In Est. of Soakai v. Abdelaziz,[1] the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied qualified immunity to police officers involved in a high-speed chase in which innocent bystanders were injured and one was killed by a fleeing suspect. Despite allegedly witnessing the crash, the officers neither stopped to render aid nor summoned emergency services.
Background
In June 2022, Oakland Police Department Police Officers Jimmy Marin-Coronel and Walid Abdelaziz (“Defendants”) spotted a person who they believed had participated in an illegal car rally. Even though the Oakland Police Department’s policy authorized high-speed car chases only in cases involving certain violent crimes, Defendants began pursuing the suspect through busy city streets at speeds exceeding 60 miles per hour. Defendants did not turn on their lights or sirens, nor did they report the chase to the dispatcher – both actions violating departmental policy. The chase ended when the suspect lost control of his car and smashed into an area near a popular taco truck, where Lolomania Soakai (“Lolomania”) had stopped with his family and friends. Lolomania suffered a direct hit and died of his injuries in front of his mother, Plaintiff Lavinia Soakai (“Lavinia”), whose back was broken in the crash. Other members of their group, including Plaintiffs Daniel Fifita, Ina Lavalu, and Samiuela Finau, also suffered severe injuries.
Despite witnessing the crash, Defendants neither stopped to render aid nor summoned emergency services. Instead, Defendants drove by the scene—still with their lights and sirens off—and did not return until they heard other officers approaching the area of the crash. When they did return, Defendants pretended not to have been at the scene previously. While still at the site of the crash, Defendants were overheard saying that “they were satisfied the [suspect] appeared injured and hoped that the [suspect] had died in the crash.”
Lolomania’s estate and the individual Plaintiffs sued, asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 for violations of the Fourteenth Amendment. Plaintiffs alleged that the officers violated Plaintiffs’ substantive due process rights in two ways: by initiating and conducting the chase for the purpose of harming the fleeing suspect and by failing either to call for emergency services or to render aid after the crash. Defendants moved for judgment on the pleadings, arguing that they were entitled to qualified immunity. Assessing only the pleadings, the District Court ruled that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity and denied the motion. Defendants appealed.
Discussion
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals initially observed that in reviewing de novo the denial of a motion for judgment on the pleadings premised on qualified immunity, the Court employed the same standardsused when reviewing a motion to dismiss.[2] Therefore, the Court would view the allegations in the complaint as true and in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs.[3]
Plaintiffs claimed that Defendants violated their constitutional rights by (1) conducting a high-speed chase for the purpose of harming a fleeing suspect unrelated to any legitimate law enforcement purpose and (2) failing to summon or render emergency services after the crash. The Ninth Circuit explained that both theories sounded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of substantive due process, which protects against “executive abuse[s] of power” that “shock[] the conscience.” County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 846 (1998) (“Lewis”). For each theory, Defendants would be entitled to qualified immunity if they could demonstrate (1) that the allegations in the operative complaint, accepted as true, “do not make out a violation of a constitutional right”; or (2) “that any such right was not clearly established at the time of the alleged misconduct.” Hampton v. California, 83 F.4th 754, 765 (9th Cir. 2023).
The Court explained that courts have developed two methods for defining conscience-shocking conduct: the deliberate-indifference test and the purpose-to-harm test. Courts decide which test to apply by “ask[ing] ‘whether the circumstances are such that actual deliberation [by the officer] is practical.’” Wilkinson v. Torres, 610 F.3d 546, 554 (9th Cir. 2010) (second alteration in original) (quoting Porter v. Osborn, 546 F.3d 1131, 1137 (9th Cir. 2008)).
Purpose-to-Harm Claim
Addressing first Plaintiffs’ purpose-to-harm claim, the Ninth Circuit explained that because officers engaged in a high-speed chase must “operate under great pressure and make repeated split-second decisions” with “precious little time for deliberation,” Bingue v. Prunchak, 512 F.3d 1169, 1176 (9th Cir. 2008), courts in the Circuit apply the more stringent purpose-to-harm test “to all high-speed chases,” id. at 1177 (emphasis omitted). Under that test, a police officer violates substantive due process only if the officer “act[s] with the purpose to harm a civilian” for reasons “unrelated to the legitimate law enforcement objectives of arrest, self-defense, or the defense of others.” A.D. v. Cal. Highway Patrol, 712 F.3d 446, 454 (9th Cir. 2013).
The Court noted that satisfying the purpose-to-harm test is inherently difficult for those injured by high-speed chases. Officers almost always chase a suspect for a legitimate law enforcement purpose and, even when they might not, legitimate justifications are readily available. See Porter, 546 F.3d at 1137 (explaining that officers chasing a suspect are generally “reacting to the urgent public safety threat of fleeing motorists in a situation where inaction could be the most dangerous option”); Lewis, 523 U.S. at 853 (noting that police pursuits can serve “the need to stop a suspect and show that flight from the law is no way to freedom”).
The Court explained that, although difficult, satisfying the purpose-to-harm standard for those injured by high-speed chases is not impossible because the purpose-to-harm test turns on the officer’s subjective intent. See A.D., 712 F.3d at 453 (“The purpose to harm standard is a subjective standard of culpability.”). A court employing that test will not second-guess an officer’s decision—even if seemingly ill-advised in hindsight—if the officer “acts with a legitimate purpose . . . in mind.”[4] However, the availability of an otherwise plausible excuse will not shield the officer from liability if the officer acts with an “ulterior motive[]” to harm that is unrelated to legitimate law enforcement purposes. Gonzalez v. City of Anaheim, 747 F.3d 789, 798 (9th Cir. 2014) (en banc); see also A.D., 712 F.3d at 453 (noting that, even if an officer ultimately arrests the suspect, “he still violates the [D]ue [P]rocess [C]lause if he used force with only an illegitimate purpose in mind”).
The Ninth Circuit explained that at the motion-to-dismiss stage, the key question was whether, accepting all well-pleaded allegations of fact as true, the officer subjectively intended to act, not to further a legitimate law enforcement purpose, but instead to induce lawlessness, to terrorize, to cause harm, to kill, to teach the suspect a lesson, or to get even. Porter, 546 F.3d at 1140-41; see also Zion v. County of Orange, 874 F.3d 1072, 1077 (9th Cir. 2017) (holding that an officer could be liable for a physical assault if he “was acting out of anger or emotion rather than [to achieve] any legitimate law enforcement purpose”).
Here, Defendants conceded that the complaint adequately pleaded thatthey acted with a purpose to harm the fleeing suspect for reasons unrelated to a legitimate law enforcement objective. Defendants admitted that the Court must treat as true the allegation in the complaint that Defendants acted “in an effort to make [the] suspect lose control, severely injure himself[,] and die.” Defendants premised their argument on the assumption that Plaintiffs pleaded a purpose to harm the suspect unrelated to a legitimate law enforcement objective. Defendants’ only contention on appeal was that any improper intent to harm the fleeing suspect was irrelevant here because, in the context of a purpose-to-harm claim, the object of an officer’s improper intent to harm and the injured plaintiff must be one and the same. In other words, Defendants asserted that, to state a claim, a bystander injured by a high-speed police chase must plausibly allege that the officer acted with an improper purpose to harm the bystander specifically. The Court rejected this argument.
The Ninth Circuit observed that Lewis involved an officer’s pursuit of a motorcycle carrying two teenagers—the driver and his passenger—that ended with the passenger’s death. Although the sole question before the Supreme Court was whether the officer had violated the passenger’s rights, the Supreme Court applied the purpose-to-harm test by considering the officer’s intentions and actions only in relation to the driver: “[The officer] was faced with a course of lawless behavior for which the police were not to blame. They had done nothing to cause [the driver’s] high-speed driving in the first place… the officer’s instinct was to do his job as a law enforcement officer, not to induce [the driver’s] lawlessness, or to terrorize, cause harm, or kill.” Lewis, 523 U.S. at 855. The Lewis Court did not comment on whether the officer might have intended to harm the passenger specifically.
When discussing the risks, however, Lewis noted “the high-speed threat to all those within stopping range,” including “suspects, their passengers, other drivers,” and “bystanders.” Lewis, 523 U.S. at 852 (emphasis added). The Ninth Circuit stated that implicit in Lewis’s discussion was the recognition that, although the object of a high-speed police chase might be to catch the fleeing motorist, an officer owes a duty to all those in the vicinity, including bystanders. Lewis thus confirmed that high-speed car chases create a clear, known risk of harm, not only to the fleeing driver and to the officers, but also to passengers and bystanders. The Ninth Circuit stated that because the risks taken by those participating in the chase generate—and, thus, cannot be isolated from—the peril faced by bystanders, it would be illogical to distinguish between those dangers when considering whether an officer ought to be liable for injuries that result from the decision to give chase.
The Ninth Circuit stated that Lewis thus established that an officer can (though the officer in Lewis ultimately did not) violate the substantive due process rights of one individual by chasing another for illegitimate purposes.
The Ninth Circuit noted that in Moreland v. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, 159 F.3d 365 (9th Cir. 1998), officers accidentally shot and killed a bystander while attempting to incapacitate an active shooter. Reviewing the substantive due process claim brought by the bystander’s family, Moreland held that Lewis’s test applies, not just to “high-speed police chases,” but wherever “an officer inadvertently harm[s] a bystander while responding to a situation in which the officer [is] required to act quickly to prevent an individual from threatening the lives of others.” Id. at 372 (emphases added).
Moreover, and contrary to Defendants’ argument, Moreland’s purpose-to-harm analysis did not consider only the officers’ intentions with respect to the bystander. Instead, the Ninth Circuit in that case affirmed the grant of summary judgment to the officers because they (1) had sought to harm the suspect for legitimate reasons and (2) did not intend to harm the bystander at all. See id. at 373 (noting that the plaintiffs neither “dispute[d] that [the officers] w[ere] entitled to use deadly force to halt the gunfight,” nor contendedthat the officers “intended to harm [the bystander]”). The decisive question was, in other words, whether the officers had intended to harm someone—rather than the bystander, specifically—for reasons unrelated to a legitimate law enforcement objective.
The Ninth Circuit here noted that Onossian v. Block, 175 F.3d 1169, 1172 (9th Cir. 1999), clarified that Moreland’s reading of Lewis applies equally in car-chase cases. Onossian, 175 F.3d at 1172. Onossian held that bystanders may recover for injuries caused by a high-speed chase, but only if they satisfy the purpose-to-harm test. When addressing the merits, Onossian followed Lewis’s and Moreland’s leads by looking for “evidence that [the] deputies . . . intended to cause harm to anyone,” id. at 1172 (emphasis added), rather than to any one specific individual. Several years later, the Ninth Circuit in Bingue reaffirmed that approach in another car-chase case involving an injured bystander. 512 F.3d at 1177 (asking whether the officer “acted with an intent to harm,” without specifying a particular object of that intent). Here, the Court stated that adopting Defendants’ view would require the Court to overrule Onossian and Bingue. The Court added that it was difficult to conceive a scenario in which an officer forms the intent to harm a bystander in the brief moments during which the bystander is in their line of sight. Adopting Defendants’ rule would make it all but impossible for any bystander to recover for injuries caused by a high-speed police chase.
The Ninth Circuit therefore held that Plaintiffs had stated a substantive due process claim by plausibly alleging that they, as bystanders, were injured when Defendants engaged in a high-speed chase for the purpose of harming the fleeing suspect without a legitimate law enforcement objective.
The Ninth Circuit also held that Defendants violated clearly established law, noting that the “unlawfulness of an officer’s conduct [is] ‘clearly established’” if, “at the time of the officer’s conduct, the law was sufficiently clear that every reasonable officialwould understand that what he is doing is unlawful.” Hampton, 83 F.4th at 769 (quoting District of Columbia v. Wesby, 583 U.S. 48, 63 (2018)) (some internal quotation marks omitted).
State-Created Danger Claim
The Ninth Circuit also considered Plaintiffs’ alternative, narrower state-created danger claim. Plaintiffs alleged that Defendants’ failure to summon aid after the crash delayed Plaintiffs’ receiving medical treatment, resulting in additional harm to Plaintiffs. The Court assumed in consideration of this claim that Defendants did not give chase with a purpose to harm unrelated to a legitimate law enforcement objective.
The Court explained that the Fourteenth Amendment “generally does not confer any affirmative right to governmental aid.” Patel v. Kent Sch. Dist., 648 F.3d 965, 971 (9th Cir. 2011), but there are a few exceptions. To make use of the state-created danger exception, a plaintiff must satisfy two requirements, both of which relate to the defendant-officer’s conduct. First, the plaintiff must establish that the officer’s affirmative conduct exposed the plaintiff “to a foreseeable danger that she would not otherwisehave faced.” Martinez v. High, 91 F.4th 1022, 1028 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 145 S. Ct. 547 (2024). Second, the plaintiff must show that the officer acted with “deliberate indifference to a known or obvious danger.” Id. (quoting Murguia v. Langdon, 61 F.4th 1096, 1111 (9th Cir. 2023)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The Court explained that to satisfy the state-created danger exception’s first prong, Plaintiffs had to plausibly allege that Defendants’ affirmative actions (1) placed Plaintiffs in a worse position than they would have occupied had Defendants not acted at all; (2) created or exposed Plaintiffs to an actual and particularized danger; and (3) resulted in foreseeable harm to Plaintiffs.[5] The Court found all three elements were satisfied. Plaintiffs alleged that Defendants “sped after the suspect” without alerting the suspect to pull over by turning on their lights and sirens. The Courts stated that it could plausibly infer from those allegations that, in the absence of Defendants’ affirmative actions, the suspect would not have raced through the city and lost control of his vehicle and, therefore, that Plaintiffs would not have required urgent medical attention to keep their conditionsfrom deteriorating further. The Court found that Plaintiffs’ state-created danger claim targeted only the additional risk faced by Plaintiffs after the crash due to delayed medical treatment. Only a small and distinct group—those few people injured by the collision—had to contend with that danger. Plaintiffs therefore relied on a sufficiently particularized danger. Finally, the Court stated that it was entirely predictable that allowing seriously wounded individuals to go without aid for longer than necessary would increase the risk of further injury or death.
Accordingly, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity with respect to either of Plaintiffs’ theories of substantive due process liability. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s denial of the defendant officers’ motion for judgment on the pleadings based on qualified immunity.
Dissenting, Judge Bumatay wrote that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity. The dissent maintained that the majority adopted a brand-new theory of substantive due process—contrary to precedent and to the Supreme Court’s admonition against such judicial overreach—by ruling for the first time that a bystander may assert a substantive due process claim against an officer if the bystander can show that the officer intended to harm someone else. Judge Bumatay asserted that the law was not clearly established at the time of the accident that intent to harm a suspect is enough to press a due process claim for injuries to bystanders. The majority also expanded the state-created-danger doctrine to create a new constitutional duty requiring law enforcement officers to render or summon medical aid for civilians harmed by private actors under certain circumstances.
HOW THIS AFFECTS YOUR AGENCY
The Ninth Circuit stated that given the unique facts of this case, the Court emphasized that its decision at the motion-to-dismiss stage shed little light on whether the government actors might ultimately be entitled to qualified immunity at later stages of the proceeding. The Court stated that it therefore expressed no opinion on what the District Court might conclude at summary judgment or, should the case proceed to trial, what a jury might find. We will continue to monitor this case as the factual record further develops, thus potentially changing the ultimate outcome on the ruling for qualified immunity.
As always, if you wish to discuss this matter in greater detail, please feel free to contact Jim Touchstone at (714) 446–1400 or via email at jrt@jones-mayer.com
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[1] 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 11916 (9th Cir. May 16, 2025).
[2] Gregg v. Haw., Dep’t of Pub. Safety, 870 F.3d 883, 887 (9th Cir. 2017).
[3] See Al Saud v. Days, 50 F.4th 705, 709 (9th Cir. 2022). See also Gregg v. Haw., Dep’t of Pub. Safety, 870 F.3d 883, 887 (9th Cir. 2017).
[4] Tan Lam v. City of Los Banos, 976 F.3d 986, 1003-04 (9th Cir. 2020).
[5] Polanco v. Diaz, 76 F.4th 918, 926 (9th Cir. 2023), cert. denied, 144 S. Ct. 2519 (2024).