PHOENIX — Arizona police officers cannot hide behind common-law qualified immunity when someone sues them for ordinary negligence, the state Court of Appeals ruled in a case that grew out of a Phoenix patrol crash.
The Sept. 24 decision, written by Judge Andrew Becke for a unanimous three-judge panel, reverses a Maricopa County Superior Court order that had thrown out Juan Aldasoro’s lawsuit against Officer Giovani Pavlinch and the City of Phoenix. “Neither Officer Pavlinch nor the City of Phoenix are immune from claims for simple negligence under either common law discretionary act immunity or A.R.S. § 28-624(D),” Becke wrote.
According to the opinion, Pavlinch was driving a marked police vehicle to an emergency call, went through a red light, and hit Aldasoro’s car hard enough to push it into another vehicle. His emergency lights were on. Whether the siren was sounding is still disputed. Aldasoro alleges a closed-head injury, cuts, and abrasions, and says he had more than $20,000 in medical bills and lost income by the time he sued in September 2023.
Superior Court Judge Michael Gordon had granted summary judgment, treating the officer’s driving as a discretionary act protected by what the trial court called qualified discretionary-act immunity. The appeals court said that reading does not match Arizona law.
The panel went further than this one crash. It said two earlier Court of Appeals cases — Spooner v. City of Phoenix in 2018 and Jennings v. Agne in 2022 — “took a wrong turn” by stretching immunity that grew up in defamation disputes into a broad shield for police negligence. The judges said they were not bound by those opinions because both rested on “clearly erroneous principles.”
Arizona’s Supreme Court, the panel noted, has treated liability as the rule and immunity as the exception since it abolished common-law governmental immunity in 1963. Nearly two decades before that, the high court had already said a highway patrol officer could be sued for negligence after causing a collision while answering a call. The Legislature later wrote specific statutory immunities. None of them, the appeals court said, covers Aldasoro’s claim.
The panel also rejected the idea that the emergency-vehicle law, A.R.S. § 28-624, is a tort shield. That statute lets drivers answering an emergency run a red light after slowing enough to do it safely, and exceed the speed limit when it does not endanger life or property, generally while using lights and an audible warning. Becke wrote that the statute “does not grant any immunity from tort liability.” An officer who meets those conditions is not negligent merely because a traffic rule was broken. The officer can still be negligent if the driving itself was unreasonable.
A separate clause requires emergency drivers to proceed “with due regard for the safety of all persons.” The 2022 Jennings case had read a “reckless disregard” phrase to block ordinary negligence claims. This panel refused that reading. After tracing the traffic-code language back nearly a century, the judges said due regard is the same standard used in every negligence case: what a reasonable person would do in the circumstances. Jurors may weigh the emergency. Chasing a dangerous suspect is not the same as rolling to a non-emergency call. The call, the court said, belongs to “the collective wisdom of the jury.”
The ruling does not find Pavlinch negligent and does not award damages. It sends the case back to Superior Court. It was not clear Saturday whether Phoenix will ask the Arizona Supreme Court to take the case.