Case Alert: Circuit Court Rules on the “Danger Doctrine” and How it Applies in Civil Cases

• The “danger doctrine” and the Fourteenth Amendment’s substantive due process clause 
• The “particularized” prerequisite to the application of the “danger doctrine” 

The state-generated “danger doctrine” is an element of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. For the victim of a state-generated dangerous situation to be entitled to civil redress, the danger created must be “particularized” as to the plaintiff himself. A state-generated dangerous situation that affects the public in general, as opposed to a civil plaintiff in particular, is insufficient to trigger the “danger doctrine.” 

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a Black man, died at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer — who was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder and other charges — during an arrest gone sour. 

That summer, protests occurred throughout the country, not the least of which included in Seattle. In Seattle, the Seattle Police Department (“SPD”) and the city’s mayor took the unprecedented step of surrendering to demonstrators for three weeks an SPD precinct and eight blocks of the surrounding neighborhood. The area was soon referred to as “CHOP,” ....