 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
District of Columbia v. Chinn12/31/2003
y is whether the officer's conduct violated the standard of care of a reasonably prudent police officer." Id.
Both inquiries, however, are identical when a battery, lawful in its inception, escalates into alleged excessive force. While it may be, as the trial court here noted, that the officers may have mistakenly believed that they needed to exert the amount of force that they did, that does not affect the intentionality of the initial action or the objective excessiveness of the force. An unwanted touching may in its inception be intentional, a battery, or accidental, possibly negligent. But once it is found to be intentional, a battery tortfeasor is liable for the full range of consequences, intended or not, including harm and transferred liability. DOBBS, supra, ยงยง 28, 40. Therefore, where the excessive force is the product of a battery, an unwanted touching inherent in any arrest, which escalates in an unbroken manner into excessive force, the cause of action is a battery alone, with the privilege having ended at the point where excessive force began. To instruct in such circumstances on a separate and distinct tort of negligence is not only doctrinally unsound but a potential source of jury confusion. It also raises the risk that even where no excessive force is used, the jury will conclude that some undefined negligence was present for which relief of some sort is justified. A battery was committed and the officer is liable unless and only to the extent that the officer is clothed by the privilege.
As already mentioned, however, in certain circumstances the events surrounding the application of excessive force may lend themselves to a theory of negligence as well. What is required to justify such an instruction is at least one distinct element, involving an independent breach of a standard of care beyond that of not using excessive force in making an arrest, which may properly be analyzed and considered by the jury on its own terms apart from the intentional tort of battery and the defense of privilege.
B.
The District suggests that we have two distinct lines of cases dealing with excessive force claims that, at best, "uneasily co-exist": one line that is said to hold that courts may not permit both negligence and intentional tort claims where the sum and substance of the claims is that the defendant committed an intentional tort; and another line that is said to hold that an intentional tort claim may be brought along with a negligence claim even where there is no dispute that a defendant deliberately acted. We disagree with this characterization of our case law and believe that our cases may be read to incorporate the uniform principle set forth above that both negligence and battery claims, in order to go to the jury, must be separate and distinct from each other, even though related, and each of the two counts must be supported by the necessary evidence. See District of Columbia v. Tinker, 691 A.2d 57, 63 (D.C. 1997) (discussing Etheredge v. District of Columbia, 635 A.2d 908 (D.C. 1993)).
In the category of cases that supposedly prohibit sending both assault and battery and negligence claims to the jury, the District cites and principally relies on Maddox v. Bano, 422 A.2d 763 (D.C. 1980), and Sabir v. District of Columbia, 755 A.2d 449 (D.C. 2000). In Maddox, we established that a trial court is not bound by a plaintiff's characterization of an action and the court must look to whether both intentional and negligence claims are specifically pled. The complaint must specify a negligent act and characterize a breach of duty which might have given rise to liability. We noted that use of the terms "carelessly and negligently," without more, are con
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 District of Columbia Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|