Police officers can be held liable for injuries inflicted during investigations, the California Supreme Court ruled June 22.
The decision overrules appellate precedent that had granted qualified immunity to police officers.
Dora Leon had sued Riverside County for negligently inflicting emotional distress after sheriff’s deputies exposed her dead husband’s naked body in a public location.
Exposed for hours
The ruling lays out the facts of the case. County sheriff’s deputies had arrived at the scene of her husband’s death, at a mobile home park by the Leons’ house.
José Leon had been fatally shot. The deputies heard additional shots, and dragged José’s body behind a vehicle. The dragging caused José’s pants to slide down to his ankles.
The appellate ruling appears to say that he was fully exposed.
Officers left him unclothed for eight hours while they investigated the shooting.
They ultimately determined that the shooter had killed himself, and did not file any charges.
Dora Leon’s case claimed that the officers failed to exercise reasonable care when they left José’s body exposed in the view of Dora and the public.
Riverside County requested the case be dismissed.
They argued that its employees were immune under Government Code Section 821.6: “A public employee is not liable for injury caused by his instituting or prosecuting any judicial or administrative proceeding within the scope of his employment, even if he acts maliciously and without probable cause.”
Because the officers left José uncovered while they investigated the homicide, they were immune, Riverside Superior Judge Daniel Ottolia ruled.
The Court of Appeal affirmed Ottolia’s ruling in 2021, citing precedent.
“Moreover, in White, our Supreme Court indicated that the public policy of allowing law enforcement officers to perform their official duties free of ‘fear of consequences personal to themselves’ was inherent in the common law rule immunizing public employees from liability for malicious prosecution. This public policy supports construing Section 821.6 as encompassing immunity for injury caused by law enforcement officers and other public employees during the course of their official investigations,” the majority opinion reads.
In a concurring opinion, Associate Justice Michael Raphael said that Section 821.6 was being used too expansively, but that any change in the law’s interpretation would have to come from the Supreme Court.
“Working on a blank slate, I would not constrict our Supreme Court’s opinion to its barest holding, and I would follow the text of Section 821.6. But 36 years of precedent is persuasive when you sit on the court that issued it,” Raphael wrote.
Narrowing the immunity
The Supreme Court reinstated a standing they first made in the 1974 case Sullivan v. County of Los Angeles: that police officers are not, just because they are officers, protected by Section 821.6.
Instead, the section is dependent on how the injury is caused. Specifically, the section granted immunity against malicious prosecution claims.
The Supreme Court in the Leon ruling said it wanted to limit their interpretation further: “Section 821.6 applies to claims of injury arising from a public employee’s initiation or prosecution of an official proceeding,” the ruling said.
The Supreme Court said that Sullivan and their 1997 case Asgari v. City of Los Angeles, which affirmed Sullivan’s principles, were ignored by the Courts of Appeal. The ruling explicitly disapproves 12 prior appellate rulings.
Qualified immunity in California
Until 1963, California courts used a common law doctrine that generally barred tort suits against the government, the Supreme Court’s ruling said. Appellate courts continued making new exceptions to that rule, to the point where there was inequality and illogical rulings, the ruling said.
In 1961, the California Supreme Court stopped the immunity doctrine. The California Legislature revived it temporarily the same year. In 1963, the Legislature created the Government Claims Act, which was passed under a different name.
The Government Claims Act created a statutory scheme that explicitly said what was, and who were, entitled to government immunity. It included Section 821.6.
Although the case dismissal was overturned, Riverside Superior Court still has the power to throw out the case for other reasons.
The county had brought multiple reasons to throw out the case, and the Supreme Court reviewed only the Section 821.6 claim.
Case information
Steven Zwick and James Alquist of the Law Offices of Steven Zwick and Richard Antognini of the Law Office of Richard L. Antognini represented Leon.
Arthur Cunningham, Jeffry Miller and Lann McIntyre of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith represented Riverside County.
Associate Justice Leondra Kruger authored the opinion.
Riverside Case No. RIC1722990
Appellate Case No. E073781
Supreme Court Case No. S269672
Read the ruling here.
