Court Opinion

ID: 9548961
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:11:09.656512+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:40.480478
License: Public Domain

*723BURKE, J.
I dissent. The Legislature has made it quite clear that public entities are wholly immune from liability for any injuries to persons confined in prisons or jails, including injuries to the person, reputation, character or feelings of persons falsely imprisoned by police or prison authorities. The obvious intent of the statutory provisions which I discuss below was to provide to the public entity a broad immunity for the acts and omissions of its agents in their dealings with persons confined in prisons or jails. There is simply no basis whatever for holding, as the majority do, that persons unlawfully confined in prison cannot be considered “prisoners” under the applicable legislation. This unsound analysis could drastically undermine the legislative intent to provide broad immunity in this area, for a public entity could be held liable for all kinds of injuries to persons able to prove that they were injured while unlawfully confined in prison.
The Legislature devoted a separate chapter of the 1963 Tort Claims Act to “Police and Correctional Activities” (Gov. Code, § 844 et seq.). Section 844.6 sets forth the general rule of immunity, providing that “Notwithstanding any other provision of this part [relating to liability of public entities and employees], except as provided in this section and in [other sections not here pertinent], a public entity is not liable for; . . . (2) An injury to a prisoner. . . . (d) Nothing in this section exonerates a public employee from liability for injury proximately caused by his negligent or wrongful act or omission. . . .”
Thus, section 844.6 immunizes public entities from liability for an “injury” to a “prisoner.” Liability of the public employee, is unaffected by the section; in fact, another section provides that although a public employee is not liable for an act or omission, “exercising due care, in the execution or enforcement of any law,” the section further provides that “Nothing in this section exonerates a public employee from liability for false arrest or false imprisonment.” (Italics added.) Therefore, plaintiff herein may indeed have a cause of action for false imprisonment against various public employees. The question before us, however, is whether a cause of action lies against defendant county by reason of plaintiff’s allegedly false imprisonment. As noted above, if plaintiff was a “prisoner” at the time of his false imprisonment, section 844.6 would immunize defendant county from liability for any “injury” he suffered as a result thereof.
The majority evidently concede that false imprisonment constitutes an “injury” within the meaning of section 844.6, since that term is broadly defined in section 810.8 to mean “death, injury to a person, damage to or loss of property, or any other injury that a person may suffer to his *724person, reputation, character, feelings or estate, of such nature that it would be actionable if inflicted by a private person.” (Italics added.) Clearly,, one who is falsely imprisoned suffers damages identical in nature to those described in section 810.8.
It should be equally apparent that plaintiff herein was a “prisoner” under section 844.6. The majority’s contrary holding ignores the plain language of the act. Thus, section 844 provides that “As used in this chapter [which includes § 844.6], ‘prisoner’ includes an inmate of a prison, jail or penal or correctional facility.” (Italics added.) The record discloses that plaintiff was indeed an inmate (as distinguished from a guard, guest or visitor) of Los Angeles County jail during the period of his allegedly false imprisonment. It seems inescapable that defendant county is immune from liability to plaintiff by reason of section 844.6.
The majority seek to escape the inescapable by reasoning that “. . . false imprisonment is not an ‘injury to a prisoner’ but instead is an injury to a non-prisoner which converts him into a prisoner.” (Ante, p. 716.) This peculiar logic appears based upon the unfounded and unprecedented assumption that plaintiff had become a “non-prisoner” once his term had expired. Yet a “prisoner” is an “inmate of a . . . jail” (§ 844), and it is uncontradicted that plaintiff remained an inmate throughout the period in question despite his claim of illegal confinement.
The majority thus would narrowly construe the term “prisoner” to refer to one lawfully• restrained. Yet the courts have refused to construe the term narrowly; “On the contrary, almost every popular dictionary as well as law dictionary and encyclopaedic work, states in words or substance that a prisoner is a person ‘under arrest,’ ‘in custody,’ ‘in jail,’ ‘in prison’; in short, one who is being restrained involuntarily. The test is not whether he has been informed against, indicted, arraigned, tried or convicted.” (Italics added; Datil v. City of Los Angeles, 263 Cal.App.2d 655, 659 [69 Cal.Rptr. 788]; see Sava v. Fuller, 249 Cal.App.2d 281 [57 Cal.Rptr. 312].) Likewise, in the instant case, the test should not be whether the person has been properly or lawfully confined, or whether he has already served his term of confinement. Rather, it is the fact of confinement itself, and not the legality thereof, which renders one a “prisoner” under section 844.6.
Since the provisions of section 844.6 immunize defendant county from the instant suit, there is no need to consider the application of other sections of the Tort Claims Act upon which liability might be based. By its terms section 844.6 immunity overrides “any other provision” in the act, in-*725eluding the sections relied upon by the majority in parts 1 and 2 of their opinion.
I would affirm the judgment.
McComb, J., and Clark, J., concurred.