GA Supreme Court reverses ruling in Tift wrongful death lawsuit; finds Tift County Sheriff not immune to lawsuit

TIFTON, Ga. – According to our news partners with the Tifton Grapevine Newsletter, the Georgia Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed a lower court’s decision that had exempted Tift County Sheriff Gene Scarbrough from a wrongful death lawsuit.

The suit involved a man who died in the back seat of a sheriff’s patrol car in 2019 after being tased and restrained.

The Supreme Court ruled that the state court of appeals erred in granting Scarbrough immunity from the lawsuit, and the high court sent the case back to the appeals court.

The lawsuit was brought by Sherrie McBrayer, the widow of James Aaron McBrayer.

According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, during the early morning hours of April 24, 2019, Tift County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the 300 block of Hall Road about a disturbance. Deputies approached James Aaron McBrayer, 41, of Tifton. As deputies began assessing the situation, an altercation ensued between McBrayer and the deputies, the GBI said.

One deputy was injured and required medical attention while attempting to take McBrayer into custody. Deputies deployed a Taser, but it was ineffective, the GBI said. Once in custody, McBrayer was placed in the rear of a patrol vehicle. Deputies later found McBrayer unresponsive and called for EMS, who pronounced McBrayer dead at the scene.

According to court documents, the officers allegedly loaded McBrayer into the back of the patrol car face down with his hands and feet restrained, and his legs strapped to the car door so he could not move. He was left unsupervised for more than 10 minutes, according to court documents.

Sherrie McBrayer filed the wrongful death lawsuit against Sheriff Scarbrough, arguing that her husband died because he was negligently loaded into the vehicle.

In June, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, and Scarbrough maintained that the suit should be dropped because of “sovereign immunity,” a legal doctrine protecting government officials from lawsuits.

The appeals court had previously sided with the sheriff, ruling that the patrol car was not being “used” as a vehicle but as a holding cell at the time of McBrayer’s death.

But in arguments before the Supreme Court, Craig Webster, a lawyer representing Sherrie McBrayer, said vehicles can have numerous uses, citing court precedents that he said show loading students into a school bus is considered a use for that vehicle.

He said a primary issue is if the vehicle in question is owned, operated, and insured by the government entity.

“Because there is use of the vehicle and the vehicle is covered, there’s a waiver of sovereign immunity,” Webster had argued.

In its ruling Wednesday, the state Supreme Court said “loading a person into and restraining a person in a patrol car constitutes a ‘use’ of a patrol car as to which sovereign immunity is waived under” Georgia statutes.

“We overrule (the appeals) court’s precedent construing ‘use’ of a motor vehicle … as being limited to the ‘active’ use of the motor vehicle ‘as a vehicle,'” the Supreme Court said.

By: FRANK SAYLES JR., Tifton Grapevine

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