I know fuck all about Burger Law, but this lolsuit has dragged on for how long, now?
It's actually pretty normal for a case that at least one judge has found not to be completely frivolous. I actually tend to agree. Just instantly responding to obviously bogus SWAT calls with full force is pretty much bullshit.
I wouldn't mind him winning on that. I mean I would mind that it was Rick personally, but the precedent would be good.
There's actually a case called
Hope v. Pelzer that is relevant to this (and has been cited by Rick's lawyers). Now, 1983 makes it possible to pierce qualified immunity if the officer violated "clearly established law." That's a very broad standard, and allows a lot of bullshit.
But in
Hope v. Pelzer, the prison punished the plaintiff by just putting him on a "hitching post" like an animal and left him outside in intense heat. The defense basically argued no big deal, there's no specific case of a man being tortured by being put on a hitching post.
SCOTUS found no, you can't just physically torture prisoners for fun and claim the fact you found some novel measure of physical torture makes physical torture okay, since doing that is against clearly established law.
Treating absolutely obviously bogus SWAT calls as being legitimate and reacting to them that way actually should be prohibited.
So I'm in a position where while I absolutely hate this fat faggot with bitch tits, he may actually have a point in this case.
However, I do have a really favorite scenario here. The "clearly established law" part. Breaching qualified immunity requires that the officer actually had "clearly established law" to follow.
So 1983 cases sometimes result in the plaintiff having the court find that their rights were actually violated, as Rick's rights may have been, but it wasn't "clearly established law," so the "winner" of the case has it found that his rights were violated, the law enforcement officers responsible violated his rights, but it wasn't "clearly established" so he loses and gets jack-shit, but future litigants can cite his case.
This would be the most hilarious possible outcome.