Background
Plaintiffs, including the estate of Genevive Dawes and survivor Virgilio Rosales, sued the City of Dallas and individual officers after officers fired thirteen rounds into a van, killing Dawes and injuring Rosales. The case involved claims for excessive force and failure to train under Section one thousand nine hundred eighty-three of Title forty-two of the United States Code. A prior panel had already affirmed qualified immunity for the officers and remanded the failure-to-train claim against the City.
The court’s reasoning
The district court granted summary judgment for the City based on the precedent set in Bustillos v. El Paso County Hospital District. The court reasoned that plaintiffs could not establish the necessary element of deliberate indifference for a failure-to-train claim absent clearly established law. The Fifth Circuit affirmed, stating that Bustillos compels affirmance and that the court is bound by that decision under its rule of orderliness.
What it means going forward
The ruling reinforces the requirement that plaintiffs must show clearly established law to prove deliberate indifference in failure-to-train cases within the Fifth Circuit.