Hernandez v. City of Huntington Beach

Case Name: Hernandez v. City of Huntington Beach

Type of Case: Excessive Force, wrongful death

Court: Orange County

Judge(s): Judge Melissa R. McCormick

Defense Lawyers: Manning & Kass, Ellrod, Ramirez, Trester LLP, Eugene P. Ramirez; Huntington Beach city attorney's office, Michael E. Gates

Plaintiff Lawyers: Law Offices of Dale K. Galipo

The plaintiff called the witness, who arguably was key to a jury's decision giving the city of Huntington Beach a defense verdict in a lawsuit over a fatal police shooting.

The defense hadn't planned on calling the witness, the coroner who examined the decedent's body, according to City Attorney Michael Gates. And when she did testify, it took Gates and co-counsel Eugene Ramirez a little while to grasp the importance of what she said.

The lawsuit involved the March 2017 shooting of a man named Steven Schiltz, who police found running wildly around the city's sports complex one busy evening chasing adults and children. At times, he was armed with a large, sharpened stick and a broken bottle. Two police officers tried to de-escalate the situation. But when Schiltz ran up a short set of aluminum bleachers to stand behind a mother clutching her small child and then leaned over as if about to attack her, the officers fired, striking him four times, including once in the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The man's mother sued the city, alleging excessive force and negligence in her son's wrongful death. Hernandez v. City of Huntington Beach, 30-2020-01137506 (O.C. Super. Ct., filed March 4, 2020).

The trial ran two or three days a week through most of February last year. What turned out to be crucial evidence was where the officers, man and woman and child were relative to one another.

The set of bleachers only had five rows of benches, Gates said. The young woman and child were seated on the third row when the man ran up the steps, turned quickly around and stood behind her on the foot portion of the fourth row. The two officers were standing on the ground 10 or 15 feet away and had to raise their guns at a slight angle to aim toward him.

When the coroner testified, Gates said it puzzled him that she kept emphasizing that all the bullets entered Schlitz's body on a downward trajectory. He and Ramirez discussed her testimony in the evening. They realized that the only way that could have happened was if Schlitz had been bent sharply down in an attack position. Questioned further the next day, the coroner agreed.

After several days of deliberation, the jurors then asked to have the coroner's and an officer's testimony read back. "Then an hour after that ... they came back with a defense verdict," Ramirez said.

After the verdict, jurors told the two attorneys that the bullet trajectory was dispositive for them, Gates said.

"Had the plaintiff's attorney never called [the coroner], and we hadn't called her, the case could've had a totally different outcome," Gates said.

The mother's attorney, Dale Galipo, did not respond to an email asking him to comment on the case. He has not filed an appeal.

-- Don DeBenedictis