Steinle v. United States (August 4, 2021, No. 20-15419)
A law enforcement officer’s car, parked in the city of San Francisco, was broken into and a backpack containing the officer’s loaded gun was stolen. Four days later, a man found the gun and fired it aimlessly, killing Kathryn Steinle. Plaintiff’s parents sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act, alleging that the law enforcement officer was negligent in failing to secure his firearm and leaving it loaded in an unattended vehicle in an urban location. The district court granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment and plaintiffs appealed.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed under California tort law, holding that the connection between the officer’s storage of the gun in a parked car and Steinle’s death was too remote and tenuous to support a finding of causation.
