The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday absolved the cities of Austin and Houston of liability in police chase crashes that injured men in stopped vehicles.
Along with a May decision in which the court found Houston not liable for a police officer’s fatal crash with a bicyclist, the trifecta of cases determined governmental immunity shielded city police departments in crashes that killed or injured innocent drivers.
Dallas lawyer David Coale said the cases, taken together, are a “Restatement of the Law: Car Chases” for Texas.
“The Supreme Court’s goal in taking these cases seems to have been clearing up uncertainty that built up over time, both about the procedure and the standard for liability for high-speed chases,” said Coale, a partner at Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann.
He said the Austin case is the court’s longest clarification of procedure about governmental immunity in some time.
“Both cases confirm that the standard is very demanding, although Justice Busby’s concurrence suggests a way to drive around that standard in cases where the need to start a chase is in doubt,” said Coale, referring to a concurring opinion in the Houston case.
Lawyers for the injured or deceased parties in the two cases had argued that officers responding to calls for service acted with “reckless disregard” which would negate the immunity from suit they typically enjoy.
The recent decisions built on the framework for analyzing the emergency exception to the Texas Tort Claims Act that the court outlined in its 2022 ruling in City of San Antonio v. Maspero. In that case, San Antonio police officers engaged in a chase that reached nearly 100 mph pursuing a drug tracking suspect that ended in a crash into the Maspero family car, killing two of their young sons and injuring two other children as well as the parents. The Supreme Court dismissed the family’s claims.
The emergency exception protects government employees from liability for actions taken while responding to an emergency if they comply with laws and ordinances or are not acting with reckless disregard for public safety.
In The City of Austin v. Noel Powell, a unanimous court addressed a high-speed chase through the streets of Austin that injured the driver of a minivan stopped at an intersection when an officer lost control of his vehicle. The opinion by Justice Evan A. Young reversed a decision from the Third Court of Appeals, which held that there was a fact issue about whether the officer’s actions were reckless.
Officers Brandon Bender and Michael Bullock, driving separate police cars, were pursuing a suspect believed to have fired shots in a neighborhood. While trying to cut off the fleeing suspect, both lost control of their vehicles. Officer Bullock’s vehicle collided with Powell’s minivan, causing it to spin 180 degrees and injuring Powell.
The key legal question, according to Young, is whether a provision of the Transportation Code requiring an operator of a motor vehicle to maintain a safe distance when following another vehicle applies to emergency action. The court concluded that it does not.
“Beyond pursuing a suspect at close range, officers must sometimes closely follow each other,” said Young. “If the other officers are far behind the action, risking increased separation and the insertion of the general public within an action, they cannot successfully surround the suspect’s vehicle once the lead officer begins the maneuver. Detaining the suspect would take longer and become riskier.
“Such a result would expose not just the officers but other members of society to a fugitive who has demonstrated a willingness to do whatever it takes to avoid capture.”
The court said that, at most, the evidence shows that Officer Bullock was negligent and that Powell offered no other evidence to create a fact issue as to recklessness. It ordered Powell’s lawsuit dismissed.
Hannah M. Vahl of the City of Austin Law Department presented arguments for the city and San Antonio lawyer Geoffrey N. Courtney represented Powell. The case number is 22-0662.
The second case decided on New Year’s Eve was City of Houston v. Ruben Rodriguez and Frederick Okon.Again, the court was unanimous, although a concurring opinion questioned officers’ decision to pursue a suspect over a misdemeanor offense.
Justice John Phillip Devine wrote that Houston police officer Richard Corral was acting in good faith during his pursuit of a suspect who was fleeing arrest from a prostitution sting operation. Corral said he was trying to make a right turn when he said his car “hit the curb due to the brakes not working” and struck a pickup truck waiting at a stop sign, injuring the two men. The officer who investigated the crash found that Corral caused the accident by making an improper wide turn from the middle lane.
After the trial court denied Houston’s motion for summary judgment, the city appealed. A divided panel of the Fourteenth Court of Appeals upheld the ruling, saying that fact questions about whether and when Corral knew that his brakes were not functioning prevented summary judgment. The dissenting justice said the trial record provided no suggestion of any prior awareness that the brakes malfunctioned.
Devine said that the record establishes that Corral meant that the brakes were functional, but their use did not accomplish his intended result of stopping his car before it hit the curb. The court said the risks of the pursuit must be balanced with the need to stop the unknown driver, who was driving erratically in what officers were told after beginning the pursuit was a stolen red Mercedes.
Devine referenced the Powell decision by noting that speeding and making improper turns are “part and parcel of a police chase.”
“On this record, we conclude that the City substantiated its officers’ opinions that a reasonably prudent officer under the circumstances of the heat of this chase could have believed that the need to turn while speeding to maintain pursuit of an unidentified fleeing suspect outweighed the risks. To slow down and not make the turn would equate to discontinuing the pursuit, which Corral implicitly discounted given the stated need for police intervention and his inability to apprehend the suspect at another time,” said Devine.
The suspect was not caught, but the stolen vehicle was recovered.
Justice Brett Busby wrote a concurring opinion, which was joined by Justices Devine and Debra Lehrmann. He said the court’s opinion should not be construed as sanctioning the decision to initiate a high-speed chase in these or similar circumstances.
Busby said that when Officer Corral began the pursuit of a suspect for a misdemeanor offense, he did not know that the vehicle had been reported stolen. He cited research showing that crashes occur in at least 30 percent of vehicle pursuits, and injuries or fatalities occur in 5 to 17 percent of pursuits.
“For most nonviolent misdemeanors, a high-speed pursuit should not become the default response to apprehend suspects attempting to evade arrest,” Busby wrote.
Christy L. Martin of the City of Houston Legal Department argued for the city. Houston lawyer Robert A. McAllister Jr. represented the injured men. The case is No. 23-0094.
The May decision in City of Houston v. Sauls determined that Houston was not liable for a police officer’s fatal crash with a bicyclist because the officer was acting in good faith while responding to a suicide emergency call. Similar to Rodriguez, the high court’s Sauls ruling was written by Devine and overturned a 2-1 decision from Houston’s Fourteenth Court of Appeals.