In Leon v. County of Riverside, published June 22, 2023, the California Supreme Court reversed summary judgment entered for the defendant county. The plaintiff sued county sheriff's deputies for negligent infliction of emotional distress, based on the deputies leaving her husband's remains unclothed for eight hours, in public view, while officers searched for the person who shot the husband. The trial court granted summary judgment based on Government Code section 821.6', which immunizes public employees for injury caused by the employee instituting or prosecuting any judicial or administrative proceeding within the scope of his employment, even if the employee acts maliciously and without probable cause. The trial court followed case authority applying the immunity to police investigations. A divided appellate court affirmed. The Supreme Court granted review.
The Supreme Court held that section 821.6 immunity does not apply to investigations. Section 821.6 provides immunity against liability for claims of injury based on tortious and wrongful prosecution. The immunity is narrow in the sense that it applies only if the conduct that allegedly caused the plaintiff’s injuries was the institution or prosecution of an official proceeding. But the immunity is broad in the sense that it applies to every such tort claim, whether formally labeled as a claim for malicious prosecution or not. Where it applies, it is absolute. The body of case law interpreting the immunity as applying to investigations, because investigations are part of prosecutions of judicial proceedings, are contrary to the plain language of the statute, as well as its historical status as a codification of the common law immunity against malicious prosecution (although the language of the statute extends it beyond traditional malicious prosecution, to negligent prosecutions) and its legislative history. Other provisions in the Government Claims Act address the concerns that exposure to liability will chill investigations, including the public entity defense of claims and payments of judgments against public employees; Government Code section 820.2's immunity for discretionary acts; Government Code section 820.4, immunizing acts taken with due care in the execution or enforcement of any law (though not for false arrest or false imprisonment); and Government Code section 821, immunizing failure to enforce an enactment. The court disapproved lower appellate court decisions extending section 821.6 to claims arising out of investigations.
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