When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 1998 decision in County of Sacramento v. Lewis, it may have seemed at first that the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had been vindicated because the justices adopted a “shocks the conscience” standard for evaluating civil rights suits brought by victims of high-speed police chases.
The 3rd Circuit was one of the first appellate courts in the country to impose the shocks the conscience test in a high-speed chase case with its en banc opinion in Fagan v. City of Vineland.
