Qualified Immunity Shields Lawyer from Legal Error

• Pages: 25-26
• Date: 01 October 2023
• Author: Nhan T. Ho
• Subject Matter: Civil Law

Published in Litigation News Volume 49, Number 1, Fall 2023. © 202 3 by the American Bar As sociation. Reprodu ced with permission . All rights reser ved. This information o r any portion ther eof may not be copied o r disseminated in any form

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the relief sought and further found that

the parties had collectively waived their

rights to a jury trial. Thus, over the par-

ties’ jointly f‌iled objection, the matter

proceeded as a bench trial, resulting in

a judgment in the plainti’s favor.

The defendant doctor appealed

to the Supreme Court of Arkansas,

arguing that the trial court lacked the

authority to order a bench trial when

the defendants had not waived their

right to a jury trial in a manner pre-

scribed by law, and that f‌inding waiver

was a denial of the defendants’ equal

protection and due process rights guar-

anteed by the Arkansas Constitution

and the U.S. Constitution.

In its decision, the supreme court

made clear that although trial courts

have considerable discretion in the

control and management of proceed-

ings before them, that discretion is not

unlimited. Ultimately, the court held

that denying one’s constitutional right

to trial due to a failure to meet a court’s

self-imposed mediation deadline was

an overreach of judicial authority.

Accordingly, the court held that the cir-

cuit court lacked the authority to divest

the parties of their fundamental consti-

tutional right to a jury trial.

Ligation Section leaders agree

that the supreme court’s holding is

an important reminder that while a

court’s authority is far reaching, it has

limits. “Mandatory alternative dispute

resolution is doubtless here to stay,

and parties ignore this requirement at

their peril,” observes Wade S. Kolb III,

Greenville, SC, cochair of the Section’s

LGBT Law & Litigator Committee, “but

the Arkansas Supreme Court has made

clear that the possible perils do not

include a sanction of striking a request

for a jury trial.”

Despite the reversal, there are les-

sons to be learned. “A litigator should

consider and determine these elements

during the early stages of a matter,”

making certain to heed all of a court’s

pretrial rules and procedures, says

Kenneth M. Klemm, Atlanta, GA, former

cochair of the Section’s Pretrial Practice

& Discovery Committee. However, in

the end, “this ruling should serve as

an important reminder of how funda-

mental the jury trial is to our civil legal

system and give comfort to those con-

cerned about how rare this fundamen-

tal component is becoming,” says Kolb.

Qualif‌ied Immunity

Shields Lawyer from

Legal Error

By Nhan T. Ho, Litigatio n News

Contributing Editor

Qualif‌ied immunity can shield a govern-

ment lawyer whose legal error resulted

in a man’s prolonged imprisonment.

According to one federal appellate

court, the mistake alone did not vio-

late the constitutional prohibition on

cruel and unusual punishment. While

disagreeing on whether the result was

right, ABA Litigation Section leaders

agree that the case is only the tip of the

iceberg regarding the complexities of

modern-day qualif‌ied immunity.

The conf‌lict in Campbell v. Florian

et al. began when the plainti Marion

Campbell was sentenced to seven

years’ imprisonment on a state drug

charge. As the charge was considered a

“no parole oense,” state law required

Campbell to serve at least 85 percent of

his sentence before he could be consid-

ered for sentence reduction with work

or good-time credits (the 85 percent

rule). However, between Campbell’s

arrest and his conviction, South Carolina

passed the Omnibus Crime Reduction

and Sentencing Reform Act of 2010.

The act created contradictions in the

applicability of the 85 percent rule in

assessing inmates’ parole eligibility and

release dates based on earned credit.

To determine parole eligibil-

ity and calculate the release dates

of its inmates, the South Carolina

Department of Corrections (SCDC)

charged its deputy general counsel

with interpreting the act. The deputy

general counsel concluded that the 85

percent rule still applied unless parole

was granted, and the SCDC adopted

this conclusion in evaluating prison-

ers’ eligibility for parole, credits, and

release. However, the South Carolina

Court of Appeals later invalidated the

deputy general counsel’s interpreta-

tion in a dierent case, f‌inding that the

act implicitly repealed the 85 percent

rule. Accordingly, the SCDC reevaluated

Campbell’s imprisonment term and

released him.

Campbell sued the SCDC’s law-

yers under 42 U.S.C. §1983 in the

U.S. District Court for the District of

South Carolina, alleging the misread-

ing of the law violated the Cruel and

Unusual Punishments Clause of the U.S.

Constitution’s Eighth Amendment by

prolonging his detention. The district

court rejected the defendants’ defense

of qualif‌ied immunity as to the Eighth

Amendment claim, holding that the

act’s plain language “clearly estab-

lished” the plainti’s rights.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the

Fourth Circuit reversed, holding that

the law was not clearly established at

the time and that the deputy general

counsel acted reasonably in interpret-

ing the act. Although his interpretation

was later found to be unreasonable, the

court determined that legal error alone

did not violate the plainti’s rights, in

the absence of “deliberate indierence”

to his plight.

Litigation Section leaders agree that

qualif‌ied immunity is a complicated

topic. “There is enough to f‌ill a book”

about qualif‌ied immunity, notes David

I. Schoen, Montgomery, AL, chair of

the Criminal Justice Subcommittee

of the Section’s Civil Rights Litigation

Committee. “The doctrine is premised

on the notion that government ocials

should have some freedom to act with-

out fear of liability unless their violation

of rights rises to a certain level,” elabo-

rates Warrington Parker, San Francisco,

CA, cochair of the Section’s Criminal

Litigation Committee.

Section leaders are divided, however,

as to whether Campbell was correctly

decided. Some believe that the Fourth

Circuit properly granted qualif‌ied

immunity. “The lawyers who provided

the advice interpreted a new—and

admittedly—confusing statute; there

literally was no prior clearly estab-

lished statutory right,” observes Parker.

Conversely, others think the outcome

is incorrect. The state court’s decision

invalidating the defendants’ interpre-

tation of the act “found the law to be

clear that the victim was eligible for

parole under the applicable state of the

law at the time,” so there was a viola-

tion of clearly established law, accord-

ing to Schoen.

Section leaders agree that the impli-

cation of qualif‌ied immunity reaches far

beyond what was at stake in Campbell.

As to the future of qualif‌ied immunity,

however, “there is some indication that

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