Hernandez v. City of Pomona

Police fired 37 shots at an unarmed Hernandez after a high-speed chase, a crash, and a struggle involving a police dog, killing him after he reached toward his waistband and yelled about a gun. Hernandez's family (plaintiffs) sued the officers and the City of Pomona (defendants) in federal court under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments and for state-law wrongful death; the federal court tried the federal claims first (with jury instructions to weigh the totality of the circumstances), returned a defense verdict for three officers and judgment as a matter of law for the fourth, and declined to keep the state claims, dismissing them without prejudice. The family then refiled the state claims in state court; the defendants argued collateral estoppel barred relitigation, the trial court agreed and dismissed, but the court of appeal reversed, allowing a theory that the officers negligently created the situation making deadly force reasonable.