Correctional officer Patrick O’Dea has one of the “toughest beats in the state,” a California appellate court agrees, but that doesn’t entitle him to sue his bosses, even if they orchestrated a prison fight in which O’Dea was injured.
“There was no state action in O’Dea’s case that restrained him from acting on his own behalf,” 3rd District Court of Appeal Justice Ronald Robie wrote May 23. “[Prison officials] did not restrain O’Dea from defending himself as he was equipped with pepper spray and a baton that he used to subdue the inmates and quell the fight.”
