Trial Attorney Blog
In a case decided April 30, 2007, entitled Scott v. Harris, the United States Supreme Court held that a suspect fleeing from the police during a high speed police chase case has no Fourth Amendment right to be protected from the use of excessive force by the police against them. As we interpret this case, essentially, what this means is that a suspect assumes the risk of injury by the police during a police chase case.
In the Harris case, a 19 year old was fleeing from the police and the police employed a “pit maneuver” in order to knock the suspect’s car off the road. The pit maneuver is one in which the police hit the corner of the fleeing car with their car in order to force it off the road. In this case, when the suspect’s car left the road, it crashed rendering him a quadriplegic.
Harris filed suit against the police officer alleging that the officer had violated his Fourth Amendment rights against the use of excessive force. The Supreme Court disagreed and held that the police office did not violate the suspect’s Fourth Amendment rights by utilizing the contested pit maneuver.
In ruling against the claimant, the Supreme Court noted that he intentionally placed himself and the public in danger by unlawfully engaging in a reckless high speed flight. The Court obviously concluded that it was not reasonable for Harris to take the action that he took and that the deputy (Timothy Scott) was authorized to terminate the chase with force because of the suspect’s danger to the public. The Court specifically ruled that a police officer’s attempt to terminate a dangerous high speed chase that threatened the lives of the public did not violate the suspect’s Fourth Amendment rights even if the maneuver utilized by the police placed the fleeing suspect at risk of serious injury or death.
What is interesting about this case is what it did not say. This case did not address the rights of the innocent members of the motoring public. Essentially, it simply held that a fleeing suspect cannot sue the police for injury to himself. Fleeing suspects have no Fourth Amendment right to be protected from excessive force when they themselves are exposing the public and the police to serious risk of injury or death through their unwarranted conduct.
This, of course, is entirely different from a situation where an innocent third party motorist gets caught up in a police chase and are themselves injured under circumstances where the police violated, perhaps recklessly, proper police procedure. For example, if a police officer is chasing a suspect for a minor traffic violation and during the course of the high speed police chase an innocent motorist is injured or killed, the Scott v. Harris case does not seem to be implicated in any manner whatsoever. This is because the Fourth Amendment rights that were disputed in the Scott v. Harris case belonged to the suspect and not to the innocent third parties as there was no injury or death to innocent third parties in that case.
Our office continues to take cases where innocent third parties are injured by unwarranted and reckless high speed police chase cases. We do not believe that Scott v. Harris decided by the United States Supreme Court changes the law with respect to the duties of the police as it pertains to the rights of the innocent members of the motoring public.