Tag Archives: qualified immunity
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Supreme Court Reinstates Qualified Immunity Claims By Police Officers
In two unanimous per curiam opinions today, the U.S. Supreme Court indicated that qualified immunity for police officers was alive and well despite recent attacks on its propriety. In Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna, the Court reversed a ruling by the Ninth Circuit that denied qualified immunity to an officer responding to a violent domestic dispute who put his knee on an ... Read More
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Court Requests Additional Examination Of Evidence In Excessive Force Case
The case of Lombardo v. City of St. Louis involved a detainee who died after police officers sought to restrain him after an apparent suicide attempt. After the detainee resisted, he was handcuffed and put in leg irons, and then placed prone on the floor, face down, with four officers applying pressure to hold him down. After 15 minutes of ... Read More
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SCOTUS Opinion: Dismissal of Claims Under Federal Tort Claims Act Bars Bivens Claims
In Brownback v. King, a student at the University of Michigan was mistaken for a fugitive and tackled and punched by two federal officers. The student sued, alleging tort claims against the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, and separately sued the individual officers under Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). The district ... Read More
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SCOTUS Opinion: Court Begins Scaling Back Qualified Immunity
In Taylor v. Riojas, an inmate sued the correctional officers who confined him in a pair of “shockingly unsanitary cells,” one of which the inmate was forced to sleep in without a bunk or clothing in frigid conditions. The Fifth Circuit had held that the conditions violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, but since the law ... Read More
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Court Awards Qualified Immunity To Officer Who Shot Woman Claiming Excessive Force
In Kisela v. Hughes, officers reporting to a call of a woman acting erratically with a large knife discovered Ms. Hughes emerging from her house with a knife in her hand, heading toward another woman, Ms. Chadwick, who it turned out was Hughes’ roommate. Hughes stopped six feet from Chadwick, and the officers drew their firearms and told Hughes ... Read More
TAGGED: scotus, qualified immunity, Excessive Force, Kisela v. Hughes
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Court Finds Probable Cause To Arrest Partygoers For Unlawful Entry
When police officers busted a raucous party being held in a vacant house, some of the partygoers said that “Peaches” owned the house and allowed the party. On the phone, though, Peaches admitted she had no such authority, and the true owner told police he had never given anyone permission to be there. The officers arrested the partygoers for violating ... Read More