by Andy Chen | May 16, 2017 | California, Law, in real life
The vast majority of people don’t have any dealings with law enforcement at all, aside from the occasional traffic ticket. To them, the term “police officer” refers to any uniformed local-level law enforcement officer. In California, at least, the term “police officer” technically refers only to those officers employed by the city, usually by a police department run by the city. Another uniformed local law enforcement officer in the US that you might encounter is a deputy sheriff. There are a number of differences between a deputy sheriff and a police officer. Deputy sheriffs work for the county. Police officers work for a city. If a crime occurs in a city, it falls to the police to take care of it. If a crime occurs in a county, but outside of a city that has its own police department, it falls to the sheriff’s department of that county to handle it. The sheriffs department will generally work pretty closely with the police departments of the cities in that county so this distinction may not be that big in practice. In California, the sheriffs department in a county is in charge of running the county jail as well as security at the county’s state courts. In California, the sheriffs department is also the one who is involved in the legal process of the courts. This includes serving legal papers (although this varies from county to county) and carrying out orders of the court, such as seizing property of a debtor or evicting a tenant. Of course, there are also a lot of similarities between deputy sheriffs and police officers, not...
by Andy Chen | May 2, 2017 | California, Law, in real life, Statutes... and stuff
In my experience, most people tend to have a good intuition about how to sue a private person, such as someone who has damaged or broken your property. That intuition also applies — with minor differences — to suing a corporation, limited liability company, or other entity. When it comes to suing the government, though, the rules change significantly and most people’s intuition tends to let them down. I don’t know where the rumor started, but you can indeed sue the city, county, state, and federal government. This post, though, is not going to cover suing the federal government, but instead I’m going to go over how to sue the city, county, and state in California under something called the California Tort Claims Act. Two things I want to mention first: First, you might think that you would never sue the government itself (e.g. State of California, City of San Diego, etc), but remember that the government — like any entity — acts through individuals. Thus, if you’ve been injured or damaged as a result of the actions of a city, county, or state employee (e.g. city police officer, public school teacher, etc), it’s the city, county, or state that may be ultimately responsible. Second, if you ever do find yourself in a position where you might have to sue the government, please do find a lawyer to help you. As I’ll describe generally below, the rules for suing the government are very specialized and strict. In general, it is not something you can wing or simply figure out. Spend the money and effort to find a lawyer who...
