INDIANAPOLIS (Legal Newsline) - Indiana’s immunity statute protecting police against lawsuits doesn’t extend to a case in which an inmate accused a guard of failing to help him negotiate an icy step into a prison van, an appeals court ruled.
While the law has been interpreted to cover most aspects of law enforcement, that doesn’t include an officer’s decision to make an inmate climb into the van with his hands and feet shackled, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled.
The decision to force a shackled prisoner to enter the van without assistance while faced with an obvious hazardous situation was a discretionary decision made by the deputy but not controlled by any departmental policy,” the court said in an Aug. 4 decision overturning a trial court’s dismissal of the lawsuit.
John Kader sued the Marion County Sheriff’s department in 2017 over injuries he suffered in 2015 after he slipped and fell getting into a van returning him to jail after a court appearance. Kader said the van had an icy step and he asked Deputy Ernest Wesley to help him up but Wesley refused.
Kader fell and hit his head on a metal bench. He was treated by a nurse for about an hour, cleared for transport, but complained of more symptoms in the van and treated again at the Boone County Jail.
A trial court dismissed his case, citing Indiana Code Section 34-13-3-3(8), which prohibits lawsuits against police officers “acting within the scope of the employee’s employment” except for false arrest or imprisonment. Indiana, like most states, provides immunity to police officers and other government employees from lawsuits over decisions they make in the course of fulfilling their public duties.
The law is designed to allow those employees to exercise independent judgment without fear of being harassed with litigation. In Indiana, it has protected officers against being sued over placing an allegedly defamatory note in an inmate’s file and for failing to make an arrest that would have prevented a murder.
The law doesn’t cover every action by police, however, the appeals court ruled.
“Deputy Wesley’s acts or omissions here are not what we would consider `the very essence of law enforcement’ to which immunity applies,” the court said. “There is no suggestion that there was any departmental policy precluding Deputy Wesley from assisting Kader.”