Southfield, Mich., Fire Chief Johnny Menifee holds a news conference on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020, in Southfield, Mich., in response to questions about a woman, Timesha Beauchamp, who was found alive at a funeral home. A Southfield emergency medical crew said there were no signs of life when they were called to Beauchamp's home on Aug. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Ed White). Inset: Timesha Leshay Beauchamp (via O.H. Pye, III Funeral Home).
A federal appeals court has ruled that first responders were immune from a civil lawsuit accusing them of violating a woman's civil rights by pronouncing her dead when she was actually alive.
Timesha Beauchamp, a 20-year-old Michigan woman with cerebral palsy, was pronounced dead, placed in a body bag, and transported to a funeral home on Aug. 23, 2020. However, when an embalmer opened the body bag, they discovered that Beauchamp was still alive. Beauchamp was taken to a nearby hospital and placed on a ventilator, living for six additional weeks before dying from a brain injury.
After Beauchamp's death, the administrator of her estate sued the City of Southfield, Michigan and the individual emergency medical workers for violating Beauchamp's constitutional rights.
EMTs had been called to Beauchamp's home when Beauchamp's mother, who was also her primary caregiver, found her unresponsive and called 911. Four emergency medical personnel — Michael Storms, Scott Rickard, Phillip Mulligan, and Jake Kroll — responded to the call. They attempted CPR and ventilation, but after resuscitation efforts failed, they declared Beauchamp dead.
There were, however, "numerous medical indicators" that showed Beauchamp was still alive. According to court findings, "her capnography indicated continued respiration, her cardiac monitor showed electrical activity, and her breathing and pulse were perceptible to her family members." Those family members even told the first responders what they were observing, but two EMTs "stuck to their conclusion that Beauchamp was dead, explaining the signs of life as reactions to medication."
As the EMTs were leaving, police officers who had been called to the scene told the EMTs that the family had seen Beauchamp gasp for air, but the first responders said again that Beauchamp's chest movement was merely the result of medication and insisted she was dead. A funeral home employee arrived to remove Beauchamp's body and asked whether the woman really was dead as her chest was still moving, and Beauchamp's mother relayed the medication-related explanation for the movement. The employee then wrapped Beauchamp in a sheet, placed her into a body bag, and took her to the funeral home.
When the embalmer unzipped the body bag, "[they] saw Beauchamp gasping for air with her eyes open and her chest moving up and down." Separate emergency personnel ultimately brought Beauchamp to a hospital where doctors said she had suffered an anoxic brain injury. Beauchamp remained on a ventilator in a vegetative state until she died about six weeks later.
Beauchamp's estate administrator then sued the first responders and the city under federal civil rights law for violating Beauchamp's Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process rights for being "deliberately indifferent to her serious medical need." The plaintiff argued that the first responders' treatment of Beauchamp amount to a "state-created danger" that resulted in "a private act of violence" against Beauchamp.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit heard the case and sided with the defendants in affirming the district court's refusal to allow plaintiffs to amend their complaint for a third time.
George W. Bush appointee U.S. Circuit Judge Julia Gibbons wrote for the panel and rejected the estate's argument on liability on the grounds that no controlling decision supported an interpretation of the facts that would consider the EMT's actions a constitutional violation. The panel also included U.S. Circuit Judges Joan Larsen and Eric Murphy, both appointees of Donald Trump.
In addition to rejecting the substance of the complaint, the panel ruled that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity from the estate's constitutional claims.
Qualified immunity is a highly-criticized judge-created doctrine that shields government officials from liability in civil lawsuits. Unless a plaintiff can show that the right of which they were deprived had already been "clearly established" by case law or statute, that official is immune from the claim. The concept was originally meant to protect formerly enslaved people in the post-Reconstruction era, but has now become the subject of scrutiny from both conservatives and liberals alike.
"It is hard to see how it could be 'clearly established' that the first responders exposed Beauchamp to a private act of violence when they mistakenly believed she was dead and left her in her family's care to be processed for routine funeral proceedings, which included the funeral home employee's act of putting Beauchamp's presumed-dead body into a body bag to transport her to a funeral home," Gibbons wrote.
Ultimately, the panel's ruling made it clear that the court laid blame with the individual actions of the first responders, and not with any state-endorsed policy.
Better training would not have prevented the incident, said Gibbons.
"If anything, the fact that numerous laypersons recognized signs that Beauchamp was still alive suggests that the City could reasonably have expected the First Responders not to pronounce Beauchamp dead without special training on the topic," Gibbons wrote. "In the same vein, the obvious signs of life Beauchamp displayed also undermine the inference that the First Responders would have acted differently had they received more or different training from the City."
Kali Henderson, attorney for Southfield, said in an emailed statement that she was pleased with the ruling.
"It is a correct statement of the law and holds that no law or court has ever given my clients, and responders like them, notice that they can be constitutionally liable for their conduct," Henderson said.
Henderson noted that the holding was consistent in other areas of the law outside the context of qualified immunity and said, "This case should have never been filed in federal court and there were no grounds for it." Henderson added that the state court lawsuit filed in the matter has likewise recently been dismissed,
Counsel for the plaintiff estate did not respond to request for comment.
You can read the full ruling here.
Editor's Note: This piece was updated from its original version to include comment from counsel.
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