This week, Dallas City Council will vote on a $2.5 million settlement for Timpa's estate. This comes months after a federal jury awarded Timpa’s son $1 million over his father’s death. However, the jury failed to award the other plaintiffs in the suit, Timpa’s mother and father and his estate.
Dallas police officer Dustin Dillard knelt on Timpa for about 14 minutes and was accused of using excessive force in Timpa’s civil suit. The three other officers on the scene were accused of failing to intervene. All but one of the officers – Raymond Dominguez – were shielded by qualified immunity, a controversial legal doctrine that protects officials like police officers from lawsuits.
According to the jury, Dillard, and DPD officers Dominguez and Danny Vasquez violated Timpa’s rights, but Vasquez, too, was shielded by qualified immunity. The legal doctrine also applied to Dillard because the jury found a reasonable officer wouldn’t have known that kneeling on Timpa was unlawful. All but one of the officers, Kevin Mansell, who has since retired, are with the department still today.
Geoff Henley, the attorney for Timpa’s mother, Vicki, told the Observer he was astounded that the jury didn’t award any money to Timpa’s mother, father or his estate.“These cases are marathons. They’re not sprints." – Geoff Henley, attorney
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He said his clients were very disheartened by the jury verdict and would prefer to settle on much different terms. “But there’s also an element of ‘This has been an eight-year fight,’” Henley said. “So, there’s also a component of wanting to put some of this behind them.”
Henley said there’s another plaintiff who is part of the suit but not part of this settlement. That’s why the $2.5 million is considered only a partial settlement. Asked if the settlement is enough, Henley said, “Every plaintiff and every plaintiff’s lawyer always wants and feels that there should be more.” And they argued for more, but $2.5 million is what was settled upon. Part of the $2.5 million is to cover attorney fees, Henley said.
He didn’t want to guess whether the council would approve the settlement. “That’s just not something that I have any control over,” he said. “Just like I don’t guess what juries are going to do because, again, I can’t control that. I can only control what I attempt to do and what I do.”
City Council will vote on the settlement at its regular meeting on Wednesday. Henley said a case like this is often litigated slowly, and there’s a reason for that.
“These cases are marathons. They’re not sprints,” he said. “Because of qualified immunity, these cases always take so much longer than regular personal injury cases, and until qualified immunity is reformed or significantly modified, we are going to continue to have, effectively, bloodletting litigation on cases where there are bona fide injuries and death.”
