HMW Contributes Law Review Article to Special Issue on NM Civil Rights Act

An article authored by members of the HWM legal team has been published in a special issue of the New Mexico Law Review. The article, titled A New Jurisprudence of Constitutional Duty, addresses a subset of constitutional “failure to protect” claims that have historically been constrained by the United States Supreme Court’s holdings in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services, and argues that the New Mexico Civil Rights Act revitalizes these claims by allowing them to be analyzed through “traditional tort concepts of duty and the reasonably prudent person’s standard of care in the performance of that duty.”  The article further argues that the New Mexico Supreme Court’s holding in Rodriguez v. Del Sol Shopping Center Associates eliminates the threshold inquiry of foreseeability with respect to the assessment of “constitutional duties” under the NMCRA, ensuring that a higher percentage of “failure to protect” claims make their way to juries.

“Failure to protect” claims against state actors often involve horrendous injuries and human suffering, and frequently result from the reckless behavior of law enforcement officers, child welfare officials, or other public employees. The HWM team’s devotion to this academic project is but one facet of their constant efforts to ensure that all victims of serious civil rights injuries have a viable legal remedy in court. This is a complex and difficult area of the law; the HWM team encourages any New Mexican who has suffered injury as a result of the neglect of public actors to contact the Firm and assess their potential legal claims.

You can read the full article from the special issue of Volume 54 of the New Mexico Law Review here: A New Jurisprudence of Constitutional Duty: Moving Beyond DeShaney Through the NMCRA