Negligent Supervision Liability for Law Enforcement

1. What Should You Know?
2. When Should You Know It?
3. What Should You Do?

For supervisors of all ranks—from FTOs and first-line supervisors to Chiefs and Sheriffs— these 3 questions underpin virtually all legal claims of negligent supervision for individual supervisors and their agencies across the country.  When facing deposition or trial testimony related to allegations of officer misconduct or negligence, supervisors are essentially required to answer these 3 questions to establish that they were not negligent in the performance of their supervisory duties. 

It is vitally important that supervisors can answer these questions in a way that is both honest, defensible, and verifiable. A crucial part of answering these questions is often providing documentation that supports the assertion that an individual supervisor did everything that they reasonably could to address performance issues before an incident of serious misconduct.

In this two-hour webinar, Attorney Matt Dolan will review case studies of negligent supervision liability and summarize liability take-aways to explain the various ways that supervisors either expose themselves to liability or minimize that exposure—depending on how they are able to answer these 3 key questions.