Civil Rights Clinic Wins in Ninth Circuit
The Civil Rights Clinic prevailed on behalf of its client in a case decided on May 29 by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. In Campbell v. Herrera, the appeals court affirmed the trial judge’s order denying qualified immunity to four prison health care providers.
On March 6, law students Thacher Hoch ’25 and Sinporion Phuong '25 presented oral argument before Circuit Judges Kim McLane Wardlaw, Richard A. Paez and Kenneth K. Lee. In an unpublished memorandum opinion, the panel majority held that the lower court was correct in denying immunity to the defendants. Lee authored a partial dissent, indicating he would have granted immunity to all but one of the officials.
The clinic represents a California state prisoner who brought a lawsuit in federal district court alleging claims of excessive force and deprivation of medical care. The trial court judge denied summary judgment to the medical defendants, holding that they were not entitled to qualified immunity. The defendants filed an interlocutory appeal from that order.
Professors Ashutosh Bhagwat, Gabriel “Jack” Chin, Katherine Florey, Carlton Larson and Brian Soucek helped the students prepare for this argument. Professor Carter White, director of the Civil Rights Clinic, supervised the students’ work on the case.
The clinic was first appointed as pro bono counsel for Mr. Campbell in the district court in 2018. Since that time 20 law students have handled a variety of tasks on the case, including investigating and drafting an amended complaint, representing the client in a court-supervised settlement conference before a United States magistrate judge; conducting written discovery and resolving discovery disputes in informal conferences with the magistrate judge; taking and defending depositions, including expert depositions; and drafting and arguing the opposition to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. With this appeal resolved, the clinic hopes the case will be set for trial later this year.