Christopher Chung, et al. v. Gulstan E. Silva, Jr., as Personal Representative of the Estate of Sheldon Paul Haleck, et al.

Police officers were called to the scene where a large unknown man, Sheldon Haleck, was impeding traffic in the middle of a busy six-lane downtown thoroughfare near an intersection. They asked him to move to the sidewalk, but he disobeyed their commands. Neither the officers’ multiple warnings that pepper spray would be used, nor its subsequent deployment, led to Haleck’s compliance. Instead, he ran a short distance away, out of the officers’ reach, but not out of the street. An officer then warned him that taser would be applied, but again he disobeyed the command, continuing to run away while remaining in the street. After taser was deployed, he eventually fell to the ground, where he flailed and kicked and fought six officers before they were finally able to subdue him and carry him to the side of the street so that the flow of traffic could be restored. The district court denied the officers qualified immunity, and a Ninth Circuit panel affirmed, recognizing that the officers were performing a community caretaking function but without citing to any particularized and clearly established law regarding that function. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Ninth Circuit erred in denying the officers qualified immunity by defining clearly established law at too high a level of generality rather than considering the particular facts and circumstances of this case.

2. Whether the Ninth Circuit, having found that the officers were exercising a community caretaking function, erred by only considering the reasonableness of their caretaking while disregarding the requirement of clearly established law.