Wrongful Death Civil Rights?

What is the name of your state?Mo, from Oregon.....Let's say, a City Police Officer takes chase of several motorcycles on a dangerous road, crosses County line without informing dispatch, the officer admittingly speeds over 120MPH (due to his location) to catch these motorcycles who had done nothing to violate any laws, the Officer "heard" the motorcycles and took chase even though the Officer was at the end of his shift at 1:00 am. The Officer catches up to motorcycle last in line, motorcycle backfires, Officer turns on overhead lights, motorcycle pulls to side of road, both engines running, Officer yells at driver to follow him. Is this a proper stop? The Officer knew the motorcycle had mechanical problems, the Officer sped off leaving first motorcycle on side of the road (he says), Officer, still speeding up the dangerous road to catch the other two motorcycles. Now, were the kids on the first motorcycle mind readers and should have known that was the Officers intentions? The Officer is a young Officer, but through training and experience put lives at risk by chasing after these kids on a very dark, dangerous road, at 1:00am. The kids were dead on the side of road shortly after the Officer says he left them on the side of the road. Are there any Attorney's in Oregon that have any answers or suggestions? It seems to me nobody wants to take on the police department and my child is dead. The whole investigation has been tainted, yes, we believe this was a Rogue police officer and they are covering for one of their own. I am not affraid to say that. Tort claim has been filed. Law firm that was handling this case has had too much turnover in their office to continue to properly file a lawsuit. If an Attorney won't file a lawsuit, can we file one ourselves? Any help is appreciated, please be kind, this has not been easy.

Sincerely, Mo

I am sorry for your loss. You do have a hard case, and the words that I am hearing are speculative, and some of your points are excusable for the officer and within reason of his appointed rights.

Have you paid any money to an attorney? What was the date of loss?

But your question was "can we file one ourselves?" The answer is yes but without a law degree, or a high knowledge with torts, you would not get very far in the court system with a wrongful death suit.

Reply

Mo from Oregon: Thank you for your reply. We are at this time looking at filing charges other then "Wrongful Death". We figured it would be hard to file the lawsuit ourselves and have found an Attorney to do that for us. The tort claim was filed, the accident happened August 29, 2003, so we are approaching a deadline on filing the lawsuit. Somebody from the police agency has come forward with compelling evidence against the officer. We just hope this person will still be around to testify. You know how that goes..... Again, thank you, Mo

I'm confused. The kids ran from the police at over 100mph on motorcycles and crashed and you want to sue the police?

"The kids were dead on the side of road shortly after the Officer says he left them on the side of the road."

how did the kids die? Where did you get the information on the story you posted leading up to the stop?

I would like to hear both sides of the story. The OP's description sounds extremely biased with lots of irrelevent information.

Google is your friend. They think that either the officer hit and killed the kids or a minivan hit and killed them. Minivan supposedly had silver paint on it (the color of the motorcycle). There was something about the kids turning around and heading back home. Police heard report over radio about motorcycle accident. It was the kids.

Sorry for your loss, Mo.

Mo from Oregon: To, you are guilty: No, the kids were not speeding, infact they were travelling at 45 MPH at the time the Officer supposedly stopped them. As I stated before the Officer was travelling at speeds over 120 MPH, from a dead stop, then going through an intersection and passing a mini van, the Officer was far behind the kids when he took chase. To: racer72: I am not sure what OP means, but if you are referring to me being biased, everything is in the police reports and investigation reports, a lot of reports. I am not here to write a story. I am certainly not going to put all the cards on the table, as it is possible for the police department to read this and that could damage what we do have. Thank you "trying to please", I know you do care and appreciate everything. Mo

"as it is possible for the police department to read this"

Hmm?

Mo from Oregon: To: Stephenk, are you on this board to help people or cause them even more misery? I don't believe you are very professional and certainly not an attorney. You can write me when you lose your innocent child at the hands of a police officer whom has no duty of care because he above the law and see who will assist you.............. I sincerely hope you never have to experience what I and my family have, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. My daughter was killed a few days before she was to start pre-law. How ironic, that she believed in our system.............

bigdaddy6939 said:

To: racer72: I am not sure what OP means, but if you are referring to me being biased, everything is in the police reports and investigation reports, a lot of reports. I am not here to write a story. I am certainly not going to put all the cards on the table, as it is possible for the police department to read this and that could damage what we do have. Thank you "trying to please", I know you do care and appreciate everything. Mo

Click to expand...

OP=Original post or original poster. The first post in a thread.

Read your post from 3rd party standpoint. It is hard to understand and is extremely biased towards your point of view. And consider attending a local community college and taking a class on grammar and composition. The reason you can't find any attorneys that will accept your case is because they don't know what you are talking about.

Maureen,
I'm sorry for your loss.

Here is your post on findlaw made 1 month after your daughter's tragic death. Your account here is much easier to follow. You say because of the lawsuit that you can't post facts, because the police might read them. While that is true, as you can see, by doing a search with a few of the facts, this has already been on the net for 1.5 years. And if they were going to read your posts they have already done so, so figure your post there along with any other information or public record will be a part of discovery and you will be asked questions about what you said. That is a done deal.

While you can file a wrongful death lawsuit against the police, what about the minivan, was it located? Such a lawsuit is difficult to win for too many reasons to go into here and there is no way you can post all the facts here. Please retain counsel. Also look into recent legislation re high speed pursuits, many jurisdicitons have abandonded them because they lead to death and injury of innocent people and not in the public interest.

Have you made a complaint to internal affairs?

http://boards.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/[email protected]^[email protected]/329

Maureen ***** - 07:25pm Sep 28, 2003 (119. 249/485)

Child Verses Police

I live in Oregon. My Daughter Kalena was riding on the back of her boyfriends motorcycle. They just left a local coffee house in Hillsboro, Oregon(Washington county), with two other couples on motorcycles. A police officer from Washington County stopped my daughter and her boyfriend while they were in Multnomah County(the other motorcycles kept going). The police officer did not get out of his car to talk with my daughter or her boyfriend who was the driver, he instead pulled along side them and told my daughter's boyfriend to follow him, as he was chasing the other two motorcycles at a high speed. My daughter and her boyfriend at some point stopped, I am assuming because of the excess speed, they stopped following the officer and turned around to head back home. The police officer caught up with the other two motorcyclists and sat there chatting with them for the next 25 minutes, he then hears on the radio that there was an accident down the road. My daughter and her boyfriend were killed August 29, 2003. It doesn't make sense to me that a Police Officer hired to Pretect and Serve our community would be relieved of any wrong doing. In his statement, he states he never intended to cite anyone! Since this Officer was out of his jurisdiction he couldn't have cited them, he would have had to call and officer from Multnomah County to do that! What was this Officer thinking. My baby girl is gone forever, she would have started Portland State University 09/29/03, this Momday. Is there anything I can do? Any advise would be welcome in trying to make sense of this senseless act. Thanks so much in advance, MAUREEN LAUTZ

Here is what I think I'm seeing:

Police officer sees motorcycles pass by ... officer catches up to one motorcycle with the couiple on it and he tells them to follow him as he tries to catch up to the other pair of motorcycles ... officer zips ahead and loses original couple who turn around and cease to follow the officer ... officer catches up with other pair of motorcycles and is chatting with them when word of the collision with the original couple on the motorcycle comes out.

First, it seems obvious that at least the second pair of motorcycles was speding. If not, how could he have only caught the first couple and not all three motorcycles?

Second, there had to be some reason the officer was headed after these folks - I guess speeding, but I don't know.

The issue of the officer being out of his primary jurisdiction is moot. If a violation was observed in his jurisdiction he can cite as normal regardless of where the stop was made. And if the officer's city was in the same county then he could likely cite even if the violation occurred outside his jurisdiction. The days of Smokey and the Bandit and jurisdiction ending at the city limit sign is pretty much overwith.

The key here is going to be whether or not "custody" resulted from the officer's apparent direction to the couple to follow him. It can be argued that they acquiesced (at least originally) to his direction and thus they were lawfully detained or even in temporary custody. However, it can also be argued that their actions were voluntary and thus no special relationship had occurred as the officer never said they were under arrest or made an effort to relocate them after they turned away from following him.

While this whole incident is sad and tragic, I see the issue of liability toward the officer or his agency being difficult to make. The time delay between his initial contact and the accident makes it hard to establish the special relationship required to show that the officer was responsible for their safety at that point. All because the officer's direction may have put them on a street a few blocks from where they might not have otherwise been, that does not mean he has liability. If I were to give directions to a paserby that took them around a corner and into the path of a speeding semi truck, I'm not liable because I gave those directions ... unless I suspected they might get whacked.

I am terribly sorry for your loss. But, unless I read the situation wrong, the officer was not responsible for your daughter and her boyfriend at the time of the collision. Thus he is not likely to be held responsible. Had they been following immediately behind him then I can see that there might be a case ... but they had turned away and were no longer within the officer's spehere of influence. The special relationship issue via the apparent detention would seem to be the only tie to liability for the officer, but that is a tenuous one at best.


- Carl

I would like to thank all the intelligible readers who have taken time out of their busy schedules to review my post. Carl, I appreciate your input. I am not a cop hater. The whole situation has been complicated. The reports from the officer involved have so many conflicting statements and they don’t match the dispatch records. It is like putting a puzzle together with many missing pieces. I drove up to Portland and took pictures of the mini van, which does show silver paint transfer and several dents which would appear to be the approximate dimensions, size, height, etc., of the motorcycle. The van driver stated he was in an accident about a week after the motorcycle accident but didn’t report it. The motorcycle had red color traces on it, the van was maroon . . . The motorcycle has since been disposed of so we can’t distinguish if the red coloring is from the van or perhaps blood. I do need to add, we received information from a person in law enforcement ( not his department, but close by) that the officer involved never stopped the kids, instead he came around the corner at a high rate of speed and hit the kids. There are no dispatch records of the first stop. The officer didn’t have a citation book for the county he supposedly stopped the kids in, therefore, he couldn’t have cited them. The officer sped to the end of the road which is on a hill, and he found the other motorcycles sitting there waiting for the third motorcycle to arrive. The officer stood at the hill talking to the other riders for 25 minutes about the airport and good places for them to ride their bikes before heading back down the hill and came upon the accident scene. I don’t think the officer ever intended to cite anybody, and he was just out for a ride himself. I know you only get bits and pieces. I have stacks of reports and materials and I am too involved to see clearly I guess. Thank you again, Mo

racer72: You need not reply. I suggest you spend more time trying to acquire new business as a paralegal with a bad attitude instead of spending so much valuable time analyzing a persons grammar. Alimentary canal, look that one up!

So ... your allegation is that the officer hit the couple?

Conflicting statements or not, unless the officer was detaining them at the time of the collision the nexus between his alleged initial contact and a collision quite some time later is nebulous at best.

EDIT: I think I may have misread your post about the car and the corner - I think you were refering to the van and not the police car. But, I still must be missing something - how is the officer responsible for a collision that occurred away from his location?

- Carl