Ann Price v. County of San Diego
Published: May 30, 1998 | Result Date: Jan. 9, 1998 | Filing Date: Jan. 1, 1900 |Case number: 941917 Bench Verdict – $0
Judge
Court
USDC Southern District of California
Attorneys
Plaintiff
Defendant
Ricky R. Sanchez
(Office of the San Diego County Counsel)
Experts
Plaintiff
Richard D. Jones
(Jones Mayer)
(medical)
Lou Reiter
(technical)
Janet Goldfarb
(medical)
James Copley
(technical)
Richard Sobel
(medical)
Robert R. McFarlane
(medical)
Robert R. Trout
(technical)
Donald Reay
(medical)
Defendant
Shelly Cochlin
(medical)
Thomas S. Neuman
(medical)
Elmer J. Pellegrino
(technical)
Joseph Shannon
(medical)
M. Daniel Close
(technical)
Facts
On June 28, 1994, Poway Sheriff's deputies confronted the decedent, a 35-year-old unemployed man, whom they deemed violent, and placed him in a four-point restraint (commonly referred to as a hogtie). The decedent lost consciousness after he was hogtied, then died two days later at a local hospital. The hospital's pulmonary consultant opined that the decedent's death was cardiac arrest possibly due to exertion and methamphetamine ingestion. The medical examiner's autopsy report concluded that the decedent died from positional asphyxia caused by the application of the hogtie. The plaintiffs, the decedent's wife, parents and two minor children, brought this wrongful death action against the defendant for excessive use of force in violation of the 4th Amendment, battery, and negligence. The plaintiff also sued the county and the sheriff then in office for municipal federal civil rights violation, and negligent training and supervision for permitting its deputies to use the hogtie and not training the deputies about the restraint's purported asphyxial risk.
Settlement Discussions
The plaintiffs made a settlement demand for $1.4 million. (Per defendant, the plaintiff demanded $4 million.) The defendants made no settlement offers.
Specials in Evidence
$20,000 $583,664 (present value), $7,500 for funeral expenses
Injuries
Death of husband/father.
Other Information
The verdict was reached approximately three years and one month after the case was filed. The plaintiff appealed, but dismissed the appeal in return for a waiver of costs. EXPERT TESTIMONY: Prior to trial, at defense counsel's request, the University of California San Diego Medical Center conducted a scientific study to determine the effects the prone hogtie restraint had upon pulmonary gas exchange function. The study "Custody Restraint Position and Positional Asphyxia," conclusively determined that the prone hogtie position does not cause asphyxia, i.e., the restraint position neither causes a decrease in arterial blood oxygen levels, nor an increase in blood carbon dioxide levels. The study also provided the first air flows measurements for persons in the prone hogtie position. The study was published in the November 1997 issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine. An abstract of the study was published in the May 1997 issue of Academic Emergency Medicine, vol. 4, no. 5. Before the UCSD study was available, plaintiffs' medical expert, Dr. Donald Reay, the originator of the hogtie-positional asphyxia hypothesis, opined at deposition that Price's death was caused by positional asphyxia due to application of the hogtie in the prone position. At trial, and in light of the UCSD study, he retracted his hypothesis and acknowledged that the hypothesis was medically fallacious. Reay then testified that the prone hogtie position was a physiologically neutral position with no adverse physiological effects.
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