holding no liability under the state-created danger doctrine for the officer's conduct reassuring the plaintiff of her safety and charging the former boyfriend on lesser charges than he'd promised after having responded to a domestic disturbance call and hearing the plaintiff express fear for herself and her children in light of the boyfriend's abusive and violent conduct and death threats that occurred on the same night
How later courts described this case
- holding no liability under the state-created danger doctrine for the officer's conduct reassuring the plaintiff of her safety and charging the former boyfriend on lesser charges than he'd promised after having responded to a domestic disturbance call and hearing the plaintiff express fear for herself and her children in light of the boyfriend's abusive and violent conduct and death threats that occurred on the same night
- stating that state actors do not “‘commit[] an affirmative act’ or ‘create[] a danger’ every time [they] do[] anything that makes injury at the hands of a third party more likely,” and that instead, would-be plaintiffs must come forward with evidence of an act “more akin to a[] [state] actor [himself] directly causing harm to the injured party”
- concluding that an officer’s assurances to the victim and his decision not to charge the assailant were not affirmative acts giving rise to civil liability because, if so, “every representation by the police and every failure to incarcerate would constitute ‘affirmative actions’ giving rise to civil liability”
- recognizing that the state’s affirmative duty to protect arises “when the state restrains persons from acting on their own behalf,” and noting that “[s]ome sort of confinement of the injured party— incarceration, institutionalization, or the like — is needed to trigger the affirmative duty” (emphasis added)
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Fijalkowski v. Wheeler, 361 F. Supp. 3d 577 (2019)
Yet importantly, the Fourth Circuit in Pinder held that the state-created doctrine was inapplicable to the facts in that case.
The opinion
HAMILTON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
This appeal involves a straightforward question of qualified immunity: whether, at the time of Officer Johnson’s conduct, his actions violated “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 , 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738 , 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). In light of the Supreme Court’s decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep’t of Social Servs., 489 U.S. 189 , 109 S.Ct. 998 , 103 L.Ed.2d 249 (1989) and cases which held that a state’s affirmative duty to protect could arise only in a custodial situation, see; e.g., Harpole v. Arkansas Dep’t of Human Servs., 820 F.2d 923 , 927 (8th Cir.1987); Estate of Gilmore v. Buckley, 787 F.2d 714, 722 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 882 , 107 S.Ct. 270 , 93 L.Ed.2d 247 (1986), a reasonable officer would not have known that Johnson’s personal assurances to Pinder and subsequent actions with respect to Pittman would violate Pinder’s due process rights. For this reason, the judgment of the district court should be reversed.
LUTTIG, J., joins this separate opinion concurring in the judgment.