Bystanders Hurt in Police Pursuits Can’t Sue, High Court Says

Innocent motorists and bystanders who are injured or killed because of reckless high-speed police chases cannot sue the police for their damages, under a ruling that the U.S. Supreme Court let stand on Monday.

The justices turned away appeals from four Southern California accident victims who were badly injured when they were struck by cars fleeing the police.

They claimed the police were reckless and negligent for pursuing cars at high speed through the Los Angeles area, and therefore should be held at least partly responsible for their injuries. The court was told that roughly 300 Americans die each year as a result of high-speed police pursuits, about as many as die in police shootings.

But the California Legislature, and now the federal courts, have closed the door to claims for accident victims.

Gabriel Torres of Pico Rivera, a road repair worker, was returning home in the early morning along the Hollywood Freeway when he was struck by a car traveling 130 mph. The vehicle was being chased by California Highway Patrol officers, but the driver escaped.

Torres was thrown from his car and suffered multiple injuries. He was blinded in one eye and has had numerous operations to reconstruct his nose and cheekbones.

In the second accident, Noni Onossian, a former fashion model, was struck by a car fleeing police at 70 mph on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. She and her husband and another relative were all badly injured.

Under California law, the police are shielded from lawsuits growing out of police chases or the operation of emergency vehicles.

Claims for Torres and the Onossians were filed in federal court, but they were doomed by a high court ruling in June 1998.

The parents of a Sacramento teenager had sued the police after their son was killed when he fled on a motorcycle.

Lawyers for the police departments argued that officers need the freedom to pursue fleeing suspects. If they could be held liable for damages, they would be handicapped in doing their duties, they said.

In a broad ruling, the high court agreed. The police cannot be sued for such accidents so long as they had “no intent to harm the suspects” who were fleeing, the court said.

After that ruling, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the lawsuits brought by Torres and the Onossians.

Their lawyers, Marion and Stephen Yagman, appealed to the high court in August, arguing that “innocent bystanders” deserve greater consideration than fleeing suspects.

“Wholly innocent citizens should not be left with no remedy at all,” they said. “California police pursuits have left a deplorable wake of devastation of innocent bystanders,” yet citizens have nowhere to turn in the federal courts, the lawyers said.

Nonetheless, without comment or any dissents, the high court Monday turned down the appeals (Torres vs. Bonilla, 99-452).

Yagman, a longtime outspoken critic of the police, called the decisions outrageous.

“All I can say is that one day, one of the justices, or someone near to them, may step off a curb and get nailed by someone being pursed by the police. Maybe they will then change the perspective on unregulated police chases,” he said. “If this were put to a referendum, I think 95% of the people would not want innocent persons to go uncompensated.”