment and qualified immumity does
not apply.
 The moment she began questioning the driver, he wasn't free to go.
 This is a horrible story. A driver had crashed. It was a one vehicle
crash. When the female CHP patrol officer arrived at the scene, with
her extensive medical training (sarcasm; she hadn't even taken the drug
recognition course), immediately assessed that the incoherent driver
in obvious physical distress was drug impaired and therefore a criminal
drug addict. The driver was arrested at the scene for driving under the
influence 45 minutes after the patrol officer arrived. The delay was
due to the officer administering field sobriety tests. The breathalyzer
test found 0.0 blood alchohol levels. Brought to the Orange County jail,
the duty nurse refuse to allow the prisoner to be admitted into custody
due to high blood pressure and directed that the driver be taken to
hospital.

The Orange County jail has a nurse who routinely tests the blood pressure - and who knows what else - of incoming prisoners? Colour me surprised....

The police officer then transported the driver to hospital more
than two hours after the driver had arrived at the jail. She didn't use
lights and sirens to transport the driver, now a patient recognized as
needing emergency treatment. It was almost 4 hours after the officer had
arrived at the scene of the incident to get the driver to hospital. He
was diagnosed with a stroke.
 It sounds like the driver had a stroke, then lost control and crashed.
 The delay in getting to hospital led to permanent brain damage,
according to the P.I. lawsuit.
 The lawsuit was filed against CHP and the officer herself in state court,
then removed to federal district court. Lawsuit dismissed in summary
judgment for the state on qualified immunity grouds. A three-judge panel
for the Ninth Circuit removed the qualified immunity because the plaintiff
was denied the medical assistance he was entitled to. The case can proceed
to trial.
 Steve Lehto video
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VwPx0g_DOM

I had peripheral involvement in a somewhat similar case.
About 20 years ago, I was on my way to work. It was the simplest possible route to work: I simply drove straight up my street a few miles, hung a right, and parked on the street. Shortly after leaving my house, I found myself behind a car that was driving erratically: he/she would drive at normal speed for a bit, then slow down very substantially, then speed up again. I thought perhaps the driver was looking for a particular address and was having to slow down to read the house numbers; then I wondered if he/she might be drunk.
Anyway, after a couple of minutes of this, I was getting pretty annoyed and I winked my lights at him/her, which is a widely-known signal here that someone should speed it up. This actually worked - too often, the sluggish driver is indifferent to such signals or simply refuses to be rushed - but a little too well. The car sped up quite dramatically to the point where it was going pretty fast as it passed through a school zone. Luckily, no kids were crossing the street at that moment. I soon lost sight of the car but a couple of minutes later, I saw it pulled over at the side of the road and no one was inside. A minute or two later I arrived at work and had my first access to a phone so I called 911 to report this individual for suspected drunk driving. But it turned out that the driver had suffered some kind of medical distress and was already being seen to. I wish I could fill in the details but that's all the 911 operator told me and I never heard any more about it. I have no idea if the driver was successfully treated or died in the hospital.
I know this has nothing to do with your point about qualified immunity but I can well imagine a police officer assuming that someone driving erratically was drunk and simply being mistaken. Of course that doesn't excuse her failure to seek medical attention immediately upon determining the driver wasn't drunk!
I wonder if the driver had such a minor stroke that even he didn't realize what was going on at the time. I remember speaking to my mother on the phone back in 2016 and learning that she'd had a stroke a couple of hours before; her speech was a bit slurred but still quite comprehensible.
--
Rhino