Koussaya v. City of Stockton

54 Cal.App.5th 909

268 Cal.Rptr.3d 741

Stephanie KOUSSAYA, Plaintiff and Appellant,

v.CITY OF STOCKTON et al., Defendants and Respondents.

C089159

Court of Appeal, Third District, California.

Filed September 21, 2020

Piering Law Firm, Robert A. Piering, John D. Beals ; and Leslie M. Mitchell, Sacramento, for Plaintiff and Appellant.

Angelo, Kilday & Kilduff and John A. Whitesides, Sacramento, for Defendants and Respondents.

HOCH, J.

Stephanie Koussaya was taken hostage, along with two other women, by three armed bank robbers, Alex Martinez, Jaime Ramos, and Gilbert Renteria, Jr. Used as human shields in order to facilitate the robbers’ escape from the bank, the hostages were forced into a Ford Explorer belonging to one of the hostages, Kelly Huber. A high-speed chase with law enforcement followed. For Huber, the chase ended abruptly when she was pushed out of the vehicle after Ramos shot her in the leg, apparently by mistake. For Koussaya and the other hostage, Misty Holt-Singh, the pursuit lasted for more than an hour, reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour, and included exchanges of gunfire between Martinez, who was firing an AK-47 assault rifle out of the back of the Explorer, and two Stockton Police Department (SPD) officers, Captain Douglas Anderson and Officer Edward Webb. The details of the chase will be set forth more fully later in this opinion. For present purposes, we note Koussaya ultimately decided her best chance at surviving the ordeal was to open one of the rear side doors and throw herself from the moving vehicle. As Koussaya explained, having already heard multiple rounds hit the Explorer during the pursuit, she believed that if she did not jump from the vehicle she would be killed by the special weapons and tactics (SWAT) team when the chase inevitably came to an end. Minutes after Koussaya's escape, the chase did come to an end, at which point police officers fired several hundred rounds into the Explorer, killing two of the robbers and the remaining hostage.

Having sustained serious injuries during her escape from the Explorer, Koussaya sued the City of Stockton and its police department (collectively, the City), as well as Captain Anderson and Officer Webb (officer defendants), asserting causes of action for assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), and general negligence.¹ The City and officer defendants filed separate motions for summary judgment. The trial court granted the motions and entered judgment in favor of defendants. Koussaya appeals.

We affirm. As we explain, although the trial court abused its discretion in ruling on an evidentiary matter and also misapplied the Government Claims Act ( Gov. Code, § 810 et seq. )² to improperly limit the scope of Koussaya's claims, taking into account the improperly excluded evidence and properly viewing the factual basis of her claims against the officer defendants and the City, we conclude each defendant was entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

BACKGROUND

In accordance with the standard of review, we recite the facts in a light favorable to Koussaya as the losing party. (See Saelzler v. Advanced Group 400 (2001) 25 Cal.4th 763, 768, 107 Cal.Rptr.2d 617, 23 P.3d 1143.)

Bank Robbery and Initial Pursuit

In July 2014, Koussaya worked as a bank teller at a Bank of the West location in Stockton. The bank was situated between three major roads that came together to form a triangle, Hammer Lane, Thornton Road, and Lower Sacramento Road. On July 16, three armed men, Martinez, Ramos, and Renteria, robbed the bank. Another bank employee activated a silent alarm upon their arrival.

Officer Darren Sandoval was on patrol not far from the bank when he heard dispatch notify another nearby officer, Officer Denise Egan, about the robbery in progress. Sandoval self-deployed to the bank, activating his patrol car's emergency lights and siren until he was about a quarter-mile from the bank, at which point he turned off the siren but kept the emergency lights activated. Sandoval was the second officer to arrive at the bank. As he approached, he heard Officer Egan notify dispatch there were three suspects inside the bank. Sandoval pulled into the bank parking lot from Lower Sacramento Road and parked his patrol car in front of the bank. He correctly assumed Egan was located on the Thornton Road side of the bank and intended to assist in setting up a perimeter.

At least three additional SPD officers also responded to the bank. Two joined Officer Egan blocking the exit onto Thornton Road. One of these officers, Officer Anisko, traveled to the bank with emergency lights and siren, but deactivated the siren when he approached the bank. Egan activated only her emergency lights and positioned her patrol car to block the main exit onto Thornton Road. The third, Officer Zavala, joined Officer Sandoval on the Lower Sacramento Road side of the bank, blocking that exit. No one blocked the drive-through ATM exit.

As Officer Sandoval got out of his patrol car and positioned himself next to his driver's side front tire in front of the bank, he noticed an elderly man walking through the parking lot and warned him away from the bank. Sandoval then saw the three robbers exiting the bank with a hostage, Huber. One of the robbers held Huber by the arm from behind and held a handgun to her chin; the other two followed in a triangle formation. Sandoval pointed his service pistol at the lead robber and issued several commands for the robbers to stop, put their weapons down, and get down on the ground. After some momentary hesitation, the robbers retreated back into the bank with Huber.

Officer Sandoval holstered his handgun and ran to the trunk of his patrol car to retrieve a rifle while updating dispatch about the situation. As he started to position himself with the rifle behind a tree near his vehicle, the robbers again emerged from the bank, this time with three hostages, Huber, Koussaya, and Holt-Singh. Abandoning his position behind the tree and again taking aim at the lead robber with his service pistol, Sandoval issued several more commands for the robbers to stop and threatened to "blow their heads off." These commands were ignored. The robbers moved slowly towards Sandoval with the hostages and ultimately moved past him, making their way to Huber's Ford Explorer.

Inside the Explorer, Huber got behind the wheel and was ordered to drive. She did so, exiting the parking lot via the drive-through ATM lane and turning north onto Thornton Road. Officer Sandoval ran to his patrol car and followed in pursuit, as did other police units. Less than a minute into the pursuit, one of the robbers, Ramos, shot Huber in the leg, apparently by mistake. The Explorer then slowed and Huber was pushed out of the vehicle. Ramos's cohort, Renteria, got behind the wheel and the chase continued.

Officer Sandoval was directly behind the Explorer as they approached Davis Road less than a mile from the bank. The Explorer's back window shattered in front of him as the third robber, Martinez, fired a barrage of bullets from an AK-47 assault rifle out of the back of the SUV. Multiple rounds hit Sandoval's front tires and grille, disabling his steering and ending his participation in the pursuit.

Overview of the Remainder of the Pursuit

The pursuit would continue for more than an hour, reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour, traversing about 60 miles back and forth between Stockton and Lodi, and involving over 30 police cars. After Officer Sandoval's vehicle was disabled, other police cars took its place as the lead pursuer. One by one, these vehicles were either disabled by additional rounds fired out of the back of the Explorer or fell back to avoid taking further gunfire.

SPD commanders monitored the pursuit through radio traffic and were able to view segments of the pursuit through the City's traffic camera system. Their main objective was to get the SWAT team to the front of the pursuit to find a tactical means of disabling the Explorer. The number of police vehicles involved in the pursuit made this difficult. So did SPD's lack of air support. Eventually, however, a San Joaquin County Sheriff's Department aircraft arrived to provide air support for the pursuing officers on the ground.

Lieutenant Ivan Rose was given tactical command of the pursuit. However, this information was not clearly communicated to the officers engaged in the pursuit, including Rose apparently, who testified in his deposition that Lieutenant Ridenour was in command of the pursuit. Other officers also had different understandings with respect to who was in charge. For example, one of the SWAT sergeants believed Lieutenant Pickens was in command. At one point during the pursuit, Ridenour and Pickens gave conflicting orders with respect to whether or not to put down a spike strip to attempt to disable the Explorer. The spike strip was not deployed. At another point, Ridenour ordered officers not to shoot at or ram the Explorer. However, Rose understood this order to not apply to the SWAT team and thereafter unsuccessfully tried to ram the Explorer with the SWAT team's armored vehicle. Another SWAT sergeant testified: "I don't believe there was one specific person that had tactical control of this."

At different times during the pursuit, two SPD officers, Captain Anderson and Officer Webb, fired at Martinez in the back of the Explorer. We recount the details of these officers’ participation in the pursuit immediately below.

Captain Anderson's Participation in the Pursuit

Captain Anderson was at SPD headquarters when he was informed about the bank robbery and ongoing police pursuit. He was tasked with assisting in the investigation at the bank and left in an unmarked police car to do so. Anderson took Highway 99 north towards Hammer Lane on his way to the bank, but heard over the radio that the pursuit was further north on Highway 99 and heading south. Rather than go to the bank, Anderson decided to...