In Mendez v. Conley, published July 27, 2018, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, affirmed judgment against the defendant sheriff's deputies under 42 U.S.C. section 1983, and reversed the judgment in the defendants' favor under California negligence law. The deputies were looking for a fugitive. They received a tip that the fugitive rode a bicycle past a residence. The deputies knocked and entered the residence. There was a small house behind the residence. The house showed signs of being inhabited. The deputies entered the house, without knocking. One of the plaintiffs was sleeping on a futon within. His BB gun was by his side. When the officers entered, the plaintiff picked up the BB gun to move it. It momentarily faced the deputies. The deputies fired on that plaintiff, seriously wounding him and the other plaintiff in the house. The district court and 9th Circuit originally ruled that the use of force was reasonable in itself, but was unconstitutional under the "provocation" rule because the deputies' illegal entry provoked the plaintiff to pick up the gun and resulted in the use of force. The Supreme Court reversed this ruling, holding that the "provocation" rule conflated Fourth Amendment violations. It remanded for determination of whether the improper warrantless entry proximately caused the plaintiffs' injuries.
The 9th Circuit ruled that the entry did proximately cause the injury. One of the purposes on the Fourth Amendment's ban on officers entering a residence without a warrant, exigent circumstances, or consent is to avoid violent confrontations between officers and those within a dwelling. The deputies' violation of the Fourth Amendment without entering was therefore a proximate cause of the incident. Although the officers were entitled to qualified immunity for not knocking and announcing their presence, and that might be seen as another cause of the incident, the violation of multiple duties causing an incident does not eliminate proximate cause by the actionable violation. Because the inhabitant's act was foreseeable, it was not a superseding cause. The 9th Circuit also held that under the circumstances, the officers were negligent. Although the deputies' failure to knock and announce was not actionable under section 1983 due to qualified immunity, that did not eliminate exposure to liability under state negligence law.
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