zlacker

>>mnm1+(OP)
I'm curious - it's obvious what abuses of qualified immunity are driving this, but the law must have been originally put in place for a reason. Are there any examples where a police officer was shielded from prosecution for something that, if you or I did it would definitely be a crime, but that a reasonable person would say, "yes, this is a good application of qualified immunity"?

>>comman+9m
Lets say you want to build a deck. You put together the plans, take them to the planning commission, and they rightfully reject it for being structually unsound.

Qualified immunity is what prevents you from personally suing each member of the planning commission to pressure them in to reversing their decision. Think of it like the legal system throwing an exception, we aren't even going to consider this because your beef is with the city not an individual employee.

Police have qualified immunity because otherwise they would face personal lawsuits every time they wrote a rich guy a speeding ticket, or a convicted murderer has nothing better to do but get his law degree in prison.

In my opinion, qualified immunity is _not_ the problem. If an officer does something in their official capacity that is wrong, it is up to the department and the DA to deal with. Just like if the hypothetical planning commission did something illegal. Unfortunately police unions prevent that from being a viable option.

>>dsl+Hq
I still don't get it though. What would you be suing a commissioner over that would get them to reverse their decision? If you're suing them directly for their decision, then surely that just wouldn't be a valid lawsuit. If you're suing them for some unrelated valid issue, but using that as pressure for them to change their decision, then surely that's already illegal. Isn't it considered extortion or blackmail to compel someone to give you something of value by threatening to sue them or report them to law enforcement?

>>baddox+Pw
I always wondered why pro sports players would yell at the referee when they got an unfavorable ruling. Apparently they're not trying to get that ruling changed, they're preemptively intimidating the ref so that _next_ time they'll rule differently. Go $sportsball!

Getting sued is expensive, stressful, and time consuming no matter how the case turns out.

If you sue all the commissioners every time they issue a decision that you don't like sooner or later they'll see your next request and think "Can I afford the inevitable lawsuit if I say No like I should?" and/or "Can I take the stress? Can my family?" So next time they'll give you what you want just to avoid that whole mess.

IANAL but it sounds like qualified immunity is intended to short-circuit this: even if you made a reasonable mistake here and there you can't be sued by some bullying jerk.

>>MikeTh+LA
Okay, then why doesn't that happen in analogous non-government situations? Why doesn't every construction company sue a developer every time they don't get given a new contract? Why doesn't every job interviewee sue every company that doesn't hire them? Surely the legal system has some mechanism for dealing with this. I do think there should be some mechanism for short-circuiting preposterous lawsuits, and I think it should be available to everyone.

>>baddox+eC
Not a lawyer but maybe there’s a few possible reasons:

Standing: without a reason that looks remotely viable, a court might just throw it out without requiring a defence.

Risk: big companies have legal departments on hand to make your life hell for even trying.

Reward: smaller companies don’t have enough money to be worth your time to sue. Even if you’re trying to “send a message” the first attempt is so expensive for no gain, it’s not worth your while.

Government departments tend to fall into a bad middle ground. There’s enough money to be worth fighting over but they’re not always fantastically well equipped to defend it (or at least they’re perceived as such).