Day on Torts
Where plaintiffs, who were mother and daughter, were injured by gunfire by police, but the police were aiming the gunfire at the father, the plaintiffs’ GTLA claims were rightly dismissed because the claims involved civil rights, and governmental immunity was therefore not removed.
In Guirguis v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, No. M2024-01310-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Sept. 5, 2025), the police were called to plaintiffs’ residence. When they arrived, a mother and father were engaged in a struggle on the front porch, and a minor child was also present. The police saw that the father had a gun. After being told to drop the gun, the father aimed the gun at the police, and the police opened fire. Both the mother and child were injured by the gunfire.
The plaintiffs (mother and child) filed this complaint against the city alleging that the officers “committed negligence in firing their weapons” despite the close proximity of the plaintiffs to the father, and that the police had negligently violated police training and policy. After the case languished for six years, the city filed a motion for summary judgment, asserting that the claims sounded in civil rights and that the city’s immunity was not removed under the GTLA. The trial court agreed that the “civil rights exception to the GTLA removal of immunity was applicable” and dismissed the case. The Court of Appeals affirmed this dismissal.
Plaintiffs argued that “the civil rights exception [was] inapplicable to this case because they [had] alleged that their injuries resulted from the negligence of Metro’s employees, rather than intentional acts.” Looking to similar cases, though, the Court reasoned that “so long as the ‘underlying act’ is ‘predicated on intentional tortious conduct’ in violation of the plaintiff’s civil rights, the claim arises from civil rights[.]” (internal citation omitted). Previous authority concluded that “even claims of negligence may arise from civil rights when they are inextricably linked to a civil rights claim.” (internal citation omitted).
Here, the plaintiffs were “unintentional victims” of intentional gunfire. A similar case in the Sixth Circuit stated that the “test in this situation requires that the force must be applied with an intent to restrain, as opposed to force applied by accident or for some other purpose.” (internal citation omitted). Applying this reasoning to the present facts, the Court explained:
Here, the undisputed facts demonstrate that the officers fired their weapons intentionally, rather than accidentally, in an effort to apprehend Mr. Guirguis. This use of deadly force was clearly a seizure that arises under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. And while Appellants assert that the officers’ negligent failure to adhere to their training and education resulted in hitting Mrs. Guirguis and Martena rather than the intended target, the “underlying act” of firing their weapons was intentional, not accidental. Instead, only the victim was unintended. Mrs. Guirguis and Martena were therefore “seized” under the Fourth Amendment by Metro’s police officers’ intentional use of force. The underlying act that predicates Appellants’ claim therefore arises from civil rights under section 29-20-205(2).
(internal citations omitted).
After affirming the ruling that the plaintiffs’ decision not to pursue a federal civil rights claim had no bearing on the analysis, as well as the ruling that the defendant did not waive the sovereign immunity argument by waiting six years to make it, dismissal was affirmed.
This opinion was released four months after oral arguments.