CINCINNATI (CN) — The family of a woman presumed dead but who later awoke at a funeral home cannot bring civil rights claims against the paramedics who treated her, according to a circuit court ruling.
Timesha Beauchamp was not exposed to a “private act of violence” after paramedics stopped providing emergency medical services, so her estate cannot bring a wrongful death action against them or the City of Southfield, Michigan, the panel determined.
Beauchamp was found unresponsive in her home by her mother on the morning of Aug. 23, 2020, and first responders provided treatment until they declared her dead at 8 a.m.
Soon after, family members claimed she still had a pulse, but upon further inspection, the paramedics insisted she was dead and that any movement was the result of medication given during treatment.
Three hours later, Beauchamp was transported to a funeral home where an employee discovered her alive and gasping for air when her body bag was opened.
She was taken to the hospital but died of an anoxic brain injury on Oct. 18.
A federal judge dismissed constitutional and due process claims brought by Howard Linden, personal representative of Beauchamp’s estate, in July 2022 and granted the paramedics’ request for qualified immunity.
The estate appealed and the case was argued before a three-judge panel in June 2023.
U.S. Circuit Judge Julia Gibbons, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote the panel’s opinion rejecting the estate’s “state-created danger” theory of liability.
Such a theory requires an affirmative act by the state actor to expose the victim to a private act of violence, but the only Sixth Circuit case Linden could point to was an unpublished decision in which a truck driver was presumed dead after a rollover accident and was “jostled” as the truck was lifted off his body.
In that case, the panel unanimously held no constitutional violation had occurred, and Gibbons relied on that line of thinking in her opinion.
“It is hard to see how it could be ‘clearly established’ that the first responders exposed Beauchamp to a private act of violence when they mistakenly believed she was dead and left her in her family’s care to be processed for routine funeral proceedings, which included the funeral home employee’s act of putting Beauchamp’s presumed-dead body into a body bag to transport her to a funeral home,” she wrote.
The lack of binding precedent was also fatal to the estate’s lawsuit, explained Gibbons, who emphasized “it is Linden, not the first responders, who bears the burden of pointing to legal authority that clearly shows the constitutional question in this case should be resolved in his favor.”
Linden relied on another unpublished decision to support the estate’s due process claims and argued a Sixth Circuit ruling in Beck v. Haik should control the panel’s decision.
Beck involved law enforcement's refusal to allow a team of private divers to attempt a rescue of a drowning victim, but Gibbons found the case “readily distinguishable” from the current set of facts.
“Here … the first responders did not prohibit any private party from seeking or rendering aid,” she said. “Indeed, no qualified private rescuer was present to offer aid, a circumstance based on which several of our cases have distinguished Beck and found no constitutional violation.”
U.S. Circuit Judges Joan Larsen and Eric Murphy, both appointees of Donald Trump, rounded out the panel, which also refused to allow the estate to amend its complaint for a third time.
Neither party immediately responded to requests for comment.
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How long has this been going on? May 3, 2024
