California: Government Immunity Does Not Shield Officials from Decision to Keep Wrong Person Incarcerated
California: Government Immunity Does Not Shield Officials from Decision to Keep Wrong Person Incarcerated
In August 2007, the California Supreme Court held that the governmental immunity provision of Government Code (GC) §845.8(a) did not shield state defendants from liability for their decision to keep the wrong man in jail after they knew or should have known that he was not the parolee for whom they had mistaken him.
In June 2000, state parole agents arrested and jailed Lenin Freud Perez-Torres for violating the terms of his parole, when he was not in fact on parole at all. Twenty days later, a fingerprint check conducted at the request of Perez-Torres’ wife revealed that Perez-Torres was not the parolee the parole agents thought they had arrested. Perez-Torres was not released, however, until five days later.
In a subsequent lawsuit, Perez-Torres alleged causes of action for interference with the exercise of legal rights (Civil Code §52.1), false imprisonment, and negligence. The trial court granted the state defendants’ motion for summary judgment. On appeal, the Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in favor of the state defendants, but on a different ground, viz., that GC §845.8(a), gave them immunity.
The California Supreme Court disagreed. It held that while the state’s decision to revoke the parole of a non-parolee was a basic policy decision falling within the governmental immunity provision of GC §845.8(a), the state defendants’ subsequent conduct in keeping Perez-Torres in jail after they knew or should have known that he was the wrong man constituted an action implementing the basic policy decision which fell outside the statutory immunity; the latter was thus subject to legal redress on the question of negligence. In so holding, the Court affirmed the continued viability of the distinction it had drawn in Johnson v State of California, 69 Cal. 2d 782 (1968), nearly four decades earlier, between what it termed discretionary and ministerial decisions; only the former are shielded by governmental immunity.
Source: Perez-Torres v. State of California, 42 Cal. 4th 136 (Cal. 2007)
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Related legal case
Perez-Torres v. State of California
| Year | 2007 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 42 Cal. 4th 136 (Cal. 2007) |
| Level | State Supreme Court |