The Missouri Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s ruling that stripped a state trooper of immunity.
Initially, Judge John D. Beger allowed Osborn’s injury lawsuit to proceed by denying Missouri Highway Patrol Trooper Mayela Barron official immunity.
“Certainly, qualified immunity has its place in Missouri,” said Rich AuBuchon, executive director of the Missouri Civil Justice Reform Coalition. “It's very well settled law, not only from the federal but also down to the state.”
The underlying lawsuit alleged that Barron was not entitled to immunity because she wasn’t using the patrol car’s lights and sirens when it crashed into the injured plaintiff Justin Osborn’s car in Jan. 2020.
But the state’s highest court unanimously disagreed and upheld Barron’s immunity.
At the time, Barron was pursuing another motorist who had been traveling at a speed on a highway while she was patrolling Howell County, according to media reports.
“The decisions Trooper Barron made when attempting to overtake the truck could have been made in various different ways and were subject to Trooper Barron’s discretion,” the Dec. 6, 2022 opinion stated. “This included the discretion over Trooper Barron’s vehicle’s speed, discretion over her vehicle’s emergency lights, and discretion over her vehicle’s emergency sirens. This Court does not have to determine if Trooper Barron was responding to an emergency, just whether her actions were ministerial.”
Official immunity protects government workers from civil lawsuits when they have allegedly acted wrongly during the performance of their official duties.
As previously reported, in 2021, some 89 civil rights and government accountability groups penned an open letter to Senate leadership asking them to end immunity.
"The judge-made qualified immunity doctrine leaves a gaping hole in federal civil rights laws, frustrating congressional intent to hold government actors accountable for unconstitutional acts," the letter states. "As a result, instead of a system of remedies for misconduct, we have a system that breeds impunity. We cannot hope to rein in abuses of power if courts give the police and other state actors a free pass when they violate an individual’s rights."
But immunity is here to stay, according to AuBuchon.
"There are many opportunities for a party to lose qualified immunity but certainly qualified immunity is an important protection for officers to be able to perform the duties they do," AuBuchon told the St. Louis Record.