A panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that covers the states of Florida, Georgia and Alabama issued a decision on July 12, 2024, that clarified what a trial court can rely on in deciding a motion to...more
Dozens of college and university campuses experienced protests in April and May of 2024 due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Many were peaceful, but some turned violent — and they engendered a wide variety of law...more
In the plaintiffs’ lawsuits against the City, former police officer Derek Chauvin, and several additional Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officers, the complaints alleged police misconduct, use of excessive force, and...more
Events from recent years related to alleged police misconduct raised major questions surrounding the protections afforded by qualified immunity to police officers in excessive force claims. Two recent Supreme Court decisions...more
Law enforcement critics have launched concerted attacks on the doctrine of qualified immunity in an effort to mischaracterize the doctrine as allowing police officers to escape liability for clearly unconstitutional conduct. ...more
Trust is the cornerstone of safe and effective law enforcement. In New Jersey and around the country, building trust among police and the communities they serve has always been a challenge, but after the murder of George...more
In a 5-3 decision authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Torres v. Madrid that a woman who was shot while fleeing from police officers was “seized,” even though she remained at large. ...more
Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial Dist., No. 19-368; Ford Motor Co. v. Bandemer, No. 19-369: In two separate products liability actions, petitioner Ford Motor Company challenged the Montana and Minnesota State courts’...more
Recent unrest has thrust the doctrine of qualified immunity into the spotlight. Many of those who oppose law enforcement frequently misrepresent the nature, extent, and intent of this limited immunity. Doing so fosters the...more
On June 12, 2020, the Police Officer Standards and Training Council (POST), a division of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, amended its Compliance to Law Enforcement Standards and Practices (CLESP)...more
On February 19, 2020, the New Jersey Appellate Division issued a decision Digital First Media v. Ewing Township permitting a newspaper access under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA) to Use of Force Reports (UFR)...more
A while back I wrote about the collateral order doctrine as discussed by the Fourth Circuit in Williams v. Strickland. Williams involved an alleged excessive force claim against a law enforcement officer and an...more
In September 2018, Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1421, amending sections of California's Penal Code to allow the public to obtain some peace and custodial officer (collectively, peace officer) records with a...more
The US Supreme Court issued an Opinion April 2, 2018 (Kisela v. Hughes) that a Tucson Police officer was justified in shooting a woman who was holding a knife near her roommate after the woman was reported exhibiting...more
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a Tucson police officer who shot a woman four times could not be sued for violating the woman’s Constitutional rights. The case is a significant win for government officials. It’s a...more
The Supreme Court of the United States issued two decisions today: Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro, No. 16-1362: The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) requires that employers pay covered employees overtime compensation,...more
On April 29, 1992, a not-guilty verdict for the four Los Angeles Police Department officers who had been charged with assault and the use of unreasonable and excessive force on Rodney King, sparked the LA Riots. Today, in an...more
The California Supreme Court recently denied considering an appellate court ruling from a case in Eureka that police arrest videos cannot be considered confidential officer personnel records and therefore kept from public...more
South Boston police responded to the local Super 8 Motel in the wee hours of May 3, 2013. They came because they’d received phone calls from Linwood Lambert, Jr. asking somewhat unclearly for help. When they arrived, they...more
Officers are immune from liability in lawsuits alleging use of deadly force against fleeing suspects unless it is “beyond debate” that a shooting was unjustified and clearly unreasonable, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled. The...more
Police Officers are often faced with unimaginable circumstances that most of society runs away from. However, police officers took the oath to protect and serve, and to run towards that danger. Sometimes, running towards...more
The Supreme Court of the United States, in Kingsley v. Hendrickson, waded into the metaphysical discussion of what plaintiffs must prove about corrections officers’ state of mind in a lawsuit alleging the officers used...more
On June 22, 2015, the United States Supreme Court issued an important decision for all North Carolina counties operating county jails in which individuals are held detainees awaiting trial. In Kingsley v. Hendrickson, No....more
The late radio personality Paul Harvey had a famous show called “The Rest of the Story.” Harvey would bait his audience with a cliffhanger story based on sketchy facts, let them reach a conclusion, and then finish it with...more
We are all very familiar with the recent incidents that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City. These two incidents brought to the national spotlight (yet again) the difficult, split-second decision making required...more