Opinion ID: 785861
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Qualified Immunity-EMTs

Text: 79 We turn now to the question of whether Garcia and Rodriguez are entitled to qualified immunity. An appellate court reviewing the denial of a defendant's claim of qualified immunity must ask itself whether the legal norms allegedly violated by the defendant were clearly established at the time of the challenged actions. Mitchell, 472 U.S. at 528, 105 S.Ct. 2806. Because the incidents in question occurred more than two years after we issued our decision in Kneipp, supra, it follows that the right to be free from a state-created danger was clearly established by this Court by November of 1998, when Garcia and Rodriguez responded to the Rivas family's 911 call for medical assistance. Our inquiry does not, however, end there. 80 It is not enough that the constitutional right was clearly established in a general sense at the time the incident occurred. Rather, [t]he contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). The relevant, dispositive inquiry in determining whether a right is clearly established is whether it would be clear to a reasonable [official] that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001). 81 In Kneipp, which we discussed earlier, public officials abandoned a victim with whom they had direct contact. In reaching our decision in Kneipp, we relied on, among others, the following cases: Reed v. Gardner, 986 F.2d 1122, 1127 (7th Cir.1993) (police officer who removed a sober driver and left behind a passenger whom he knew to be drunk with the keys to the car was subject to liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983) and White v. Rochford, 592 F.2d 381, 385 (7th Cir.1979) (police officers who arrested uncle for drag racing and left minor children alone in abandoned car on the side of highway deprived children of their due process rights). Both of those cases involved public officials abandoning citizens in dangerous situations. 82 We discern from these cases that, as of November 1998, our case law had established the general proposition that state actors may not abandon a private citizen in a dangerous situation, provided that the state actors are aware of the risk of serious harm and are partly responsible for creating the opportunity for that harm to happen. As the Supreme Court explained in Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 122 S.Ct. 2508, 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002), in some cases a general constitutional rule already identified in the decisional law may apply with obvious clarity to the specific conduct in question, even though `the very action in question has [not] previously been held unlawful.' Id. at 741, 122 S.Ct. 2508 (quoting U.S. v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 263, 117 S.Ct. 1219, 137 L.Ed.2d 432 (1997) (citation omitted)). 83 In sum, we find that the preexisting law of state-created danger jurisprudence was clearly established. As such, it was sufficient to put Garcia and Rodriguez on notice that their conduct, if deemed unlawful, would not shield them with immunity. 12