I’m trying to catch up on writing about important Washington Supreme Court cases, so today I’m going back to a decision from January 28, 2021. In Mancini v. City of Tacoma, the court held 8-1 that under state law police officers can be sued for the negligent execution of a search warrant. This case is a great example of how state courts, operating under state law, can do things differently than the federal courts. It is also a great example of perseverance by the plaintiff and her attorney.
Case Background
An officer received a tip about a large quantity of drugs at a suspect’s apartment and that the apartment was rented in the suspect’s mother’s name. The officer performed an online public records search of the suspect and the apartment, and going only by the age and race of the person in that apartment and the tip from the informant, the officer sought a search warrant for that apartment. He did no surveillance of the apartment. He did not conduct a controlled buy in the target apartment to independently verify that it was the correct apartment.
And as a result—spoiler alert—the officer got the wrong apartment.
Eight police officers arrived on January 5, 2011 to execute the search warrant. An officer knocked and announced their presence, and after about 20-30 seconds of receiving no response, they broke down the door with a battering ram and entered with their guns drawn.
The occupant of the apartment, plaintiff Kathleen Mancini, described being awakened “by a ‘terrible shake and a loud boom’ and “she thought it was an earthquake.” She came out of her bedroom in a nightgown “to a ‘sea of black, men in black’ with guns pointed at her.” They yelled at her to get down “and asked, ‘Where’s [the suspect]?’ and ‘Are you Kathleen?’” Mancini was pushed to the floor and cuffed with her hands behind her back. Police then “dragged” her outside of the apartment in nothing but her nightgown, refusing to allow her to put on shoes.
Officers questioned her about the suspect. They walked her up the stairs to the parking lot and asked about the vehicle that belonged to the suspect. She told them it was associated with a neighboring building. Eventually, the police uncuffed her and told her they had the wrong apartment. It’s unclear exactly how long she was handcuffed, but it could have been around 15 or so minutes. The majority opinion notes that the police report omitted the time they left Mancini’s apartment and the time they first contacted the suspect, making it impossible to know how long the officers were at Mancini’s.
The officers went to the suspect’s apartment, knocked on the door, and he came out. He consented to a search and the officers found marijuana plants growing in his apartment. Police seized the drugs and other items from the suspect’s apartment and took him to the station for questioning. They did not detain him and released him pending further investigation.
The Litigation
You may have noticed that the date of the raid on the plaintiff’s apartment was in 2011. Given the opinion came out 10 years after the raid, almost to the day, you may have guessed that this was not the case’s first trip to the appellate courts. And if you did guess that, you are correct!
Mancini sued the City of Tacoma and the Tacoma Police Department for negligence, false imprisonment, assault and battery, invasion of privacy, and other torts. The case was initially dismissed by the trial court who ruled the City did not owe a duty to Mancini under the public duty doctrine. In 2015, the Court of Appeals reversed, holding the public duty doctrine was inapplicable to the City’s common law duties because municipalities are liable in tort to the same extent private individuals are.
The case was eventually tried to a jury. The City moved for a directed verdict after Mancini’s case in chief. The trial court denied the motion. The jury found for Mancini on her negligence claim and for the City on her other claims, and awarded her $250,000 in damages for the negligent police raid.
The City appealed, and in 2019, the Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the claim as tried to the jury was for negligent investigation, which was not a cognizable claim under Washington law.
Supreme Court Decision
One of the big battles throughout this case was the battle to characterize plaintiff’s claims. The defense took great pains to try to narrowly characterize her claims as “negligent investigation of law enforcement” because there was Court of Appeals case law stating that claim does not exist under Washington law.
The Supreme Court rejected that characterization, noting negligent investigation was not alleged in the plaintiff’s complaint and the jury was not instructed on negligent investigation. And the jury did not return a special verdict finding negligent investigation.
Instead, Mancini alleged that the police were negligent in the performance of their duties in general. In answering the question whether police officers could be liable for negligent execution of a warrant, the court pointed to a case from 2019, also against the City of Tacoma, where the court held that the common law duty of reasonable care applies to officers and “encompasses the duty to refrain from directly causing harm to another through affirmative acts of misfeasance.” The court surveyed several other cases, noting that the state courts have long recognized the potential for tort liability based on the negligent performance of law enforcement activities.
Based on that history, the court had no trouble concluding the City could be liable for negligent execution of a search warrant. And it had no trouble concluding substantial evidence supported the jury verdict:
At trial, Mancini introduced evidence that the police raided her apartment, pointed guns at her, forced her to the ground, handcuffed her, took her outside barefoot in a nightgown, in January, and left her handcuffed for up to 15 minutes. She also presented contrasting evidence of the peaceful manner by which police contacted [the suspect’s] actual apartment, despite justifying their initial raid by rating [the suspect] a potentially armed “medium threat.” The evidence, taken in the light most favorable to Mancini, offered the jury multiple avenues to find that police breached their duty of care. A rational juror could have found that police breached the door unreasonably quickly after knocking and receiving no response, that police took an unreasonable amount of time to realize they had the wrong apartment, that the police unreasonably continued their search of Mancini’s apartment after realizing they had hit the wrong door, or that the police unreasonably left Mancini handcuffed long after realizing she had no relation to their suspect—or any combination of these facts. Given the general claim of negligence and the general verdict form on this claim, any of the above would support the trial court’s decision.
The court noted that while the plaintiff did argue the police were negligent in conducting their investigation, arguments are not evidence, and the jury could reasonably find liability for negligent warrant execution.
Finally, the court explicitly stated it was not deciding the question of whether police may be separately liable for the tort of “negligent investigation.” I’m guessing that case will be coming down the pike before too long.
So, 10 long years after that traumatic experience, Kathleen Mancini can finally, hopefully start to put this whole experience behind her. She deserves great credit, as does her lawyer, Lori Haskell, for never giving up.