Adams

I.

Introduction

Appellants City of Fremont and Fremont Police Sergeant Steven Osawa appeal from a jury verdict awarding Patrick Adams’s surviving spouse and stepdaughter approximately $4 million in this action for wrongful death and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The jury found that City of Fremont police officers negligently handled an emergency situation in which Patrick 1 was fatally injured after threatening to commit suicide and refusing to surrender his loaded firearm to police officers. 2 Appellants contend the verdict must be reversed as a matter of law on two major grounds: (1) appellants owed no legal duty of care to Patrick or his family; and (2) appellants were immune from liability under Government Code section 820.2. 3 Appellants also contend the jury’s findings were not supported by substantial evidence and that respondents were not entitled to damages for negligent infliction of emotional distress under a “bystander” theory as a matter of law.

We hold that police officers responding to a crisis involving a person threatening suicide with a loaded firearm have no legal duty under tort law that would expose them to liability if their conduct…

The majority refuses to expose the police to tort liability for what it describes as “inadequate or unreasonable assistance to suicidal individuals” because it believes such liability “could inhibit them from providing intervention at all.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 273.) This conclusion rests on distortions of both the facts and the law.

The conduct of the police in this case was not merely “inadequate” and “unreasonable,” but mindlessly reckless. The decedent, shown to be a caring person who never hurt others, suffered periodic bouts of depression and had a drinking problem. Though he possessed a weapon, he had never in the past or at the time of his death used it to threaten others. The decedent had been in his backyard for over an hour before the police found him. A few minutes *290 after they found him he was killed in a hail of bullets. The officers at the scene did not, as my colleagues claim, merely fail to prevent this death; as the evidence abundantly shows, and the jury found, the death was aggressively provoked. Subjecting the gross misconduct in this case to tort liability will not unduly inhibit law enforcement intervention or burden local government. As the Supreme…

I agree completely with both the result and the path by which it is reached in Justice Ruvolo’s majority opinion. However, what is not addressed in Presiding Justice Kline’s dissent leads me to add this brief separate concurrence.

As both of my colleagues demonstrate repeatedly in their opinions, the special relationship doctrine is reserved for situations in which the authorities have created a relationship of “dependency” with a “vulnerable” individual, here of course the decedent. It is for this reason that, at various points in his dissent, Justice Kline references a “situation of dependency” or a “relationship of dependence” allegedly created here. (Dis. opn. of Kline P. J., post, at pp. 292, 295, 307.) He also suggests that the police action here amounted to an “ ‘undertaking to rescue’ ” by which they “ ‘voluntarily assume[d] a protective duty’ ” {id. at pp. 292, 310), and that the resulting special relationship triggers a duty to take “affirmative action to assist or protect another.” {Id. at p. 292.)

All of this and much more in the dissent might lead the unwary reader to suspect that we are dealing with a “vulnerable” and “dependent” victim, e.g., one who was standing…

Appellants City of Fremont and Fremont Police Sergeant Steven Osawa appeal from a jury verdict awarding Patrick Adams's surviving spouse and stepdaughter approximately $4 million in this action for wrongful death and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The jury found that City of Fremont police officers negligently handled an emergency situation in which Patrick [1] was fatally injured after threatening to commit suicide and refusing to surrender his loaded firearm to police officers. [2] Appellants contend the verdict must be reversed as a matter of law on two major grounds: (1) appellants owed no legal duty of care to Patrick or his family; and (2) appellants were immune from liability under Government Code section 820.2. [3] Appellants also contend the jury's findings were not supported by substantial evidence and that respondents were not entitled to damages for negligent infliction of emotional distress under a "bystander" theory as a matter of law.

We hold that police officers responding to a crisis involving a person threatening suicide with a loaded firearm have no legal duty under tort law that would expose them to liability if their conduct fails to…