John Betts v. Martha Anne Shearman

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that the 22 existence of arguable probable cause entitled arresting officers to qualified immunity on the plaintiff's malicious prosecution claim
• holding that eyewitness’s history of false accusations did not undermine arguable probable cause where plaintiff did not allege officers’ knowledge of past accusations at time of arrest
• holding that information from a putative victim that a crime was committed can establish probable cause “unless the circumstances raise doubt as to the person’s [reliability or] veracity” (citation omitted)
• concluding that a claim that plaintiff was arrested based on a false accusation made against him by the private defendant was insufficient to indicate that the private defendant and the arresting officers shared a common goal of violating plaintiffs rights
• noting that the function of police officers is to “apprehend those suspected of wrongdoing, and not to finally determine guilt through a weighing of the evidence”
• referring to probable cause in the context of a malicious prosecution claim as “continuing probable cause”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).