Hi, my name is Anya Bidwell, and I'm going to tell you about a county
highway engineer who refuse to stay in his lane of authority, played
a cop for a day and got away with it because of qualified immunity.
At least for now.
In late 2016, a company named central specialties won a major
bid to build roads in Minnesota.
My name is Allan . I'm the president and CEO of central specialties, Inc.
This company is meant everything to.
Since I was 12 years old picking rocks out of a ditch.
As Allan explained to me, one of the most important parts of bidding jobs
is making sure trucks have the most efficient route between the project
and a source of gravel, because of course, time is money and we use various
roads to get from point a to point B from the gravel pit to the project.
And we use the roads that any anybody else could use legally to.
Bid the project in this case, John large circumvented that Jonathan
large is a highway engineer from a Norman county, Minnesota.
His job is to manage the roadways for the county and not a part of his job
is to prepare road plans and surveys.
He also has the authority to impose weight and load restrictions.
In the summer of 2017 central specialties needed to use Mahnomen counties,
roads to get to its project site.
But large refused to grant that permission.
We've never in our history, had these troubles with, with getting
these rows designated to use ever.
And I finally said enough is enough.
This road is legal for anybody else to haul empty.
We should be able to haul empty on it.
It's a free country.
We should be able to haul empty on it, just like everybody else.
Whole empty means that central specialty's trucks were entirely empty.
So they were as light as they could possibly be and would not cause any
more damage than other empty trucks traveling regularly on that road yet
large lowered the limit below that.
He took the weight limit from five tons per axle to five
tons, total central specialties.
Vice-presidents Alex sweep put this into perspective for me.
If a road is restricted to five ton, total, uh, there's pickup trucks that
wouldn't even meet that weight limit, or even like a, a large van, you know,
something that you see on any number of roads or city streets on any given.
To have that happen, I guess is unheard of that, that the road would be restricted
to a five ton total weight restriction.
I've never seen it personally.
40 minutes after large change the weight restrictions.
He put his county vehicle in the roads path, leaving central specialties,
drivers, no choice, but to pull over or run into large, he told
our people, we had to stay there.
Our drivers, we had to stay there and they could not.
He had the blocked, he was a government official or people respect
the government and they do what they're told by the government.
While large health CSI's vehicles.
He allowed other vehicles that clearly exceeded the five ton weight limit, like
a filled cement truck to continue down the county road without any interference.
He ultimately held the drivers and CSI's trucks for over three hours waiting
on law enforcement to come weigh the vehicles and issue a ticket large
called the Sheriff's office, the tribal police and the state troopers, trying
to find someone to finish the job.
The Sheriff's office told large to stop wasting the officer's time.
And the tribal police were confused about why they would be involved at all.
Since the trucks weren't on tribal land, eventually state
troopers arrived on the scene.
When the Minnesota state patrol showed up, they weighed our trucks and determined
that they were overweight for the five ton total weight, then issued citations.
They, the next day the head of.
Area of Minnesota highway patrol called our people and said,
there will be no citations.
They will be dismissed.
Central specialties filed a civil rights lawsuit against large for
violating the company's constitutional rights by stopping and seizing
the trucks and singling them out.
But that's just the beginning of the story.
Large claimed qualified.
He argued that he could not be sued because there are no cases that say
a counter engineer cannot perform law enforcement functions by stopping
and detaining a company's vehicle.
Even though large admitted, he had absolutely no authority to pull them
over or detain them in the first place.
40 years ago, the Supreme court invented qualified immunity because it
was trying to balance what it called.
Two evils, giving government officials immunity would mean people won't
have a remedy when their rights are violated, but on the other hand, no
immunity would mean government officials could not effectively do their jobs.
So the court landed somewhere in.
It held that government employees are entitled to immunity from suit, but
only for actions that were actually part of their job description.
They're not immune.
If they act outside the scope of their authority, like an engineer,
performing traffic stops here, there is no question that largest actions
were well beyond his job duties.
The state statute says it and even large himself says it.
It's unheard of that.
A county engineer would, would pull our trucks over.
And detain them, um, for any period of time, uh, like that, which is why the
Institute for justice is representing CSI in a petition for certiorari to
the United States Supreme court for all the debates around qualified immunity.
There is one thing that everyone agrees on allowing government officials
to have immunity for rogue actions is just a license for lawless.
Although the Supreme court has said it before.
It seems that the circuit courts are writing this rule out of the case law.
So the court must say it again.
Qualified immunity does not extend to officials who have gone rogue.
John large is not a policeman.
What he did was wasted their time, their valuable time, and he should
be held accountable for what.
We're not just doing this for our company.
We're doing this for companies all over the United States.
So they have the opportunity to live the American dream.