A Killeen man whose vehicle was hit by a police cruiser en route to a 911 call can't sue the officer unless the man can prove he violated emergency response laws, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday.
It's the latest ruling to highlight the high bar on claims against police officers after the court's decision in the case of an Austin driver set a higher standard in proving an officer’s alleged recklessness in police responses.
Aamir Terry sued the city of Killeen after Officer Jonathan Player hit Terry’s car in 2017 on the way to a reported stabbing. Terry alleged Player wasn’t complying with state laws on driving emergency vehicles and was driving recklessly.
Lower courts rejected the city’s claims that the case should be dismissed on the grounds of governmental immunity. But drawing from their decision in an Austin police chase crash case late last year, the high court justices ruled it would take more for Terry to claim the officer was reckless and the city shouldn’t be immune from suit.
“The Texas Supreme Court, I think, in this ruling is just inserting an additional level of immunity for officers who injure a plaintiff when responding to an emergency call,” said Tammy Holt, an attorney for the plaintiff.
Attorneys for the city of Killeen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Both sides agree Player activated his lights and sirens and sounded his horn as he approached the intersection of West Trimmier Road and East Stan Schlueter Loop. Player testified he slowed to check for oncoming traffic before he drove through the red light.
Player said he attempted to stop, but hit the driver’s side of Terry’s car, which had the green light. Terry alleged Player was still driving above the speed limit as he went through the intersection and didn’t hit his brakes before the crash.
Terry also accused Player of recklessly blowing through the red light despite knowing the risks, but the city claimed the fact that Player activated his lights and sirens, used his horn and slowed at the intersection showed he was acting with care.
The Texas Supreme Court considered similar facts last year in a pair of lawsuits against the cities of Austin and Houston over officers crashing into uninvolved bystanders during two separate chases. In the Austin case, the court ruled an officer was not acting recklessly despite crashing into driver Noel Powell, and the city was protected by governmental immunity, a legal protection from suit or civil liability.
The rules for suing a governmental entity for a car crash — like a city — are different than suing any other driver, said Ryan Henry, an attorney uninvolved in this case whose work includes personal injury defense. Allowing for immunity avoids lawsuits draining a city's funding, he said.
On top of that, emergency vehicles are entitled to disregard some regular rules of the road in order to get to the scene quickly. That means there's a higher standard to prove wrongdoing in cases where emergency vehicles get in crashes.
"The normal burden for like a car accident is general negligence theory," Henry said. "A person has to just not act reasonable, prudent like a normal person would, is the standard. Instead, they have to prove recklessness, which means the individual knew a high degree of danger existed, and they intentionally disregarded it or knowingly disregarded it, which is harder to prove."
In Friday’s opinion, justices said Powell’s case showed an officer’s potential recklessness isn’t always the standard courts should use to waive governmental immunity. Rather, the law requires a court to first consider whether the officer violated any laws applicable to their emergency action — in this case, responding to a 911 call.
If there is an applicable law, the officer’s adherence to that — or not — should be the basis of a court’s decision. If there’s no applicable law, only then can a court decide whether the officer’s recklessness is in dispute.
Additionally, the “9-1-1 Emergency Service” section of the Texas Tort Claims Act states governments may be held liable for an employee’s damaging action while responding to a 911 call only if that action “violates a statute or ordinance applicable to the action.”
Thus, the high court ordered the Third Court of Appeals to rehear the case — this time, instead of weighing Player’s alleged recklessness, it must specifically consider the 911 emergency service law, which doesn’t take into account an officer’s potential recklessness.
The court's ruling clarifies the standard that already exists in the law, Henry said.
"What the Supreme Court is saying is when you're dealing with emergency services — which is going to be police, fire, EMS — recklessness is no longer something you're looking into," he said. "You use their rules that they apply to them, and that's it."
Holt, however, said the high court is now giving the Third Court of Appeals the chance to determine how the 911 emergency statute applies and what affect it will have on Terry's case. The lower court could unilaterally issue an opinion based on the Texas Supreme Court's ruling or ask for both sides to make their cases again, Holt said.
"What we hope is that the court would give us a chance to explain how the officer in this case failed to comply also with that 911 statute, and therefore the case should proceed," Holt said.
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