{"id":9308,"date":"2013-09-27T08:22:09","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T06:27:09","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-21T06:27:09","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=9308","title":{"rendered":"Cal: Fourth Amendment reasonableness is different than negligence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On a certification of a question of California law by the Ninth Circuit (Hayes v. County of San Diego, 658 F.3d 867 (9th Cir. 2011)), in police shooting case also implicating state negligence law, Fourth Amendment reasonableness is not the same as state negligence law. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.courts.ca.gov\/opinions\/documents\/S193997.PDF\">Hayes v. County of San Diego<\/a>, 57 Cal. 4th 622, 160 Cal. Rptr. 3d 684, 305 P.3d 252 (2013):<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Fourth Amendment law protects against an \u201cunreasonable \u2026 seizure[]\u201d (U.S. Const., 4th Amend.) and thus tends to focus more narrowly than state tort law on the moment when deadly force is used, placing less emphasis on preshooting conduct (see Billington v. Smith (9th Cir. 2002) 292 F.3d 1177, 1190). Munoz, supra, 120 Cal.App.4th 1077, did not cite Billington v. Smith, but if the California Court of Appeal in Munoz was influenced by Fourth Amendment law in reaching its conclusion that Corporal Woodward owed no preshooting duty of care, it did not adequately consider the differences between federal constitutional liability and state tort liability. \u201cThe Fourth Amendment&#8217;s \u2018reasonableness\u2019 standard is not the same as the standard of \u2018reasonable care\u2019 under tort law, and negligent acts do not incur constitutional liability.\u201d (Billington v. Smith, at p. 1190.) Moreover, Munoz&#8217;s extension of Adams, supra, 68 Cal.App.4th 243, directly conflicted with our long-standing conclusion that peace officers have a duty to act reasonably when using deadly force, a duty that extends to the totality of  circumstances surrounding the shooting, including the officers&#8217; preshooting conduct. (See pp. ___\u2013___, ante.)<\/p>\n<p>. . .<\/p>\n<p>Our response to the Ninth Circuit&#8217;s question on an issue of state law, as restated by this court, is this: Law enforcement personnel&#8217;s tactical conduct and decisions preceding the use of deadly force are relevant considerations under California law in determining whether the use of deadly force gives rise to negligence liability. Such liability can arise, for example, if the tactical conduct and decisions show, as part of the totality of circumstances, that the use of deadly force was unreasonable. Whether defendants here acted reasonably is not for us to decide. Our task is limited to answering the state law question of duty that the Ninth Circuit posed to us, a purely legal question; the factual question of any breach of that duty is for the federal courts to resolve in later proceedings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>b2evALnk.b2WPAutP <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=9308\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}