Case 2:20-cv-09582-JFW-E Document 367 Filed 08/03/22 Page 16 of twenty-two Page ID #:31186
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resembling “high speed police chases”—the extra demanding “purpose to harm” normal applies. Id. at 1137. When the officer’s conduct is extra akin to negligence, courts have discovered such conduct inadequate to “shock the conscience.” For instance, in Jones v. Jinparn, No. C 19-02817 SBA, 2020 WL 999806, at *4 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 2, 2020), the plaintiffs alleged {that a} police officer did not make cheap efforts to contact the decedent’s heirs earlier than releasing the physique for cremation. The courtroom there reasoned that the officer’s conduct “sounds, at most, in negligence.” Id. at *5. “The Due Process Clause serves to protect the individual from the abuse of governmental power” and thus isn’t implicated by a negligent act. Id. By distinction, in Shelley v. County of San Joaquin, 996 F. Supp. second 921 (E.D. Cal. 2014), plaintiffs, who have been the decedent’s members of the family, alleged that defendants violated their proper to privateness by participating in large-scale digging to exhume the decedent’s stays, which triggered the stays to be “chewed up, pulverized, destroyed, crushed and commingled with other unknown murder victims” in the presence of the decedent’s mom and earlier than information media. Id. at 931. The courtroom concluded such conduct was prone to trigger the household “profound grief” and subsequently shocks the conscience. Id. (quotation omitted). Here, the officers’ conduct at situation is extra akin to that in Jones than in Shelley. First, with respect to the taking and inside sharing of photographs amongst County personnel, the proof will present that website images at an incident is each applicable and customary apply in each the Fire and Sheriff’s Departments. Such photographs are used, amongst different issues, to supply intel, to evaluate the progress of an incident response, and to facilitate coaching post-incident. Indeed, a few of the photographs taken by County personnel right here have been shared with the NTSB to help them in their investigation of the crash. With respect to Plaintiffs’ allegations that photographs have been shared with individuals exterior the County or exterior the confines of County enterprise, Plaintiffs’ case is
570887.2 11 DEFENDANTS’ TRIAL BRIEF