{"id":18447,"date":"2015-08-15T11:07:12","date_gmt":"2015-08-15T16:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=18447"},"modified":"2015-08-15T11:12:28","modified_gmt":"2015-08-15T16:12:28","slug":"ca9-arrest-of-public-defender-summoned-to-court-had-no-qualified-immunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=18447","title":{"rendered":"CA9: Arrest of public defender summoned to court had no qualified immunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A court security officer\u2019s arrest of plaintiff public defender who was sent to get her to court had no qualified immunity for arresting her just because she sarcastically said \u201c[i]f you want me to come right now, you\u2019ll have to arrest me.\u201d There was no legal authority to arrest, and it lasted eleven minutes. Demuth v. County Of Los Angeles<\/a>, 12-57197 (9th Cir. August 14, 2015):
\n<\/p>\n

Li could not reasonably have believed that he had one of the usual Fourth Amendment justifications for the arrest: He had no warrant; Demuth was not suspected of a crime; he was not in hot pursuit or performing a community care-taking function, etc. Referee Shirley\u2019s order, by its clear terms, did not authorize Li to seize Demuth. As Li testified at trial, Referee Shirley\u2019s command was \u201cgo … get Ms. Demuth; and, if she refused to come to court, then … get Ms. De La Guerra Jones.\u201d The referee contemplated the possibility that Demuth might not come when summoned, and gave clear instructions as to what Li was to do in that case: bring her supervisor, presumably to explain why her subordinate was not coming to court when summoned. No reasonable officer could have understood the referee as ordering that Demuth be forcibly brought into court. An unreasonable mistake of fact does not provide the basis for qualified immunity. See Liberal v. Estrada, 632 F.3d 1064, 1078 (9th Cir. 2011). <\/p>\n

Li also relies on Demuth\u2019s statement that he would have to arrest her to bring her into court immediately. While challenging someone equipped with a badge, handcuffs and a gun to \u201carrest me\u201d was unwise on Demuth\u2019s part, we fail to see what legal difference her statement makes. Demuth certainly could not authorize her own arrest and, in any event, Li could not reasonably have believed that Demuth was volunteering for handcuffs. Demuth was obviously employing \u201ca literary device known as sarcasm.\u201d MCI Telecomms. Corp. v. Am. Tel. & Tel. Co., 512 U.S. 218, 228 (1994). Her statement was a snide way of refusing; no reasonable officer could have thought otherwise. Having no reasonable basis for believing he was authorized to arrest Demuth, Li is not entitled to qualified immunity. <\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

No one in this case has covered himself with glory: not the lawyer whose lackadaisical response to a judicial summons and disrespectful retort to a fellow court officer set off this unfortunate chain of events; not the supervisor who did not urge the lawyer to comply promptly with the deputy\u2019s repeated requests that she come to court or admonish her for her tart response to the deputy; not the deputy who took the bait and abused his power; not the judges of the Los Padrinos Juvenile Court, who, doubtless aware of the incident, failed to mediate a minor dispute among court officers and allowed it to metastasize into a federal case. What seems to be at stake here is little more than wounded pride, as any damages suffered by the plaintiff seem hardly more than nominal. The dispute should have been resolved by an admission that the deputy violated Demuth\u2019s constitutional rights, followed by mutual apologies and a handshake, saving the taxpayers of Los Angeles County the considerable costs of litigating this tiff.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A court security officer\u2019s arrest of plaintiff public defender who was sent to get her to court had no qualified immunity for arresting her just because she sarcastically said \u201c[i]f you want me to come right now, you\u2019ll have to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-45","category-qualified-immunity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18447"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18451,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18447\/revisions\/18451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}