In A.B. v. County of San Diego, published June 26, 2025, the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division 1 reversed summary judgment for the defendant county, sheriff, and sheriff's deputies. Responding to a report that the plaintiffs' decedent was acting erratically, sheriff's deputies struggled with the decedent, using tasers and blows as he resisted restraint. Eventually the deputies handcuffed the decedent's wrists behind his back and secured his ankles together with cords, wrapping one cord around his waist and connecting it from behind his back to both the handcuff and the ankle cord for "maximum restraint." As he was bound, the decedent was lying prone on the pavement while several deputies pressed down with their hands and knees on his back, legs, and arms. A mesh spit sock was placed over the decedent's head. After the sock was placed, a deputy pressed into the back of the decedent's head and neck while he was lying face down. The deputies attached another set of handcuffs to the decedent's rear belt loop and ankle cord and secured another cord around his waist. At some point, the decedent said he couldn't breathe, and called out for help. After several minutes of being prone with restraints and under body weight compression, the decedent stopped moving. Fifty seconds later, the deputies put the decedent into a "recovery position" on his side for six minutes. They observed his breathing slow and become shallow. They administered Naloxone. Paramedics arrived. When they arrived, deputies were still applying downward pressure on the unresponsive decedent. The paramedics attempted life-saving measures, but the decedent expired. The plaintiffs sued the county, sheriff, and deputies in federal court. The district court granted the defendants summary judgment on the federal claims and dismissed the state law claims without prejudice. The Ninth Circuit affirmed. It ruled that the officers' initial uses of force on the decedent were reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, and that the officers' actions in restraining the decedent were subject to qualified immunity because no established law would have put them on notice that the force they used was excessive. The plaintiffs refiled their state law claims in state court. The trial court granted the defendants summary judgment, ruling that their application of restraints was "by the book" and that the decedent was rolled over into the recovery position immediately after he stopped resisting. The court further ruled that the plaintiffs lacked a legal basis for suing the sheriff for negligence in training under California law.
The appellate court disagreed with the trial court's analysis. Under California law, peace officers have a duty to act reasonably when using deadly force. The reasonableness of an officer's conduct is determined in light of the totality of the circumstances. The totality include the Graham v. Connor factors for determining reasonableness of force. (The court observed that based on the recent U.S. Supreme Court case of Barnes v. Felix, Fourth Amendment law has been brought into closer alignment with California law in considering all of the facts and events leading up to the use of force.) The plaintiffs introduced expert evidence, including a police practices expert's declaration that opined that the use of force was excessive and unreasonable. The opinions of other experts, the non-expert evidence, and the law supported the expert's opinion. The opinion was sufficient to raise a triable issue of fact on whether the use was excessive. That the same expert's opinion had been rejected in some other cases did not change that result, especially since the trial court overruled the defendants' objections to the plaintiffs' evidence and the defendants did not challenge that ruling on appeal. The Ninth Circuit's ruling on the federal case did not have any collateral estoppel effect on the issue of whether the restraint was negligent, because the court did not rule on whether the restraint violated the Fourth Amendment and there is no qualified immunity under California law. The trial court also erred in ruling that there was no legal basis for suing the sheriff for negligent training. Government Code section 820(a) provides a statutory ground for a public employee's liability for negligence. The defendants did not submit any evidence that the sheriff was not involved in the deputies' training, and the plaintiffs introduced evidence that the sheriff approved the department's polices and procedures, and that the department created the training outline for arrest and control training, subject to POST approval.
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