The same argument was made in Travis, and the supreme court under those facts held that the police could be a proximate cause of the accident in that case. We believe that the same reasoning applies to these facts. As the Travis court noted, proximate cause requires two elements: (1) cause in fact, and (2) foreseeability. “Cause in fact” means that the act or omission was a substantial factor in bringing about the injury and that, without it, no harm would have occurred. As in Travis, the summary judgment proof raises the inference that the motorcycle's wreck may have been caused in part by the policemen's failure to drive with due regard for Chambers' safety.... While the criminal conduct of a third party can be a superseding cause rendering the resulting injuries unforeseeable to the actor, the criminal conduct is not a superseding cause if it is a foreseeable result of the actor's negligence. Here, the [defendants'] summary judgment proof does not conclusively prove that the illegal conduct which caused the accident—Stiles' high-speed exit from the highway with the resulting loss of control of his motorcycle—was an unforeseeable result of their negligence, i.e., their failure to drive with due regard for the safety of all persons using the road. A fact question remains as to whether the [defendants] were a proximate cause of the accident.
[w]here the law prescribes and defines the duties to be performed with such precision and certainty as to leave nothing to the exercise of discretion or judgment ... but where the act to be done involves the exercise of discretion or judgment, it is not to be deemed merely ministerial.
a reasonably prudent officer, under the same or similar circumstances, could have believed that the need to immediately apprehend the suspect outweighed a clear risk of harm to the public in continuing the pursuit.5
(1) the injustice, particularly in the absence of bad faith, of subjecting to liability an officer who is required, by the legal obligations of his position, to exercise discretion; [and] (2) the danger that the threat of such liability would deter his willingness to execute his office with the decisiveness and the judgment required by the public good.
[A]ll claims that law enforcement officers have used excessive force—deadly or not—in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other “seizure” of a free citizen should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment and its “reasonableness” standard, rather than under a “substantive due process” approach.
If ... the petition affirmatively demonstrates that no cause of action exists or that the plaintiff's recovery is barred, then summary judgment is proper. Under these facts, the only arguable claim for constitutional deprivation that [Chambers] could raise was that of the use of excessive force by the officers thereby violating Chambers' Fourth Amendment right to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. If, as a matter of law, under the facts of this case, either no seizure occurred or the force used by the officers was reasonable, then no Fourth Amendment violation occurred.
a person injured in an automobile accident caused by the negligent, or even grossly negligent, operation of a motor vehicle by a policeman acting in the line of duty has no section 1983 cause of action for violation of a federal right.
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