In D'Braunstein v. California Highway Patrol, published March 12, 2025, a divided panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment for the defendant officer. The officer arrived at the scene of a single-vehicle auto accident, in which the plaintiff crashed his car into a concrete wall along a freeway onramp. The plaintiff was standing next to the car. The plaintiff displayed symptoms of disorientation and poor balance. He did not smell of alcohol, and passed a breathalyzer test, but could not perform field sobriety tests. The officer decided the plaintiff was under the influence of drugs. She arrested the plaintiff and took him to jail. The jail nurse denied the plaintiff admission to the jail and directed he be taken to a hospital. The officer drove the plaintiff to a hospital, without using her siren or flashing lights. The plaintiff arrived at the hospital over three and a half hours after the officer first encountered him. The plaintiff was diagnosed with a stroke, and suffered incapacitating brain damage. There was conflicting evidence of whether earlier treatment would have mitigated his stroke symptoms. The plaintiff sued the officer, alleging deprivation of medical care. The district court granted summary judgment, finding that the constitutional violation was not clearly established and the officer was entitled to qualified immunity.
The panel majority disagreed. Under both the 4th Amendment, which applies to arrests, and the 14th Amendment, which applies to pretrial detainees, the question is whether the officer's provision or deprivation of medical care was objectively unreasonable. Here, construing the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, a reasonable jury could find that the officer's failure to summon prompt medical treatment for the plaintiff was objectively unreasonable, and that the officer acted with reckless disregard for the plaintiff's safety, given the serious nature of the accident and the plaintiff's symptoms. The officer's subjective belief that the suspect was on drugs does not change matters, considering the plaintiff had emerged from a violent car crash and was exhibiting physical and cognitive abnormalities. The majority further ruled that it is clearly established that officers must seek to provide an injured detainee or arrestee with objectively reasonable medical care in the face of medical necessity, and may not act with objective deliberate indifference to such a medical need. Case law further established this duty is not limited to situations where the officer's conduct causes the injury warranting medical attention. The majority rejected the argument that there was no case law that would have put the officer on notice in the specific circumstances she encountered of the duty to summon prompt medical care. Although an officer may be entitled to qualified immunity for a reasonable mistake, if the law is otherwise clearly established, an officer is not entitled to qualified immunity for a mistake of fact or judgment that is itself unreasonable. Although specificity is required to clearly establish the law, a past case dealing with strokes or auto accident victims is not necessary.
A dissenting judge opined that the officer was entitled to qualified immunity, because the existing law did not place beyond debate that the officer, who was not a medical professional, was violating the plaintiff's constitutional rights by perceiving he was under the influence of drugs rather than injured.