Opinion ID: 2973835
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Tanners’ claims as to Richardson and Smith

Text: According to the Tanners, Sheriff Richardson and ERT Incident Commander Smith violated an ongoing duty to protect the family when they set up a perimeter around the house, which allegedly restrained Kirk’s freedom to act on his own behalf and cut off a potentially lifesaving rescue, either by emergency medical personnel or anyone else. The Tanners attempt to draw an analogy between setting up a perimeter around their house and cases in which the government has restrained an individual through “incarceration, institutionalization, or other similar restraint of personal liberty.” We find no merit in this argument. Setting up a perimeter around the Tanner house did not restrain Kirk’s liberty or prevent him from acting on his own behalf. See DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 200 (“[T]he affirmative duty to protect arises not from the State’s knowledge of the individual’s predicament or from its expressions of intent to help him, but from the limitation which it has imposed on his freedom to act on his own behalf.”). The actions of Kirk’s wife and three children adequately demonstrate the lack of restraint—they all fled the home on foot after the police had effectively set up a perimeter. In addition to arguing that Richardson and Smith prevented Kirk from acting on his own behalf, the Tanners contend that the officers’ actions prevented emergency medical personnel from rescuing Kirk. This claim was properly rejected by the district court because there is no constitutional right to state-provided rescue services, so there was no constitutional violation in preventing publically employed medical personnel from entering the home to care for Kirk. DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 196 (“[T]he Due Process Clauses generally confer no affirmative right to governmental aid, even where such aid may be necessary to secure life, liberty, or property interests of which the government itself may not deprive the individual.”). Finally, the Tanners rely on the unpublished opinion of this court in Beck v. Haik, No. 991050, 2000 WL 1597942 (6th Cir. Oct. 17, 2000), for the proposition that preventing a private rescue can establish § 1983 liability. In Beck, two men jumped or fell into the Manistee River in Michigan. Emergency personnel from the county arrived on the scene after receiving a 911 call from a witness. Id. at . One of the men in the river swam to shore, but the officers saw the other man go under and not resurface. Id. Two trained civilian rescue divers heard a report of the incident on their police scanner and drove to the scene. Id. They told the officer in charge that they were prepared to attempt a rescue. Id. But the officer told the divers that the government dive team had been summoned and for them not to enter the water, even though the officer knew that the civilian divers No. 05-1107 Tanner et al. v. County of Lenawee et al. Page 8 were qualified to perform such a rescue dive. Id. Thirty-five minutes later, the government dive team arrived and recovered the body of the man shortly thereafter. Id. at . The deceased man’s estate sued the county and several officials. On appeal, this court held that there is “no constitutional right to state-provided rescue services,” so the county did not violate any constitutional rights by having in place a policy whereby any underwater rescues by the government dive team must be authorized—and therefore possibly delayed—by the Sheriff. Id. at . But the plaintiffs also argued that the county officials irrationally prohibited private rescue efforts as well. Id. This court held that this private-rescue claim “might prove to be meritorious . . . depending on how a jury ultimately assesses the evidence.” Id. The present case is a far cry from the facts in Beck. Here, there was no comparable private rescuer on hand who was prevented from entering the house to aid Kirk. Furthermore, any claim that the rest of the Tanner family or a passerby could have helped Kirk but for the actions of Richardson and Smith fails because the officers would not have been aware of the would-be rescuer’s qualifications. See Hermann v. Cook, 114 Fed. App’x 162, 166 (6th Cir. 2004) (unpublished) (calling Beck “factually distinguishable” because, in that case, “the police knew that the volunteer divers were trained civilian divers,” but in Hermann “the officers knew nothing of [the attempted rescuer’s] purported qualifications,” and therefore concluding that the officers did not violate the victim’s constitutional rights by disallowing a private-rescue attempt by one concert goer where another concert goer, after being arrested, ran and dove into the Ohio river and ultimately drowned). The evidence further demonstrates that even if the perimeter around the Tanner house prevented some hypothetical private rescue attempt, Richardson and Smith were not the officials who were directly responsible. After his arrival on the scene, Sheriff Richardson ceded command to Smith because the ERT had been dispatched and Smith was the Incident Commander at the time. But even Smith was not the final decision-maker that evening. Rather, Smith reported to ERT Commander Creswell. Creswell is the individual who was ultimately responsible for the conduct of the ERT and who decided when to deploy the entry team into the Tanner home. In summary, Richardson and Smith did not violate the Tanners’ constitutional rights by setting up a perimeter. These officers did not restrain Kirk’s ability to act on his own behalf, restrain his liberty, or prevent any private rescue. We therefore conclude that Richardson and Smith are entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c).