The family of a motorcyclist who was killed after a high-speed police chase can keep a $4.3 million jury verdict against the officer involved in the chase and the city that employed him.
Navigating a series of cross-cutting statutes and precedential court rulings, the Iowa Supreme Court decided last month that governmental immunity did not apply in this case, where plaintiffs presented evidence the officer deliberately hit the motorcyclist with his police cruiser.
A state trooper spotted Augustin Mormann speeding on the highway in 2020 and started to chase him at speeds up to 99 mph until Mormann reached the City of Manchester. The trooper slowed down and local police officer James Wessels joined the chase, following the motorcyclist until he came over a rise and had to swerve to miss him, hitting the cyclist with his car mirror.
The police car then entered a left hand curve and as it decelerated, Mormann’s cycle collided with the vehicle’s rear corner.
Mormann landed in a ditch and was paralyzed. Blood evidence found he had ingested amphetamines within a couple of days. A few weeks later he asked to be removed from life support. Before he died, Mormann’s mother said he told her: “I got ran off the road, pushed off the road at a high rate of speed.”
Mormann’s parents sued in May 2021. The following month, Iowa passed a qualified immunity statute, and in May 2023 the Iowa Supreme Court “reshaped the legal landscape” by reversing a 2017 decision that had allowed plaintiffs to sue for money damages over claims rooted in the state constitution.
The trial court cited those changes to dismiss the Mormanns’ constitutional claims but allowed the plaintiffs to add assault and battery claims, over the city’s objections. After an eight-day trial in which several officers testified for the plaintiffs, the jury awarded $4.25 million in compensatory and $10,000 in punitive damages.
The city appealed for denying qualified immunity to Wessels and various evidence rulings. In the meantime, the Iowa Supreme Court delivered yet another decision holding qualified immunity doesn’t apply to common-law tort claims.
The defendants lost on a challenge to the victim’s dying statement, which fell under a hearsay exception for dying declarations. As for assault, the court said the first impact with the police cruiser’s mirror left the victim in fear of further violence. The battery charge was justified because courts across the country have allowed vehicle-vehicle claims, especially involving motorcycles, the court said.
“The testimony of the plaintiffs’ accident reconstructionist and the physical evidence are sufficient to prove Wessels intentionally used his cruiser to twice collide with the motorcyclist and ran him off the road,” the court concluded.
