Officers held liable for warrantless entry to arrest defendant for allegedly being DWI when there was an alleged accident with no property damage. Their “audacious” excuse for the entry of expecting plaintiff to be diabetic and going into a coma is rejected. Hopkins v. Bonvicino, 573 F.3d 752 (9th Cir. 2009):
On August 22, 2003, two San Carlos Police Officers broke into Bruce Hopkins’ home. They did not have a warrant, nor did they have probable cause. All that they had was a statement from a third-party that Hopkins had been involved in an extremely minor traffic incident, an incident so minor that it did not cause as much as a scratch on either of the vehicles involved, and that he appeared to have been drinking. Based on this information, the officers broke into Hopkins’ home with their flashlights shining and their guns drawn. When they found Hopkins, they handcuffed him, removed him from his house, and placed him under arrest.
The officers’ explanation for their warrantless entry is both simple and audacious: They claim that, after hearing that Hopkins had the smell of alcohol on his breath, they feared he was on the brink of a diabetic coma and broke into his house in order to offer medical assistance. According to one officer’s deposition testimony, they entered with their guns drawn because individuals suffering from diabetic emergencies “may sometimes be confused” and can be “combative.” Apparently, in the officer’s view, someone suffering from such a medical emergency may need to be deterred by deadly force. Hopkins, however, was neither confused nor combative because he was not suffering from a diabetic emergency — he was lying in his bedroom watching television, which is where the officers found him. Yet, after the officers discovered that he was perfectly healthy and non-comatose, they did not say “we’re glad to see that you are safe, sir; we’ll be on our way now.” They did not say, “Sorry for the disturbance and for damaging your property.” No, instead they handcuffed Hopkins at gunpoint, removed him from his home, placed him under arrest, and brought him to the San Mateo County jail for the final chapter in the case of the nonexistent diabetes.
Hopkins sued the two officers who broke into his house, their colleague who waited outside, and the City of San Carlos under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He asserts three causes of action: unlawful warrantless entry of a home, unlawful arrest without probable cause, and excessive use of force. The defendants jointly moved for summary judgment on all counts–the officers asserting a qualified immunity defense and the City arguing that it should not be held liable under Monell v. N.Y. City Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S. Ct. 2018, 56 L. Ed. 2d 611 (1978). The district court denied the motion, and the defendant-officers now appeal. 1 Because “physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed,” Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 585, 100 S. Ct. 1371, 63 L. Ed. 2d 639 (1980) (quoting United States v. U.S. Dist. Court, 407 U.S. 297, 313, 92 S. Ct. 2125, 32 L. Ed. 2d 752 (1972)), and because the officers’ conduct here unequivocally violated Hopkins’ clearly established constitutional rights, we affirm the denial of summary judgment with respect to Officers Bonvicino and Buelow, although we hold that their colleague, Officer Nguyen, is entitled to qualified immunity.
. . .
The officers’ first argument is that because they were responding to a reported automobile accident they were authorized to enter Hopkins’ home to see if he was injured as a result of that incident. However, taking the alleged facts in the light most favorable to Hopkins, the police officers were aware that the purported accident did not cause so much as a scratch to either of the cars involved, as is confirmed by the photographs of the vehicles taken that evening by Officer Nguyen. Furthermore, after speaking with Talib — the woman who called the police and spoke with them before they entered Hopkins’ home, who was involved in the so-called “accident,” and who observed Hopkins exit his car both at the scene of the incident and back at his home — the officers, in their own words, learned “nothing” regarding the nature of the accident that “caused [them] to be concerned for Mr. Hopkins’ medical condition.” In short, there was absolutely no indication that the minor bump between the two cars was at all serious or that it had caused any type of medical emergency. Accordingly, the mere fact that the officers were responding to a minor “hit-and-run” cannot justify their warrantless entry into Hopkins’ home.
Perhaps aware of the tenuous nature of this first argument, the officers put greater weight on their second purported medical emergency: the argument that they had reason to believe that Hopkins was suffering from or on the brink of a diabetic coma. This claim, however, is equally baseless, and, if permitted to serve as the basis for the warrantless home intrusion, would allow police officers to ignore the Fourth Amendment almost at will. No one disputes that a diabetic coma is a medical emergency, which it clearly is. Rather, the question before us is whether Officers Bonvicino and Buelow had an “objectively reasonable basis” to suspect that Hopkins was in fact suffering from a diabetic coma. Snipe, 515 F.3d at 951. Taking the facts in the light most favorable to Hopkins, the only information the officers possessed that would support such a conclusion is as follows: (1) Talib said she smelled alcohol on Hopkins’ breath; (2) Talib described Hopkins as appearing slightly intoxicated; and (3) Hopkins did not respond when the officers knocked on his door. The officers argue that, because an individual suffering from the initial phases of a diabetic coma can, to an untrained observer, appear intoxicated and can have a “sickly sweet” or “fruity” odor on his breath that a layperson might confuse with the smell of alcohol, their fear of a diabetic emergency was reasonable. This contention is unsupportable: the mere suggestion that someone has a smell resembling alcohol on his breath and appears slightly intoxicated does not create “reasonable grounds” to suspect a diabetic emergency sufficient to justify warrantless entry into a home. If it did, then, as the officers acknowledged at oral argument, any time the police receive information from a layperson that someone inside a home has the appearance of a person who has consumed alcohol the police will be authorized to enter that home without a warrant. This result would expand the “narrow[,] … rigorously guarded exception [] to th[e] warrant requirement” beyond all recognition, and simply cannot be the law. Stafford, 416 F.3d at 1073
