Greedy Trial Lawyer
High-Speed Police Pursuits Should Be Limited To Video Games
Category: Seeing Clearly Now
You can call them police chases. You can call them police pursuits. You can even call them high-speed pursuits. What we should do is call them off.
Head-on crash victim files suit against city of Oakland
OAKLAND -- Patricia Messner's memory of her head-on collision is sketchy, but she remembers a big bang.Messner, who said she has just begun walking again with help from a cane, sued the city of Oakland and the police department Oct. 6, claiming that police "caused the colliding vehicle to be traveling the wrong way on the interstate, with no headlights, at a recklessly high rate of speed."
Messner's suit highlights the dangers and thorny legal issues that arise when a police chase results in injury or death. California law essentially grants immunity to law enforcement agencies and cities from lawsuits filed when bystanders killed or injured during high-speed pursuits.
Messner is one of thousands injured in police pursuits throughout the state. Last year, law enforcement was involved in 7,942 pursuits that resulted in more than 1,200 people getting injured and 32 killed from collisions, the California Highway Patrol reported.
California leads the nation almost every year in injuries and deaths incurred as a result of police pursuits, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In 2004, the last year statistics were available, only Texas recorded more fatalities.
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Comments
What we should do is call them off.
And of course, like the GTL you are, you look only at harms (because those are what pay your bills) and not at benefits. If we "call them off" because of trial lawyers, more criminals will flee, knowing that the police aren't allowed to chase them. Those additional escapees will commit more crimes.
Should the victims of those crimes be allowed to recover from you because you enabled the criminals to escape?
Incidentally, if, as the article says, "California law essentially grants immunity to law enforcement agencies and cities from lawsuits filed when bystanders killed or injured during high-speed pursuits," then isn't her lawsuit frivolous? Shouldn't she be sanctioned for filing it?
Posted by: David Nieporent ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.greedytriallawyer.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 16, 2006 12:50 PM