Family of Woman Fatally Shot by Union City Officer Wins Alameda County Wrongful Death Verdict
After trial: The jury put 5 percent of fault on the decedent, and after the 2007 appeal fault was set at 91 percent for the officer and 9 percent for her, so the ranked amount is 91 percent of the $1,935,600 verdict. The officer's liability and the city's vicarious liability were affirmed in 2004.
Won by Gwilliam Ivary Chiosso Cavalli & Brewer, Gwilliam, Ivary, Chiosso & Brewer and Law Office of Daniel U. Smith.
A woman in a methamphetamine-induced crisis was shot and killed by a Union City police officer on March 7, 1998. Her daughter, father and brother sued, and an Alameda County jury in May 2001 found the officer and city liable for negligence and battery, awarding $1,935,600 in total. After the court of appeal reallocated fault to 91 percent for the officer and 9 percent for the decedent, the amount that stood is $1,761,396.
What happened
Before dawn on March 7, 1998, Lucilla Amaya was in her Union City home with her father and her daughter. She was under the influence of methamphetamine, hallucinating, and holding a steak knife in each hand. Her brother, worried about the family, called the police non-emergency line. He reported that she might harm herself or her father and had been held for psychiatric evaluation before. He asked officers not to phone the house, fearing that would escalate things.
Corporal Tod Woodward, the acting watch commander that morning, took charge at the scene. The court record shows he had been a SWAT officer for about five years but had no formal training in hostage negotiation and had never supervised a call involving a barricaded person or someone high on a stimulant. Lucilla stood at the front door, her back to the open wooden door and her shoulder close to the screen door. Officers spoke with her for several minutes. The family testified that voices grew louder and more frustrated, guns came out, and officers shouted for her father and daughter to go to the back room. Woodward ordered a shotgun brought from a patrol car and called for the SWAT team. Lucilla said she had a gun in one hand, and no gun was ever found. After the relatives moved out of view, Lucilla stepped forward with the knife. Woodward fired five times and killed her, roughly nine minutes after he arrived.
Lucilla's daughter, her father and her brother sued Woodward, Union City, its police department and its police chief in Alameda County Superior Court. They alleged negligence, battery and wrongful death. Steven R. Cavalli of Gwilliam, Ivary, Chiosso & Brewer and Daniel U. Smith represented the family. Jury trial began on March 28, 2001. The plaintiffs put on a former Sacramento police sergeant who testified that Woodward violated basic crisis-management practice and that the shooting was unreasonable. The defense called its own use-of-force trainer and a physician who testified about methamphetamine intoxication.
On May 10, 2001, the jury found Woodward and the city liable for negligence and for battery through unreasonable force. It awarded $1,781,200 to Lucilla's daughter, $131,000 to her father and $23,400 to her brother, a total of $1,935,600. The jury assigned 50 percent of the fault to Woodward, 45 percent to Union City and 5 percent to Lucilla. Judgment was entered May 14, 2001, and a motion for a new trial was denied.
The defendants appealed, and the case reached the First District Court of Appeal three times. In 2004 the court held that Woodward owed a duty not to use deadly force unreasonably and affirmed the judgment against him, with the city liable for his conduct. It reversed only the separate verdict against the city for its own negligence. In 2007 the court rejected the trial court's cut of the judgment by the city's 45 percent and reallocated that share between the officer and Lucilla, leaving Woodward at 91 percent and Lucilla at 9 percent. In 2009 the court ruled that interest on the judgment runs from the original May 2001 judgment date.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Munoz v. City of Union City, 120 Cal.App.4th 1077 (Cal. Ct. App. 1st Dist., July 23, 2004)
- 2.Caselaw Access Project, Munoz v. City of Union City, 120 Cal.App.4th 1077 (2004)·Archived copy
- 3.Caselaw Access Project, Munoz v. City of Union City, 148 Cal.App.4th 173 (2007)·Archived copy
- 4.Caselaw Access Project, Munoz v. City of Union City, 173 Cal.App.4th 199 (2009)·Archived copy
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