Legal Question in Criminal Law in Texas

Re: Police liable for medical care?

I don't see why they would be. The first obstacle to such a claim would be immunity. Police are normally immune from liability for acts taken in the course and scope of their duties. Given that there was a warrant out for your father, their duties included arresting him and bringing him to court. Your question does not suggest that they did anything wrong.

Another problem is causation. Even if the officers did act improperly in such a significant way as to undermine their immunity, your father would have to show that this impropriety caused his medical problems. If he would have had the same problems had the officers acted properly -- or had they not arrested him at all -- then his claim will fail. He would bear the burden of proof on this point, and proving such allegations is not easy.

Then there is the issue of damages. You didn't say how much the medical bills were, but they might not justify a full-blown lawsuit. The amount might be worth a small claims case, but your father would probably have to bring a doctor to testify as an expert witness about the cause of his heart problems. He would likely need a second expert about proper procedures for arrests like his. These experts would cost a lot -- probably more than the underlying medical bills.

Even if the amount of the bills is substantial, it may not be enough to attract a lawyer. Cases like this one take a lot of time, and your father presumably would want a lawyer to work for him on a contingent-fee basis. Lawyers only take such cases when they expect to win a large enough judgment that their portion will adequately pay for the time they put in to the case and the risk of losing. Even a week of hospital bills likely wouldn't be enough, though if your father also suffered greatly and/or developed ongoing medical problems his case would be more attractive to plaintiffs' attorneys.

Even if a lawyer would want the case, the costs of bringing it (which would be paid from your father's share of the judgment, not the attorney's fee) might leave little -- or nothing -- for your father to collect. It might even leave him in debt. A lawsuit that pays the attorney adequately but puts no money into the plaintiff's pocket is usually not worth bringing.

But there is an even more fundamental problem here. The real cause of your father's problem seems to be that he committed contempt of court and then didn't comply with whatever orders preceeded issuance of the warrant. If I'm right about that, then his arrest was a direct consequence of his own actions and he has only himself to blame.

Re: Police liable for medical care?

Texas law would apply in this case as the question indicates that is where he was arrested. The general rule as I understand it is that the state is responsible for providing medical care to those individuals that are in custody. Your father was arrested on a warrant and therefore was in custody.