Legal immunity

“ Decision of this purely legal question permits courts expeditiously to weed out suits which fail the test without requiring a defendant who rightly claims qualified immunity to engage in expensive and time consuming preparation to defend the suit on its merits. One of the purposes of immunity, absolute or qualified, is to spare a defendant not only unwarranted liability, but unwarranted demands customarily imposed upon those defending a long drawn out lawsuit. ”

“ In the Court's view, petitioner makes two claims: (1) that the prosecutor gave incorrect legal advice, and (2) that he elicited false or misleading testimony at the hearing. As to the first, I agree that neither traditional judicial nor defamation immunity is applicable, though (as I have said) quasi-judicial immunity is. The prosecutor may therefore claim only qualified immunity. As to the second, I agree that the traditional defamation immunity is sufficient to provide a historical basis for absolute § 1983 immunity. ”

“ The defendants have successfully resisted the charge and the question is whether they should be denied the usual incidents of their success. We apply the principle that there is no presumption that the agent is clothed with sovereign immunity. We look as in the Keifer and Burr cases to see whether Congress has endowed petitioner with that immunity and we find no indications whatever of such an intent. We apply the farther principle that the words 'sue and be sued' normally include the natural and appropriate incidents of legal proceedings. ”

“ A general immunity statute as proposed in chapter 5 on the courts is essential in organized crime investigations and prosecutions. There is evidence to indicate that the availability of immunity can overcome the wall of silence that so often defeats the efforts of law enforcement to obtain live witnesses in organized crime cases. ”

“ Whenever the Lord Advocate stipulated an immunity, it seemed to be maintained, on the other side, that a sufferer by housebreaking, fire-raising, and other crimes, was to be deprived of his right, as a private party, to prosecute the guilty perpetrator of the wrong, and that the Lord Advocate had a power to enter into a compact by which he could grant immunity for offences, past or future, known or unknown. ”

“ Such transactional immunity, in my view, steers a well-conceived middle path between, on the one hand, a position that no immunity statute can supplant the constitutional privilege and, on the other, a position that affords the individual the altogether too narrow protection of use immunity as applied to the very government that has compelled him to incriminate himself. ”

“ Nor is it dictum. The Court assumed for purposes of that case that the Fourteenth Amendment required that a state statute 'give sufficient immunity from prosecution or punishment,' id., 199 U.S., at 380, 26 S.Ct., at 75, and it is evident from the opinion that the Court regarded the remoteness of a danger of prosecution in the courts of another jurisdiction, including the federal courts, as a basis for holding generally, and not merely on the facts of the case before it, that a state immunity statute need not protect against such danger. ”

“ On this view, the test for removal should be broader, not narrower, than the test for official immunity. We agree.'
I see no necessity in this case for comparing the breadth of the law authorizing removal of cases from state to federal courts with the test 'for official immunity.' This case raises no question about official immunity from lawsuits for conduct of a government employee. Moreover, the difference between the breadth of a right to remove and a right to claim immunity is purely conceptual and cannot be measured by any means that I know about. ”

“ Third, greater requirements or difficulties of proof by a defendant inhere in the rule of absolute immunity. When a witness testifies under the auspices of an immunity act, the immunity he gets does not secure him from indictment or conviction. Heike v. United States, 217 U.S. 423, 30 S.Ct. 539, 54 L.Ed. 821. The witness must plead and prove, as an affirmative defense, that he has received immunity and that the instant prosecution is on account of a matter testified to in exchange for immunity, Heike v. ”

“ Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 525, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2815, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985) . And claims of qualified immunity may be pursued by immediate appeal, because qualified immunity too "is an immunity from suit." ”

“ Lamb, 738 F.2d 1005, 1008 (9th Cir.1984) . Because qualified immunity protects government officials from suit as well as from liability, it is essential that qualified immunity claims be resolved at the earliest possible stage of litigation. ”

“ We now turn our attention to the proper focus of an inquiry into congressional abrogation of sovereign immunity, the language of the statute. We cannot agree that the textual provisions on which the Court of Appeals relied, or any other provisions of the EHA, demonstrate with unmistakable clarity that Congress intended to abrogate the States' immunity from suit. The EHA makes no reference whatsoever to either the Eleventh Amendment or the States' sovereign immunity. ”

“ People of State of New York arose under an earlier version of the New York immunity law, which conferred automatic immunity from prosecution on anyone who testified before the grand jury. Regan had, like petitioner, executed a waiver of immunity and later sought to repudiate it. ”

“ The earliest federal statute dealing with immunity is the Act of January 24, 1857, 11 Stat. 155, as amended by the Act of January 24, 1862, 12 Stat. 333. This legislation, relating to testimony before either House of Congress, furnished a model for later immunity provisions. Congress was careful to state precisely what it was for which immunity was given: 'No witness shall hereafter be allowed to refuse to testify to any fact or to produce any paper * * *.' 11 Stat. ”

“ Qualified immunity protects law enforcement officers from being tried for actions taken in the course of their duties. If the immunity applies, it entitles the officer to be free of the "burdens of litigation." ”

“ That is a matter of federal constitutional law which does not depend upon the interpretation of the New York immunity statute.
The Court's wholly wrong focus upon the particular state immunity statute [2] involved results from its failure to distinguish two different procedural postures in which the question of the scope of immunity required by the Fifth Amendment can be raised. First, an individual may rely on the Fifth Amendment privilege and refuse to answer a question after he has been granted immunity pursuant to an immunity statute and ordered to respond. ”

“ The Court emphasized that because the doctrine of sovereign immunity gives the Government a privileged position, it has been 'appropriately confined,' 312 U.S., at 84, 61 S.Ct., at 486, and noted that 'the government does not become the conduit of its immunity in suits against its agents or instrumentalities merely because they do its work.' Ibid., quoting Keifer & Keifer v. ”

“ Whether a state is forbidden by the Constitution of the United States to violate the principle of immunity from self-incrimination is a question which it is clearly unnecessary to decide now, unless what was, in fact, done at the trial, was inconsistent with that immunity. ”

“ Because of the importance of testimony, especially in the discovery of ertain crimes for which evidence would not otherwise be available, and the breadth of the privilege, Congress has enacted over 40 immunity statutes and every State, without exception, has one or more immunity acts pertaining to certain offenses or legislative investigations. ”

“ Granting "use" immunity thus increases the potential burden of proof the government must bear. If defendants could obtain testimonial immunity for other defendants to testify, it would inevitably snarl criminal proceedings. The imagination of defense counsel could run riot and, with the government being unable to control the extent of the witness' testimony, immunity and claims of immunity for the codefendant witness would be sprouting with every answer. ”

“ The complete answer to this is that in safeguarding him against future federal and state prosecution 'for or on account of any transaction, matter, or thing concerning which he is compelled' to testify, the statute grants him immunity fully coextensive with the constitutional privilege. Some language in Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. at page 601, 16 S.Ct. at page 648, to which petitioner refers, compares immunity statutes to the traditional declarations of amnesty or pardon. ”

“ The Court in Hall held that the Constitution took the permissive approach, leaving it up to each State to decide whether to grant or deny its sister States sovereign immunity. Today, the majority takes the contrary approach—the absolute approach—and overrules Hall. ”

“ Several of this Court's decisions make clear that much of our state immunity doctrine has absolutely nothing to do with the limit on judicial power contained in the Eleventh Amendment. For example, it is well established that a State may waive its immunity, subjecting itself to possible suit in federal court. ”

“ Accordingly, our review must focus, first, on an issue of law, namely, whether the trial court properly granted Dr. Washington immunity, and, second, on whether there remains any genuine issue of material fact precluding summary judgment.
[17] Article 5, section 20, of the Arkansas Constitution provides that "Nile State of Arkansas shall never be made defendant in any of her courts." Ark. Const. art. 5, § 20, grants sovereign immunity and a general prohibition against awards of money damages in lawsuits against the State of Arkansas and its institutions. ”

“ Without at all attempting to limit the kinds of 'proceeding' in which the witness can earn the promised immunity, Congress followed the President's suggestion and provided in the 1966 amendment to the 1903 Immunity Act now before us that the immunity would apply only to individuals testifying in obedience to subpoena and under oath. ”

“ Raley demonstrates that the State may not substitute for the privilege against self-incrimination an intricate scheme for conferring immunity and thereafter hold in contempt those who fail fully to perceive its subtleties. A witness has, we think, a constitutional right to stand on the privilege against self-incrimination until it has been fairly demonstrated to him that an immunity, as broad in scope as the privilege it replaces, is available and applicable to him. ”

“ It is contended that we are without jurisdiction because no title, right, or immunity was specially set up or claimed under any Federal statute and denied. But, leaving aside for a moment all other considerations, it is plain that the defendant below set up a claim of immunity from suit in the state court under the laws of the United States, and that the right to the immunity so asserted under an act or acts of Congress was expressly considered and denied by the state court. ”

“ Mere use immunity, which protects the individual only against the actual use of his compelled testimony and its fruits, satisfies neither the language of the Constitution itself nor the values, purposes, and policies that the privilege was historically designed to serve and that it must serve in a free country. ”

“ I cannot support any judgment declaring that immunity from self-incrimination is not one of the privileges or immunities of national citizenship, nor a part of the liberty guaranteed by the 14th Amendment against hostile state action. The declaration of the court, in the opinion just delivered that immunity from self-incrimination is of great value, a protection to the innocent, and a safeguard against unfounded and tyrannical prosecutions, meets my cordial approval. ”

“ Congress at that time and at the request of many of those organizations enacted the Immunities Act. Given the differences between international organizations and nation states, along with the Act’s purposes and the risk of untoward consequences, I would leave the Immunities Act where we found it–as providing for immunity in both commercial and noncommercial suits.
My decision rests primarily not upon linguistic analysis, but upon basic statutory purposes. Linguistic methods alone, however artfully employed, too often can be used to justify opposite conclusions. ”

“ As we construed §6002 in Kastigar, such immunity is co-extensive with the constitutional privilege. Kastigar requires that respondent’s motion to dismiss the indictment on immunity grounds be granted unless the Government proves that the evidence it used in obtaining the indictment and proposed to use at trial was derived from legitimate sources “wholly independent” of the testimonial aspect of respondent’s immunized conduct in assembling and producing the documents described in the subpoena. ”

“ The minimum grant of immunity adequate to overcome the privilege is that which under either paragraph 68h of this Manual or other proper authority provides that neither the testimony of the witness nor any evidence obtained from that testimony may be used against the witness at any subsequent trial other than in a prosecution for perjury, false swearing, the making of a false official statement, or failure to comply with an order to testify after the military judge has ruled that the privilege may not be asserted by reason of immunity. ”