DUI Crashes: Officer Liability

You pull-over someone for running a stop sign. The driver turns out not to have a valid driver's license. You issue him a ticket and tell him he cannot drive the vehicle. You determine his passenger does have a valid driver's license, and you order the passenger to drive the vehicle away. The passenger complies, but a few miles down the road he is involved in a major car accident with injuries. Emergency room records show the second tested positive for both excessive alcohol and illegal drugs. Now the injury victims claim you are at fault. They claim that if you had noticed the second driver was high and arrested him for drug use, the accident never would have occurred. They claim you placed them in harm's way by ordering the second driver to get behind the wheel. Do you have any civil liability here?

Your decision not to arrest the second driver for drug use likely is immune from suit under the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Under that doctrine, police departments are protected against civil suits for "discretionary functions."1 An officer's decision of whether to arrest someone is a classic example of a discretionary...