A federal appeals panel has overturned a summary judgment ruling by determining the California Highway Patrol can’t use qualified immunity to shield itself from a lawsuit over denial of stroke care to a man who was taken into custody under suspicion of intoxication.
The underlying incident is a June 2018 single-vehicle freeway onramp collision in Costa Mesa. According to court records, Officer Samantha Diaz-Durazo responded to the call and found a black Audi had hit a concrete wall nearly head on. Standing outside the car was Steven D’Braunstein. After a field examination, Diaz-Durazo took D’Braunstein to the Orange County jail, but a nurse denied him admission and sent him two Orange County Global Medical Center, where he received a stroke diagnosis.
D’Braunstein’s family sued, alleging a delay in receiving medical care contributed to a lengthy hospitalization and his current placement in a long-term residential care facility. U.S. District Judge James Selna granted summary judgment to the officer and California Highway Patrol, determining D’Braunstein “was not injured while being apprehended, but rather, his injury was sustained prior to his arrest in an event unrelated to his arrest,” and that although there was a deprivation of constitutional rights, it wasn’t “obvious” given D’Braunstein’s symptoms.
The family challenged that ruling before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judge Daniel Bress wrote the majority opinion, filed March 12; Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr. concurred. Judge Kenneth Lee partially dissented.
“The Constitution has been interpreted to require state actors to provide adequate medical care in certain circumstances when the government is confining a person or otherwise restricting his liberty,” Bress wrote, adding the protection for pretrial detainees comes via the 14th Amendment while those detained during the course of an arrest can invoke Fourth Amendment rights related to excessive force. He further wrote the legal standard isn’t what in hindsight was the most effective medical care, but “objectively reasonable” attention.
Bress said the officer “encountered D’Braunstein soon after he was involved in a major collision that destroyed his car and caused the airbag to deploy. D’Braunstein was disoriented, sweating profusely, had poor balance, his pupils were constricted and his speech was slurred and extremely slow. He had difficulty answering standard questions and could not perform the field sobriety tests as directed.”
The panel said a jury could reasonably conclude the driver had a serious medical need that carried substantial risk for serious harm and that other officers might’ve sought medical attention rather than continuing with a standard booking. Her “subjective belief that D’Braunstein was on drugs does not change matters,” Bress wrote, noting she “knew there was no physical evidence of drug or alcohol use” and “the fact that D’Braunstein had just emerged from a violent car crash and was exhibiting physical and cognitive abnormalities. The reason for the crash did not change the need for emergency medical evaluation.”
Like Judge Selna, the panel rejected the government’s argument against a factual dispute over whether the officer’s actions contributed to D’Braunstein’s more serious injuries related to the stroke. The state argued the stroke symptoms manifested the night before the car crash, but the panel agreed “the nature of D’Braunstein’s symptoms the night before is genuinely disputed, as is how D’Braunstein’s condition might have improved had he been taken to a hospital sooner.”
The panel further said the state was wrong to argue objectively reasonable medical care is required only as a result of an officer’s conduct during an arrest. Not only did Diaz-Durazo apparently not employ that reasoning during her response, precedent establishes “this duty exists even if the detainee’s injury arose from some other cause. This is not an open legal question.”
The panel said the government further misplaced its argument that no case law would’ve put the officer on notice of her duty to summon prompt medical care, saying it is “not a question of decisional law, but one of factual perception and on-the-ground judgment.” While qualified immunity protection is available based on errors stemming from legal or factual mistakes, it remains proper for a jury to determine whether such a mistake was reasonable.
“We have already explained that a jury could find her perception of the facts not only wrong, but objectively unreasonable,” Bress wrote, adding that the officer’s “assertion under the second prong of the qualified immunity inquiry thus boils down to the claim that there is no past case with facts close enough to this one. The argument does not work here.”
In his partial dissent, Judge Lee said “there were no visible signs requiring emergency medical help” and noted the law would “ask too much from law enforcement officers if we demand that they make difficult medical decisions at crime scenes or accidents.”
Although he agreed a jury could agree there was a constitutional violation, Lee further said it wasn’t clear that Diaz-Durazo obviously committed such a violation to the degree that qualified immunity is inapplicable.
The majority countered by saying the issue is not whether an officer confused stroke symptoms for signs of intoxication but whether or not prompt medical condition was required regardless of cause. Diaz-Durazo herself told D’Braunstein he was suffering from a “serious condition,” the majority noted, yet she only brought him to a hospital several hours later after a jail nurse ordered his transport.
The majority reversed Judge Lee’s ruling and remanded the complaint for further proceedings.
Representing the D'Braunstein family is Esner Chang Boyer & Murphy, of Pasadena; and the Carrillo Law Firm, also of Pasadena. The firm did not respond to a request for comment.
The California Attorney General’s Office represented the government defendants. The office did not respond to a request for comment.