The gruesome deaths of two unarmed young men fleeing police on foot in the Grand Rapids area in April 2024 — one was pinned against a wall by a police vehicle, while the other was hit and run over — are among numerous cases pending in state courts challenging a decades-old law protecting local government, tribal agencies, and their employees from civil lawsuits.
Governmental, or sovereign, immunity is a legal concept that frequently blocks civil lawsuits against government authorities that arise from actions they take in carrying out official functions. In turn, a subset of the law — qualified immunity — is often more specific to individual officials, mainly those in law enforcement.
The overall immunity privilege has, for decades, been a controversial issue among state lawmakers, the courts, and plaintiff lawyers seeking recourse for victims who they say were harmed or killed by government incompetence or neglect.
Consider, governmental immunity was the central issue and protective shield for school administrators accused of negligence by survivors and their lawyer in the tragic November 2021 mass shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, where a 15-year-old student, Ethan Crumbley, opened fire with a handgun and murdered four classmates and wounded seven others.
More than a dozen civil cases alleging negligence by school administrators were filed by a handful of lawyers, including Ven Johnson Law in Detroit, on behalf of the victims and their families. In quick order, two lower courts cited governmental immunity in rebuffing the firm’s lawsuits. In May 2025, the Michigan Supreme Court, in a two-sentence order, declined to hear appeals of those rulings, ending further legal action.
“After all these years, the Michigan Supreme Court decided to kick out the cases without even issuing a formal opinion on why,” says Ven Johnson, principal of Ven Johnson Law. “There’s no better example of the travesty of justice that governmental immunity imposes on all of us than this case. It’s a textbook example of what’s wrong with our state jurisprudence system. My clients not only did not get their day in court and did not get their right to a jury trial, but their case was thrown out by judges on three levels.”
Johnson represents the families of two deceased students and several other wounded survivors. His firm also is taking on governmental immunity defenses in cases as varied as police-related deaths involving fleeing unarmed suspects and allegations of negligence in widespread destruction of property caused by massive flooding incidents in the Midland area and Wayne County.
As for the two young men killed in Grand Rapids in 2024, Johnson and nationally known civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, of Florida, represent the families of Samuel Sterling, 25, and Riley Doggett, 17, who were crushed by police vehicles in separate incidents.
Soon after, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel intervened in the Sterling case and charged State Police Sgt. Brian Keely with second-degree and involuntary murder. Because Keely was working with a federal fugitive task force, his lawyers succeeded in getting the case transferred to U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, where a judge granted Keely immunity under federal law and dismissed the state’s murder charges, an action Nessel immediately appealed.
Despite the dismissals of criminal charges, however, the civil court lawsuits continue against the officers and their government employers.
Supporters of the law backing governmental immunity argue government agencies need protection from threats of frivolous lawsuits that would hamper officials in carrying out their duties. They say the threat of legal action against police officers, for instance, would foster a reluctance by law enforcement to make tough, but necessary, split-second decisions that could later result in lawsuits against them. What’s more, without immunity protection for officers, police departments would have a harder time recruiting applicants to fill their ranks, they say.
In 1964, the Michigan Legislature enacted the Governmental Liability Act that spelled out total immunity protection for all state agencies, including counties and school districts. Municipal corporations — cities, villages, and townships — were also immune when engaged in governmental functions.
The Act also created four exceptions for governmental liability: failure to keep highways in reasonable repair; negligent operation of government-owned motor vehicles; dangerous or defective conditions in public buildings; and for any damage resulting from proprietary or nongovernmental functions. Later, more exceptions were added making government employees legally responsible for negligence in police brutality cases, jail deaths, and failure to provide medical care by state-owned hospitals.
The exemptions, though, haven’t satisfied plaintiffs’ lawyers like Johnson, who maintain that narrow interpretations of the exceptions by judges make it extremely difficult for plaintiff cases to succeed in court.
“They’ve made these exceptions so narrow that they make it virtually impossible for us to sue them,” Johnson says. “If I sue a cop under the government vehicle exception, all I should have to do is sue the State of Michigan saying you own that vehicle, and this guy drove the vehicle negligently. But again, because of the interpretations of governmental immunity, I must allege that the cop was not just negligent; I have to prove that that cop was grossly negligent and was the ‘proximate cause’ of a death.”
Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker declined to charge State Police Sgt. Keely, the driver of the police vehicle that pinned Sterling against a wall, and absolved Kent County Deputy Josiah McMains of wrongdoing after he ran over Doggett.
Johnson and Crump also represent Patrick Lyoya, a Congolese immigrant and father of two, who in 2022 was fatally shot in the back of the head after he was tackled while running away from a traffic stop. In the shooting of Lyoya, 26, the prosecutor brought second-degree murder charges against Grand Rapids Police Officer Christopher Schurr, who was fired from the department six months after he shot the victim.
Johnson says his team’s civil lawsuit filed against Schurr should go to trial in January 2026 in the U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids. That lawsuit initially named the City of Grand Rapids and Schurr as defendants. Soon after, a judge dismissed the City from the lawsuit while rejecting Schurr’s claim of qualified immunity. His appeal in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals was similarly rebuffed.
Lyoya and a male friend were driving through a residential neighborhood just after 8 a.m. on April 4, 2022, when Schurr passed them driving in the opposite direction. The officer instantly made a U-turn, activated the emergency light on the patrol car, and pulled Lyoya over.
The patrol car’s dash camera showed Lyoya stepping out of his car and standing by the door as Schurr yelled at him to get back in the vehicle. As Schurr approached him, Lyoya took off running across residential lawns with Schurr, 34, chasing him. Schurr fired his taser weapon twice before tackling Lyoya to the ground.
Cellphone video shot by Lyoya’s passenger and by nearby residents showed the officer pinning Lyoya face-down on the ground, pulling out his gun, placing it at the base of Loyola’s head, and firing one shot that killed him.
Earlier this year, Schurr’s lawyers and witnesses who testified in the case convinced enough jurors the shooting was justified, because Schurr was fearful for his life as Lyoya repeatedly tried to grab the taser. A mistrial was declared when jurors were unable to reach a verdict, and Schurr was set free. Becker, the prosecutor, decided not to retry him.
Johnson says racial profiling of the two Black men, not an invalid license plate on their car, was the reason Shurr pulled them over. “He initially passed them going in the opposite direction and couldn’t have seen the license plate,” Johnson points out. “This case has now been on appeal for nearly three-and-a-half years. It’s taken three years just for us to overcome sovereign immunity. The strategy in these immunity cases is all about delay, deny, and defend.”
As for Doggett and Sterling, who died after being hit by separate police vehicles, the officers involved faced vastly different consequences. Keely was charged with second-degree murder and involuntary murder in Sterling’s death, while McMains wasn’t charged with a crime.
On April 17, 2024, Keely was participating in a Grand Rapids-area police fugitive task force of undercover federal, state, and local police looking to apprehend Sterling. He was a probation absconder, previously convicted of weapons charges and possession of a stolen credit card. He also had several outstanding warrants against him.
Sterling had eluded police in previous high-speed chases and officers were told not to try to apprehend him unless he was out of his vehicle. Police believed he might be armed, citing a bulge previously seen in a pants pocket and online videos showing him posing with weapons.
That Wednesday before noon, Sterling was spotted at a gas station in Kentwood putting air in the tires of his car. Officers, including Keely, who was driving an unmarked State Police SUV, closed in on him. Sterling ran away with officers chasing him on foot. Keely followed in the SUV, watching Sterling as he ran into a nearby strip mall and into the drive-through lane of a Burger King restaurant.
In a statement made later to State Police commanders, Keely said he deduced that Sterling was trying to get to a side door of the restaurant, where it would have been dangerous for police and patrons if officers tried to arrest him inside. He said he tried to block the door with his vehicle as Sterling ran toward the SUV’s right front. Keely said he hit the brakes but the vehicle slid, causing him to lose control. He recalled seeing Sterling by the wall near the vehicle’s front right end, but wasn’t sure if he hit him.
Sterling died of multiple injuries five hours later in a local hospital.
In the Doggett case, the Johnson/Crump lawsuit filed against McMains and his employer, Kent County, cites the motor vehicle exception for governmental immunity. The lawyers accuse McMains of using excessive force, gross negligence, and willful and wanton misconduct.
Becker, the county prosecutor, said he couldn’t find evidence of intent to kill or commit great bodily harm, gross negligence, or reckless driving when McMains hit Doggett and ran over him.
That incident, which happened right around the same time as the Sterling case, involved a stolen Range Rover SUV driven by a 17-year-old in which Doggett, also 17, was a passenger. Police in Holland had chased the vehicle at speeds of up to 120 miles per hour before breaking off the chase.
McMains was on patrol in his police SUV in nearby Wyoming when he spotted the Range Rover. After five minutes of harrowing pursuit, where the Range Rover sideswiped two cars and reached speeds of up to 90 miles per hour on residential and commercial streets, the stolen vehicle turned into a car dealer’s lot. Doggett and the driver bailed out and ran in opposite directions.
McMains continued after Doggett and pulled alongside him. In a statement to investigators, he said he was trying to block Doggett’s path when his vehicle made contact with Doggett. The county medical examiner concluded the collision with the SUV didn’t kill Doggett; instead, it was the impact of his head hitting the ground when he fell that caused his injuries and death.
Johnson strenuously disagrees. He points out McMains drove up and over a median before pointing his vehicle at Doggett. “He absolutely intentionally made a drastic right turn, then ran over Riley and killed him,” Johnson says.
Doggett suffered head and brain injuries, a broken hip, and other injuries. He died in a hospital a month later.
The motor vehicle exception also is the basis for a lawsuit Johnson filed in January 2019 in the Michigan Court of Claims on behalf of a snowmobiler, Mark Goss, who was involved in a horrific crash with a Michigan Department of Natural Resources all-terrain vehicle on a trail in Sault Ste. Marie.
Goss was riding through an intersection on a snowmobile trail in February 2018 when he collided with the DNR all-terrain vehicle, which was pulling a grooming rake behind it. On impact, the vehicles exploded into a fireball. The DNR ranger, Roy Pederson, 65, was pinned under his vehicle and burned to death. Goss was thrown from his snowmobile and suffered severe burns, the loss of fingers, and other injuries.
There were no witnesses to the collision, and Goss remembers nothing of the crash. Johnson’s lawsuit, filed in the Michigan Court of Claims in Lansing, blames the accident on negligence by Pederson and holds his employer, the DNR, responsible.
The state moved to dismiss the case based on government immunity, arguing that the all-terrain groomer wasn’t a “motor vehicle,” as specified by the law. A Court of Claims judge ruled in Goss’ favor, prompting the state to appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals.
In May 2024, in a 2-1 vote, the appeals court reversed that decision and ordered the case dismissed on government immunity grounds. The judges also said the all-terrain vehicle didn’t qualify under the motor vehicle exception to the governmental immunity statute.
Johnson appealed the ruling to the Michigan Supreme Court and won a reversal of that decision, and the case was sent back down the judicial ladder to the Court of Claims for trial, where the state is preparing yet another appeal.
“This would be the sixth time they’ve appealed in this case. This case has been pending for over six years and hasn’t even gone to trial yet,” Johnson says. “Welcome to governmental immunity and their increased appellate rights that they have over people. You and I would never have this right, but they do because they’re governmental entities and get to appeal anytime they want. It’s a complete travesty of justice.”
In the case of the Oxford High School shootings, Johnson and lawyers for the victims and survivors maintain that negligence by school administrators contributed to the tragedy.
Just hours before the shootings, Crumbley’s teacher was frightened when she saw what appeared to be violent sketches he was drawing, including one of a gun and someone with two bullet wounds, bleeding from the mouth. He also doodled, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.” Another drawing was a laughing face with tears. “My life is useless” and “The world is dead” were written below the face.
School officials summoned his parents, showed them the sketches, and urged them to immediately take their son to get medical help. The parents declined to do so. They also failed to disclose they had recently bought their son a gun as an early Christmas present.
Following the meeting, school officials returned Crumley’s backpack and allowed him to go back to class. But they didn’t check the heavy backpack, which contained a loaded 9-millimeter handgun and 48 rounds of ammunition.
“You have this kid with a gun at school in his backpack, he’s drawing pictures in class and is basically trying to tell everybody that he’s going to do something bad, and no one does anything about it,” Johnson says. “They give him back the backpack and don’t even search it. They search backpacks and lockers every day for vaping and pot and all that stuff. And these people (school officials) have allegedly no, no, no accountability (because of governmental immunity). That’s just wrong.”
The proximate cause requirement was a key factor in Circuit Court and Appeals Court rulings against Johnson and other plaintiff lawyers. Parallel lawsuits filed in federal court also were rejected.
Those decisions are particularly galling to Johnson and the other lawyers, considering an internal investigation commissioned by the Oxford School District agreed with their argument. A 500-page report by the third-party investigative firm, Guidepost Solutions, for which the district paid more than $300,000, highlighted examples of “collective failure” by administrators and staff to prevent the shooting.
“Their own internal investigation, albeit two to three years too late, blamed the school district and said they played a role in (the shootings),” Johnson says. The report found the school was negligent in handling the threat posed by Crumbley by failing to follow its own threat assessment policy, which would have red-flagged his concerning behavior and bizarre drawings leading up to the shootings.
“There’s no better example of the travesty of justice that governmental immunity imposes on all of us,” Johnson says. “In this case it’s textbook for what’s wrong with our state’s civil jurisprudence system. Under the law, everyone should be treated the same. No one should have more rights than others just because they work for the government. If this shooting had happened at a private school, this case would have gone to trial and none of these (governmental immunity) defenses would exist.”
Last summer, the school district and two of its former administrators settled cases brought by the families of two of the slain students for $500,000 each. The families of the other two deceased students rejected the same offers.
Governmental immunity defenses also have stalled litigation in two massive flooding events — the May 2020 failures of the Edenville and Sanford dams in mid-Michigan, and the June 2021 Wayne County flood that swamped parts of Detroit, Inkster, Grosse Pointe, and Dearborn.
Damage to homes and property in Gladwin and Midland counties exceeded $200 million, while in Wayne County the estimate is $100 million. Nearly five years after the first lawsuit was filed in Midland County Circuit Court, property owners are no closer to settlements, as the owner of the dams filed for bankruptcy and their cases against the state and its regulatory agencies are stymied by governmental immunity firewalls.
In June 2020, Johnson sued the dams’ owner, Boyce Hydro, and the State of Michigan, the regulator of the dams’ activities, on behalf of 300 property owners victimized by the dams’ collapse. Soon after the catastrophe, Boyce Hydro declared bankruptcy.
The lawsuit in Midland Circuit Court asserts state regulators were aware that the history of unaddressed safety violations by the previous owner posed a risk to the 100-year-old Edenville Dam. The earthen embankment dam reached nearly 55 feet high and spanned 6,600 feet across the Tittabawassee and Tobacco rivers in Midland and Gladwin counties. It created a 2,600-acre reservoir, Wixom Lake, that was surrounded by waterfront vacation and retirement homes.
During record rainfall on May 19, a spillway gave way — emptying out the lake and forcing the evacuation of 10,000 people. The floodwater rushed downriver, where the Sanford Dam also was breached. The Sanford community and downtown Midland were flooded as water from the Tittabawassee River crested at 24 feet. An estimated 2,500 homes and buildings were impacted.
In the summer of 2025, the Michigan Court of Claims approved setting up a class action case for residents, property owners, and business owners who argue state agencies ignored warning signs leading to the dams’ failure.
“What I think the judge is doing is organizing the cases because there are so many of them,” Johnson says. “As of right now, this case is set for trial in January 2026. They (the State) have used their appellate rights and appealed this case four times in the last four years. It’s another gross example of increased appellate rights afforded to the government, as opposed to the people who put government in place.”
As for the 1,200 homeowners who were victimized by the June 2021 floods in Detroit, Grosse Pointe, Dearborn, and Wayne County, the plaintiffs argue three city-owned pumping stations broke down as a result of the floods, exacerbated the situation, and caused more than $100 million in damage.
As in the Midland flood, the case has bounced up and down the appellate system as various judges have agreed with, or rejected, the State and City governmental immunity defenses.
“In a normal case, you don’t have an automatic right of appeal if you lose, but the government does. They can keep appealing every time they lose — and so, again, we have delay, deny, and defend,” Johnson says. “We’re putting the government above the normal rights of its people, and it’s therefore virtually impossible to hold them responsible for their screw-ups when they hurt people.”
