the doctrine of qualified immunity applies to both of the federal claims he some big bad guy police officers why why can't you guys just resolve this I mean it seems like you're spending a lot of money fighting this when you're not fighting for some Grand principle here so this court takes any other case where at the scene of an emergency a police officer arrested someone who's attending to someone medically for that reason alone that's a simple reason why the qualified immunity test for the second prong of the qualified immunity test to apply here or it could be that it's just such an outrageous thing to do that nobody's ever DED welcome back to the lackluster channel in February of 2014 volunteer firefighter Jacob greguar responded to an accident on the interstate as an engineer his duties consisted of pumping water to fires maintaining equipment on board the engine and overall safety of the crew while responding to an incident okay I don't have time for a cell phone this is ridiculous CHP is arresting engineer Greg for where he spotted the fire engine a CHP officer handcuffs a Chula Vista firefighter on the scene of a crash and tonight we're hearing the reaction over the radio as the incident escalated CHP will not give us information about who this officer is or if he's been reprimanded for cuffing a firefighter during a rollover accident in Chula Vista last night on the 8805 near Telegraph Canyon road in East Orange Avenue Gregoire positioned the engine to block uncoming traffic creating a pocket to protect emergency personnel and the victims on scene but when a CHP officer arrived late he immediately began instructing firefighters to move their apparatus to get the highway open once again firefighters say they park at an angle to protect emergency crews patients and drivers while two other fire engines left the scene Greg W says he refused to leave because his rig was acting as a buffer protecting the ambulance from traffic in the middle of patient care engineer gregar refused citing safety concerns which led to the officer arresting him for obstruction it's unbelievable you have to do this unbel treat us like this we're on the road to help you we asked you to clear the road and you said no and you'll get arrested we're in the middle of patient care with patient on the freeway they're putting him in handcuffs at this time and walking him away he made all firefighters look good in that situ he he was there to protect the citizens and he was willing to take a stand to do that Gregoire was handcuffed and detained for approximately 30 minutes before being released and eventually the officer was identified as Sergio Flores and the CHP stood by their officer actions a local firefighter who was cuffed by the CHP at an accident scene says that he was humiliated inside the CHP Cruiser it was a very odd surreal situation I asked him I said well are you prepared to take care of these two patients and he replied without even thinking those two people are not my problem afterward greguar filed the lawsuit for the wrongful arrest and excessive force because of a bulky uniform and pass shoulder pain he asked officer Flores to loosen the Cuffs I said I'm not going anywhere can you please just loosen the Cuffs click they got a little bit Tire Greg W says when he asked again the officer laughed at him officer Sergio Torres claimed that he was entitled to qualified immunity because making the unlawful arrest was a reasonable mistake he would also argue that handcuffing an arreste was not excessive force however in the lawsuit gregar claimed that on two occasions he had asked the officer to loosen the cuffs and both times the officer tightened them instead Greg says he's filed a legal claim against the CHP and state because it's clear the incident is being swept under the rug his attorney Dan Gillian says he's on covered a documented 2010 incident involving officer Flores threatening another firefighter with arrest there's people within the department that I think want to hide certain facts and that's the problem aside from those claims the issue of whether or not officer Flores had probable cause to arrest and place Greg waren cuffs was in question as well in a motion for summary judgment The District Court found that the officer's arrest of Greg War for obstructing the officer duties was not justified given that greguar was acting within his duties As A Firefighter to ensure the scene of the accident was safe the Court ruled that no reasonable officer would believe it was lawful to arrest a firefighter acting in that capacity qualified immunity did not apply and thus officer Flores appealed the decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Deputy Attorney General Robert MGI from the California Attorney General's office uh here on behalf of defendants appellant California Highway Patrol and officer Sergio Flores may it please the court this is a qualified immunity case and the court should find that the doctrine of qualified immunity applies to both of the federal claims in this action I'm going to start today by talking about the arrest claim and then I'll move on to the excessive force claim and if there's any time remaining uh I'll address the uh the issue of jurisdiction over the state law claims so starting first with the question of qualif ifed immunity for the arrest uh there are three independent reasons why this court can reverse the lower court uh but the most straightforward is the second prong of the qualified immunity test here we have two competing interests on the part of the fire department and uh PL of greguar uh there was a competing there was an interest in uh management of the scene in terms of taking care of the patients who are present on the scene that's their perspective From chp's perspective there's a substantial there's a very important competing interest in protecting passing motorists who are going by a freeway that's partially blocked by fire engines and by uh by a squad car and by an ambulance uh from subsequent accidents uh being injured or being killed on a busy freeway at night so we have these two competing incident two competing interests and against that we have a set of State statutes that don't explain what consultation means and they don't explain which of these competing in interest predominates well doesn't the that case the County of San Bernardino versus city of San Bernardino kind of outline who's in charge of what in terms of emergency scene operations yes and the statutes give a general outline clear that um that the um police are in charge of the scene management but medical personnel are in charge of patient care decisions right yes but the specific provision that issue there comes down to C uh to health and safety code 1798.83 they all seem to say that he was actually attending physically to a patient when he was arrested by Flor yes uh but it is also Undisputed that uh in the in the words of the the lower court that uh flor's officer flor's face concerned about second secondary accidents and there are disputed I mean there are Undisputed facts uh which established that officer Flores talked to the firefighters and officer kunga talked to the firefighters which officer Flores is overheard so this court takes PL any other case where at the scene of an emergency a police officer arrested someone who's attending to someone medically uh I'm not aware of a of a reported case um and for that reason alone the second prong of the qualified immunity test applies here there have been situations I believe factually I'm not sure this record don't tell us things outside the record I'm just saying if you ever seen is there any other case that you know is out there we're not of any we're not aware of any case that has addressed a situation even remotely like this your honor and for that reason alone that's a simple reason why the qualified immunity test for the second prong of the qualified immunity test to apply here or it could be that it's just such an outrageous thing to do that nobody's ever done it uh so your honor refers to the the obviousness exception to a qualified immunity uh this court has recently defined obviousness as uh conduct so flagrantly on lawful that few dare its attempt uh this case defies obviousness because we have a state statute which contains an inherent contradiction um when you have an EMT who's cond doing who's engaging in their duties and that EMT is arguably in conflict with a CHP officer engaging in their duties who wins we don't know the California state statutes don't explain that we're not aware of any case law that explains that so it's hard to say that this is so flagrant ly unlawful because there's no explanation for what qualifies as unlawful were there ever charges brought against Gregor no there were no charges brought against Mr gregar uh so going back to the obviousness question very very quickly uh if there were definition of consultation and there were case law on that particular case law from the circuit then we might get into an obviousness zone or if there were obviousness applied in excessive force cases involving extreme examples of excessive force that's just not the situation uh that we have here uh and it is it is an open question whose interest predominates if you have a patient on the ground and someone attending to them and a concern which is Undisputed and recognized by the lower court that the next person's going to ram into the back of one of these vehicles that's blocking the freeway and get injured or killed you know who gets priority we we don't know CHP doesn't know firefighters don't know and there that's why they're supposed to consult about it but we don't have a definition of consult either so how does that get figured out when we have all of these questions which cannot be answered doesn't mean arrest I I agree with that but consult one regular definition of consult is to seek information or advice from that's a pretty pretty plain language um definition of consult if you use that definition that's what happened officer kungo went and talked to the firefighters asked them to move their trucks they didn't he asked them why are you not moving them they gave their explanation under that plain language definition consultation would have happened within the meeting of the statute but we don't even have that here we don't know if that's good enough or not and a CHP officer in a developing situation on the ground who has to make some quick decisions in the interest of Public Safety uh needs to have some discretion to make a decision that we might afterwards say was not Prudential um that's what qualified imunity does it protects our discretion in these rapidly evolving situations uh and sometimes in the application of 2020 hindsight we may say that may not have been the most advisable thing to do but again 2020 hindsight doesn't apply to the situation here so Colunga went and talked to the firefighters but Flores didn't well Flores also spoke to Mr greguar but he it's Undisputed that he further overheard kunga speaking to the firefighters and specifically asking them you know hey why have you not yet moved these fire trucks and the explanation was uh the explanation was that they were engaged in patient care although I don't think that's technically part of the record I think it's in can be inferred that it's part of the record and that's certainly what uh G gor is right yes and his two witnesses yes that is plain as version of the of the facts but it's also Undisputed that California Highway Patrol had a competing interest in protecting passing motorists from getting into a severe accident why didn't they just get the keys and move the fire truck ah so that's a that's a good question uh it turns out the only person who is qualified to move the fir truck and no one found this out until after the arrest happened was uh Mr gregar Captain Albright himself uh later said I believe around the same time that he was not qualified to move the fire truck seems like there's a well I don't want to go into it but anyway go on time did you want to save I I have a I have a okay did you go I have a question for Council if I may let's put the arrest aside for a moment moment and let's say I assume that there's not clearly established law and someone's got a be the captain in that situation and and so the uh the plan of loes still how how can it be justified on the excessive force claim for police to put like a an EMT in handcuffs which also were alleged to be two Ty I mean as I looked at this it looked like an an unusual case of two two good guys getting in in a dispute a cop and an EMT but if if the dispute required an arrest why did the why did the police put the EMT greguar into cuffs so again we're getting to the distinction between what is uh within the scope of discretion and what is credential uh looking back at the situ we may say it was not credential or advisable to put a firefighter into into handcuffs um but it is standard practice everywhere during the course of an arrest to place the person in handcuffs uh officer Flores did not know at the time whether this individual he was placing under arrest would behave like a normal individual under arrest or would respond with a substantial amount of adrenaline so he did the standard procedure which is to place that person in handcuffs uh as to the the tightening of the handcuffs again the best answer here comes from the second prong of the qualified immunity test uh we again we don't have a case on point which deals with this specific situation which is we have to remember two important facts one is that there was no physical injury it's Undisputed that uh gregar was not harmed he didn't have any bruises nothing the other uh the other fact that's important to recognize here is um uh plaintiff says oh you know he asked for the handcuffs to be tightened and they were or he asked for be loosened loosened and they were just tightened that's actually not what the record shows uh the page one of the pages cited by plff uh record n at 93 um is an admission by plff where he asked for them to be loosened then they were locked which had the effect of making them tighter so we have these we have these two interesting features uh handcuffs requested to be loosened but which were tighten to a point short of causing injury and plth admits they were locked which is a procedure to prevent them from causing injury could is it Beyond debate that every single reasonable officer would know that you can't do that based on existing law no um and in fact there are some situations where a reasonable officer might think that handcuffs which can be tightened to some point short of causing injury should be tightened so again we don't have a case on point and um this is one of those eras we might not it might not be advisable to have a case on point because we're dealing with excessive force in the sense of the minimum amount for excessive force you need to have a viable claim not a not an extreme case of an ex excessive force like a you know shooting or something like that and we're getting very close to traing all over the legitimate scope of Officer discretion and we want to avoid a situation where the you know the hand the manual of handcuffing procedure is written entirely by the Judiciary so as a as a credential matter here uh when there's no injury when we have no cases which which are in all fours all threes all twos with this um then the safest thing to do is say the second prong of the qualified immunity test applies and council is there evidence in the record supporting the point you made in response to my question saying that all officers put people at handcuffs whenever they make an arrest uh I I believe that's a there's there aren't there is an Evidence in the record that I'm aware of um that I can cite off hand but I believe that is a well recognized principal in uh in this uh circuit's Juris prudence and I I believe it's in the the statement also appears in one of the cited cases I think it's low W I'm blanking on the specific case site I'm under three minutes so I'd like to reserve the rain of my time for if I may you may thank you thank [Music] you good morning your honors judge Gould uh my name is Jeremy Robinson I represent the uh Pelle Jacob grear in this case you're honest you had mentioned at the beginning of uh my colleague's argument that this is a case involving a lot of disputed facts and I think that's one of the key things that needs to be kept in mind when looking at the District Court's ruling here um one of the problems I believe with the the chp's argument is that it tends to flow from their version of what they think happened and they then take that and say well under our version of these facts we're entitled to qualify immunity but of course the opposite is what you're actually supposed to do at this stage and so you have to start from the premise that we're working from Mr Greg War's version of The Facts my understanding of this is that the Mr um officer Flores could still be entitled to qualified immunity depending on what facts are found by the jury um if if I'm understanding your question correctly it is possible yes that the case could be tried to the jury and depending on what factual findings the jury makes officer Flores could be title entitled to qualified immunity but it's also possible that the jury could make a finding a fact where he would not be entitled to qualified immunity which is why the summary judgment the disputed facts at this stage correct correct uh yes that's that's exactly true so I I think you know the the legal issue that they've raised relates to the clearly established part of the qualified immunity analysis and this it was just sort of mentioned in passing in the district court it wasn't really even made an issue there but they've made it an issue on this appeal so I wanted to address that part of it but I do think you because the law and the Supreme Court has continually told us that we have to look at these specific factual parameters and not just sort of a a broad brush of what happened and it's important to get a few facts out there from Mr Gregor's perspective um the first being that he was by his admission and by several other people's admission engaged in patient care at the time that this happened Mr Flores officer Flores and officer maybe officer colia say that they they didn't see that but we take that as true for the purpose of this particular situation um in addition officer Flores had placed a flare pattern behind his car which he had parked behind the fire trucks and the ambulance on the freeway so he had already established a a protective Zone Behind these uh to eliminate or at least minimize the risk that someone was going to crash into the back of the fire trucks and there was some dispute about whether the ambulance was in the freeway or not in the freeway but again Captain Albright says that he believes that it was we we take that as accepted at this time so the one of the critical components which my colleague mentioned is he believed there was some level of of consultation between officer kunga and maybe to a left lesser extent officer Flores and the fire department but the record does not reflect that unless you consider consultation to be I command you to move your truck that's essentially the level of consultation that there was if you look at officer colunga's uh declaration and that is I have it in here just a second um that's page uh 180 of the the excerpts of record and I'm looking at page 183 he said I had conversations with members of the other two fire Crews to ask them to move their trucks into the center median that's the extent of the consultation I mean I know my colleague said he maybe asked them why they didn't move their trucks and there was some colloquy about that but there's no record of that that's that's not part of our record on appeal here essentially we counil judge if I could ask you a question yes uh along the lines of what I asked your friend on the other side of the case is there any Authority pre-existing some case law that says that if we had the situation where one uh I'll call him a good guy then EMT is doing some Medical Care at an accident but a police officer a second Good Guys is on the scene and has to try to keep traffic lanes open uh for purposes of of avoiding another accident is there any law that says in those circumstances the uh police officer has to defer to the to the EMT if the emt's work working on our patience there is no case on point on that I think both sides will will agree to that point what our position is is that the statutes themselves are clear and unambiguous in this particular fact pattern again when you're looking at the facts as they are construed in most favorable terms to Mr greguar because the statutes do require they say shall consult they require some level of consultation by the CHP or whoever is in charge with the emergency medical technicians before making some decisions that affect patient care so there may be some gray areas out there where there was a consultation and there was some disagreement between the people about whether the you know who gets priority things of that sort I I can see there may be some circumstances but I don't think this is one of them because there wasn't any consultation so if you just look at the terms of the statutes themselves they're not ambiguous on that point and I don't think you need a case to have address that particular circumstance to understand the statutes and and I should point out officer uh Flores himself references these statutes as as a basis for making his arrest so there's no claim that he was mistaken about the law or he didn't understand or that they weren't clear and he wasn't sure exactly what he was supposed to be doing so your case rests on the the shell consult and your vers and your version of the fact is that he didn't consult and that's a clear mandatory Duty under the statute and the defense is that he did consult so that's what the battle is going to be about at trial that's certainly a big part of it I mean I I can't speak for them for their defense but that appears to be the position they're taking um they their their briefs suggest that they believe he did what was required under the statute um by way of some formal consultation is there any definition of consult or we just look at the ordinary meaning of consult in this case I think you can look at the ordinary meaning of consult and and in fact I would be happy to accept their definition of it because he defined it as requesting information from or or talking you know getting information from and again if you look at the the facts the Declarations there was no exchange of information with officer kunga he didn't say okay you know I have this concern I understand you all are taking care of patients but I'm also worried about this other circumstance we need to work this out let's try to figure out what's the best thing to do they could have probably had someone else attend to the patient while uh Gregor moved the truck if that was probably yes other firefighters there right yes there were there were other firefighters there and other EMTs there um other paramedics there yes um so it it sure they they could have made that kind of an arrangement to have someone else take over what Mr Gregor was doing and have Mr Gregor move the truck out of the way but that's not how the facts actually unfold it again just sort of to reiterate officer kunga by his own testimony said I I came over and I said move the trucks out of the way I'm you know they're block these Lanes there was no back and forth about information again of you know I understand there's priorities and let's work this out get your trucks out of here officer Flores overheard that and there was no consultation by him either he didn't say Okay I I heard officer kunga talking to you you know let's let's try to figure out how we can get this done I I'm worried about this he said move your truck that's it curiosity question how did FL how did Flores know Gregor was the guy that asked to move the truck he originally asked Captain Albright who was also on the truck whose truck is this um and Captain Albright said well it's our truck um and Mr Gregor is is the driver he's the engineer of the truck so um officer Flores then knew that Gregor was the person to tell to command to move the truck okay and what what fire department was this which city it wasn't s San Diego was it no no the city of tul La Vista it's a city South San Diego County it's a smaller City correct correct yes this was outside the city of San Diego territorial bounds but council could you at some point uh please address the excessive force issue I wondered if if you agreed with your uh colleague on the other side of the case that anytime there's an arrest it's reasonable to handcuff somebody I don't agree with that um and I would would challenge them to come up with something that says that's the case um there's nothing in the record statements by anyone declarations by experts anything else like that that would suggest that every time someone is arrested they're put in handcuffs I mean I I'm not an expert in police procedure myself but that seems unreasonable to me um and again I I haven't seen anything in the record on this case that says that's the way the police normally operate and in fact Mr Gregor said you know let's let's work this out after officer Flores said I'm going to have to arrest you Mr Gregor said can't can't we just work this out um and Flores said no put the handcuffs on him um and and put him in the car and I will note there was my colleague said something about the the tightening of the handcuffs and he referenced one section in the uh the ER but there's another section 140 to 141 this is the deposition of Mr greguar where he said um you know what did what did Officer Flores do after you you asked him uh if he could loosen the handcuffs and Greg War said he tightened them that's page 140 of the ER so there's clear testimony from Mr Gregor that he believed at least from his perception that the handcuffs were tightened and we did cite several cases you know if you want to talk about clearly established law there's several cases that say tightening of handcuffs when it's not justified can qualify as excessive force I don't think that's really a disputed point of law I don't think you need a specific case that says if a police officer CHP officer arrests a firefighter and tightens the handcuffs that can be excessive force I think you can extrapolate the general principle that that's going to be excessive force in this circumstance so again I I don't agree with the idea that this is ordinary procedure and I haven't seen anything in this case or elsewhere that suggests that it is uh I'm getting short on time so the the one other aspect I wanted to very briefly address um you know the the state has appealed all of the state law causes of action related to this claim as well and as as we've argued I don't believe this court um should exercise jurisdiction to consider those claims this is an interlocutory appeal on qualified immunity it's not an appeal after a final judgment where those things are generally going to be thought of and the test for qualified immunity and the test for liability under the Bane act uh civil code 52.1 or assault in battery things like that are different so resolving the qualified immunity issue doesn't resolve those particular claims and so I would say regardless of of the outcome on that that the court should remand the state law claims um so I I believe it looks like my time is about up um again on the qualified immunity just to get back to the arrest very briefly I believe the law is clear by Statute we don't need a case that's addressed this particular circumstance I'll I'll admit there isn't one but the statute itself says that you have to do this consultation again there may be some circumstances where that becomes confusing or an issue this case is not one of them there was no consultation at all no consultation does not equal some consultation under any stru um so with that I I'll take a seat unless there are any questions curiosity question yes CHP is like a state police officer they're the they're the top guns right and correct fire department was Chul La Vista yes that's they're the little guys they are the little guys these are some big bad guy police officers use bad guy their wrong context I'm sure they're the they're the they're the head hunchos on this scene so to speak and that's the way they acted from your from your perspective right that our perspective yes is correct that officer Flor as basically marched on the scene he didn't he didn't talk to officer kunga at all you know they they referenced this Collective ACP too kunga CHP also right so Colunga gets there first he tells a couple people to move their trucks they do he tells a couple more people to move their trucks they don't Flores overhears that he Marches On and says get your trucks out of here doesn't talk to Colunga doesn't ask them uh you know what are you doing with the patients can how can we get this done he just he overhears that and he immediately takes command and says move get out I'm in control and that's the end all right so I'm going to take my seat you dispute his characterization of which part your honor of of the CHP being the big guys on the Block and they acted like it uh I I dispute actually actually no I think they do have a different set of interests I think they do have a different perspective on on the scene and uh and the nature of the risk to pass motorists that a a reasonable firefighter might might have a different perspective on I think that as between reasonable CHP officers reasonable firefighters I think they are going to look at it in different ways uh Council referred a lot to disputed facts we're not relying on disputed facts or disputed issues of fact do you contend that that um that FL is actually consulted with um Gregor not exactly we're not saying that he consulted or didn't consult because that would be a disputed issue of fact what we're saying is based on the Undisputed facts uh that's fact 63 appell at record 59 fact 64 appell at record 59 also that he overheard officer kunga talking to them right right but doesn't he have a mandatory Duty under that one statute that says he shall consult to consult yes and what we're what we're saying is a does you have to prove at trial that he consulted no we don't because it just has to be clear to every single reasonable officer Beyond debate that that was not consultation to lose qualified immunity or stated differently uh as long as as long as a reasonable officer could think you believe that that was consultation okay that's what you have to show yes and so we don't need to go to trial for reasonable officer could think that ordering the the firefighter to move the truck constituted consultation yes it would have to be Beyond debate and because we don't have a definition of consultation it's not Beyond de can't use the ordinary definition of consultation like just look at the dictionary well if we use the ordinary definition which is to seek information and advice from uh then officer Flores o overheard officer kunga asking the group why they had not yet moved their engine so he's seeking advice from them or not seeking advice seeking information from them which is the normal definition of consultation so a reasonable officer could believe that was consultation whether or not as a factual matter a trial that turned out to be consultation so that that's our Point uh and Council admits there's no case on point here now he says so so you know I'm just curious ious cuz um um judge gold said something that puts this sort of in a perspective for me which is look you guys you're clients are both they're supposed to be cooperating at this scene of this accident to ensure the public safety and the and the uh health of the people involved in the accident um why I can't you guys just resolve this settle this I mean it seems like you're spending a lot of money fighting this when I mean you're not fighting for some Grand principle here you're not opposed to to each other really right this is so we quote Davis ferer in the in the briefing and Davis ferer has a has a good a good answer to that question um and if I may quote uh the officials are subject to a plethora of rules often so voluminous ambiguous and contradictory and in such flux that the officials can only comply with or enforce them selectively in these circumstan officials should not always air on the side of caution these situations develop rapidly it's happening at night there you know there there's a lot of a lot of there's patient care going on there's concern about what's going on in the freeway and there isn't necessarily an opportunity to have the full robust consultation we might want post Hawk so looking at the the scope of discretion here we just have to ask could a reasonable um could a reasonable officer is it Beyond debate that a reasonable officer could have taken these actions well uh yes we have that we have that situation because there's no case law in point as they admit you don't want this disc because so there'll be some cash law on the point do you so this court has discretion to decide the first prong issue as well um under the first prong um because we we say that a reasonable officer could believe that consultation happened that's all you need for probable causes a reasonable belief you don't have to be actually 100% accurate a more credential or more conservative way to handle this would be only under the second prong because as the Supreme Court has warned um highly idiosyncratic factual circumstances do not always create the best law and do not always create the best rules okay Council I have a question for you and I guess my question would go to uh to your friend on the other side of the case as well is there any chance here that if we deferred submission in the case temporarily to let uh both parties decide if they both wanted to mediate uh voluntarily uh that there this case could go away in other words would would your office want us to give that option to the two parties or would you prefer that that the Court gives you a ruling that says when there's a dispute between police and fire Personnel uh one side or the other wins uh your honor we are always interested in taking advantage of ADR options when they may produce a result that's more efficient and in the interests of the people of the State of California I I have understood uh prior statements by a council for Mr Gregoire to state that they would not be interested in um getting rid of this case unless there was a certain um very public very transparent set of sort of rul making activity they may have changed their perspective on that um that's what we've understood from gold is talking about referring you to the ninth circuit mediation unit have you been contacted by them to mediate this case yet or uh so I'm I'm at I'm actually not sure factually the the exact circumstances what happened with the mediation uh the mediation procedure there um because I came to this case uh recently through a change in Council so I apologize for for not knowing that your honors I will again state that we're always interested in ADR ADR options we yeah I I don't I don't I don't know if they contact the parties in every case or not but but your side would be interested in mediation I'm hearing if gregar was also interested yes your honor if if and yes so to be specific deferring the the decision here uh in favor of giving us an opportunity to uh to mediate yes we would be we would be interested um if that if that doesn't happen uh we remain confident that they admit there's no case on point there's no case on point that decides the second prong of the qualified immunity issue um M Mr Robinson would you be interested in uh perhaps participating in mediation before our mediation unit I I I believe so your honor I'm I'm perhaps not the right person to ask about that I'm principally the appellant lawyer but I do understand kind of how the case is proceeded and it is my understanding that there may I mean I I I can't disclose too much in the way of settlement discussions I understand there have been settlement discussions and there may have actually been a mediation already I'm not sure um it was our understanding that the case essentially was settled and again I I don't want to represent something that may or may not be correct but it it's my belief at least that the CHP is the one that has pushed this appeal forward um we we're always interested in settlement talks and and trying to make this go away and I think we've really tried to do that before having to go through all the briefing and everything else like that I I don't know what the appropriate process would be at this stage but yes I I think we would be happy to uh accept deferred briefing or deferred r Council I think the normal type of order that we enter in some cases would be in order to the parties that would ask them to advise if they both wanted to mediate or or we'd have the mediation Office contact the parties and we'd say that submission was deferred until the parties had a time to respond to that and that if they wanted to mediate then we defer submission until the conclusion of the mediation I I believe that'd be absolutely appropriate yes and then when whenever we knew that it wasn't going to be mediated then we'd proceed to develop an issue an opinion yes yes your honor I we would we would be open to that certainly okay all right thank you very much Council thank you your honors um Gregor versus CHP and Flores is um submitted and this session of the court is adjourned for today thank you both the ninth circuit reviewed the case and determined that the District Court's ruling was correct the Court held that qualified immunity did not apply because the law was clearly established that arresting a firefighter for performing his duties at an emergency scene would violate the firefighter's Fourth Amendment rights They concluded that it was well established that Public Safety officials like firefighters have a duty to secure accident scenes for safety purposes and that arresting them under such circumstances would violate their constitutional protections they agreed with the district court that no reasonable officer would have believed that arresting gregar for doing his job was lawful and finally 4 years after the incident and only after the ninth circuit shot down the officer's appeal the CHP settled with greguar for an undisclosed amount instead of continuing to fight the ridiculous case choosing to indemnify officer Flores wasting tens if not hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars worse yet it appears the CHP stood by his side and it was never confirmed whether officer Flores was reprimanded he retired in 2020 but the public never forgot if you need to blow the whistle but must stay Anonymous or you a friend or family member was victim to police misconduct to have your story shared submit it using the link in the pinned comment and description let me know what you think in the comments down below and if you like this video be sure to check out another one linked on your screen [Music]