Opinion ID: 782741
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Unavoidable Liability

Text: 42 This Court, in Bukowski, recently described the unavoidable liability problem confronting state officers when it is alleged that they should have taken someone into protective custody. In that case, a woman and her parents sued defendant City of Akron and its officials for failing to take the woman, who had a mental disability, into protective custody. The woman had disappeared from her home and had traveled to Akron, Ohio, to meet a man with whom she had talked online. 326 F.3d at 705. That man raped her. Id. Akron police found the woman and brought her to the station, where she told the police and a victim's advocate that the man was her boyfriend and asked to be returned to his home. She did not tell anyone that he had harmed her. Id. at 706. The officials perceived her mental disability but did not believe she was incapacitated, because she had traveled by bus and taxi to Akron and had the ability to read and write well enough to conduct online conversations. Id. After an Akron police legal advisor told the police that they had no legal authority to detain her as a juvenile or as a person with a mental illness, the police told her that she could wait for her parents at the police station or at a shelter. Id. When she asked to be returned to the man, the police complied, returning her to his home, where he raped her. Id. He was convicted of his crimes and imprisoned. Id. at 708. 43 This court found that the police did not violate the victim's substantive due process rights. Id. at 711. We also noted that if the Akron police had decided to detain her at the police station instead of returning her to Hall's residence, they may have faced another lawsuit based on charges of false imprisonment. Id. at 711-12 ( citing Adams v. Metiva, 31 F.3d 375, 383 (6th Cir.1994) ([I]f there is no reason to further detain a person, he cannot lawfully be detained against his will.)). 44 The facts of this case presented a similar Catch-22 for officers Vandermeulen and Rock. If they had decided to take Cartwright into protective custody under § 333.6501 of Michigan Compiled Laws, they, too, may have faced another lawsuit based on charges of false imprisonment, on the theory that Cartwright was not really incapacitated and the officers had no legal authority to detain him under the statute. 1 Plaintiff has not proposed any other grounds on which the officers could have taken Cartwright into custody. Public intoxication is not a civil or criminal offense in Michigan. MICH. COMP. LAWS § 333.6523(1) (2001). 45 Cartwright refused to allow a pat-down search when the officers asked him if he would permit it. The state statute gives officers the right to conduct a pat-down search of a person taken into protective custody. MICH. COMP. LAWS § 333.6501(2) (2001). If, however, the officers had done so, Cartwright also could have claimed that the officers had no legal authority to search him. Plaintiff has not proposed any other grounds upon which the officers could have conducted a pat-down search over Cartwright's objection before allowing him to ride in the back seat of the patrol car with the prisoner. 46 Defendants Vandermeulen and Rock were not aware of facts suggesting that a substantial risk of serious harm existed, given the knowledge they had at the time they decided to let Cartwright go. Also, as a matter of public policy, if this Court were to deny defendants' claim of qualified immunity, it would discourage police officers from trying to aid citizens in need. An officer's decision to stop and pick up a citizen walking along a dark highway should not result in liability, unless an exception to the doctrine of qualified immunity applies. 47 For these reasons, we hold that officers Vandermeulen and Rock should have been granted qualified immunity. Because the City can only be held liable if there is a showing of liability on the part of its officials, the determination that the officers did not violate Cartwright's constitutional rights resolves plaintiff's claim against the City as well. See Scott v. Clay County, 205 F.3d 867, 879 (6th Cir.2000) (noting that the conclusion that no officer-defendant had deprived the plaintiff of any constitutional right a fortiori defeats the claim against the County as well).