Plaintiff Seeks to Curb Lawsuits by Officers

A Long Beach man filed suit in federal court Monday to stop police officers in California from using small claims courts to sue people who accuse them of misconduct.

Under a 1982 law, police officers can win civil damages if the complaints against them are found to be motivated by “spite, hatred or ill will.”

The federal suit stemmed from one such case. In that action, a small claims court judge ordered Joseph Haddad to pay $5,000 in damages to California Highway Patrol Officer Scott Walls after Haddad filed a personnel complaint against the officer over a traffic ticket dispute.

Haddad’s lawyer, E. Thomas Barham Jr. of Los Alamitos, said the Legislature never anticipated that police officers would use the law in small claims courts, where the right to pretrial discovery is restricted and where neither side can be represented by a lawyer.

Barham said his client was deprived of the opportunity to subpoena important CHP personnel records and was treated scornfully by the judge. He said the officer’s lawsuit constituted unlawful retaliation against a citizen who was simply exercising his constitutional right to petition the government for a redress of a grievance.