Opinion ID: 213250
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Scott v. Clay Cnty., Tenn., 205 F.3d 867 (6th Cir.2000).

Text: The parties and the district court each cited Scott, in which police gunfire inadvertently struck Patricia Scott, a passenger in a vehicle fleeing from police whose presence was unknown to Pierce, the defendant officer who shot at the vehicle. Police had observed Robert Scott race erratically through a stop sign at high speed, and pursued the Scott car at high speeds for over twenty minutes. Several other police cruisers joined the chase. After the pursued vehicle crashed, Pierce arrived at the car first. A collision between the two occurred, after which Pierce exited his patrol car. The pursued vehicle then accelerated toward Pierce, causing him to jump out of the way, and proceeded directly toward another officer's approaching vehicle, racing to return to the highway: At the moment that the Chevrolet was racing once again onto the public motorway, Deputy Pierce believed that its operator had earlier tried to run down Sheriff Anderson, had attempted to drive over him (Pierce) only moments previously, and posed a grave immediate menace to the lives and limbs of his approaching colleagues as well as innocent highway travelers. The plaintiff has not contested Pierce's avowal that he did not know that a passenger was also inside the vehicle. Confronted with a momentous, split-second, life-or-death decision, defendant Pierce initially reacted by firing five bullets towards the Chevrolet's driver; he then discharged an additional four rounds at that vehicle's tires, causing it to skid to a stop for the second, and final, time. Pierce's hail of bullets had failed to injure the driver, Robert Scott. Unfortunately however, two of his shots had inadvertently struck plaintiff Patricia Scott, whose presence as a passenger was unknown to Pierce. . . . . [U]pon perceiving that Patricia had been wounded, they radioed for a medical evacuation helicopter. . . . [D]octors discovered one bullet lodged inside her skull and a second gunshot imbedded within her right shoulder. Scott, 205 F.3d at 872-73. Patricia Scott filed suit under § 1983, claiming that the defendants used excessive force to seize her, as well as violations under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court denied the defendant officers summary judgment on qualified-immunity grounds, assuming for summary-judgment purposes that Patricia, as a voluntary cohort of Robert's whom, following the shooting, the defendant officers forcibly removed from the inoperative Chevrolet and immediately handcuffed, was an intended target of an official seizure, id. at 876, and ruled that material issues of fact remained regarding the reasonableness of Patricia Scott's seizure, and whether the defendants were objectively unreasonable under the dictates of law which was clearly established on the incident date. Id. at 874. The defendants appealed. This court held that, as a matter of law, Pierce's faulted actions were objectively reasonable, and thus did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Pierce justifiably fired at the fleeing vehicle in order to seize its occupant(s); his actions therefore could not violate the Fourth Amendment rights of any unknown passenger who may have been injured by his actions. Thus, Pierce is entitled to qualified immunity. Id. at 878. In the cause sub judice, the district court presumed, for summary judgment purposes, that Patricia, as a voluntary cohort of Robert's whom, following the shooting, the defendant officers forcibly removed from the inoperative Chevrolet, and immediately handcuffed, was an intended target of an official seizure at all times pertinent, [footnote quoted below] thereby triggering the Fourth Amendment's comparatively relaxed objective unreasonableness standard of proof . . . On appeal, the defendants-appellants have conceded that their summary judgment motion should be assessed under the Fourth Amendment, rather than the Fourteenth Amendment. Scott, 205 F.3d at 876. In a footnote, Scott stated: Accordingly, this review need not resolve whether a factual issue would otherwise exist for trial regarding whether, at the time that Pierce discharged his weapon into the moving Chevrolet's passenger compartment, the defendants intended to seize any passenger in that vehicle other than the driver, which in turn would determine which constitutional proviso would control the plaintiff's charges. See Claybrook v. Birchwell, 199 F.3d 350 (6th Cir.2000) (explaining that the constitutional tort action of a citizen who had been inadvertently wounded while inside a parked automobile during a police shoot-out with an armed felony suspect in the parking lot must be scrutinized under Fourteenth Amendment standards because the record proof was uncontested that the defendant peace constables had been unaware that anyone had been inside that vehicle and did not intend to seize anyone who might be inside that car). Scott, 205 F.3d at 876 n. 15.