Michael J. Haddad
Police Shootings, Restraint Deaths, Jail Litigation, and Constitutional Appeals
This was a horribly wrong shooting. The officer never faced an immediate threat from Daniel to justify deadly force. A jury was going to hold the officer and the CHP fully accountable.
A Practice Built on Reconstruction and Reform
Michael J. Haddad's civil-rights work combines meticulous trial preparation, constitutional appeals that produce published law, substantial recoveries, and lasting reforms that outlast any single case.
Haddad and Julia Sherwin represented Denise Smart in federal excessive-force and wrongful-death litigation concerning Daniel Shaham. The team reconstructed the encounter through distance, movement, video, dispatch information, scene measurements, medical evidence, officer training, and the timing of each shot.
The matter resolved through a $7 million settlement before trial.
Mario Gonzalez: Qualified-Immunity Ruling and Settlements
Haddad and Sherwin represented the young son of Mario Gonzalez, who died on April 19, 2021, in a case built around body-camera evidence and the reasonableness of prolonged prone restraint after handcuffing.
At summary judgment in September 2023, the district court held that a reasonable jury could find the detention and arrest unlawful and the prolonged restraint excessive. The court denied qualified immunity on the core Fourth Amendment claims and preserved jury review under established restraint precedent, clearing the path to a November trial date.
After Haddad's team defeated qualified immunity, the parties completed two settlements paid through the California Joint Powers Risk Management Authority, the public-entity risk pool insuring the City of Alameda: $11 million for Gonzalez's son and estate and a separate $350,000 agreement resolving his mother's action. The $11 million figure stands among the largest California civil-rights recoveries for a child in the past decade — compensation scaled to a lifetime lived without a father.
Humberto Martinez: Integral-Participant Liability
Haddad represented Humberto "Beto" Martinez's children in civil-rights litigation concerning a group restraint by six Pittsburg police officers.
Haddad argued that the restraint had to be evaluated as combined force rather than by isolating each officer's contribution. The Ninth Circuit agreed that the evidence, viewed in the family's favor, supported integral-participant liability and held that fundamental involvement can establish responsibility even when an officer did not perform the final act causing injury.
On June 18, 2020, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the denial of qualified immunity and cleared the case for trial. Martinez's children then resolved the matter for $7.3 million.
The settlement also changed police policy and training. Pittsburg confirmed that choke and carotid holds were prohibited and agreed to train officers on the danger that prone restraint can impair breathing — reforms that converted one family's case into protection for people the officers would encounter in the future.
Published State-Created-Danger and PREP Act Rulings
Haddad argued the Ninth Circuit appeals in Polanco v. Diaz and Hampton v. California, cases concerning California's May 2020 transfer of 122 incarcerated people into San Quentin during the COVID-19 emergency.
In Polanco, the Ninth Circuit held that the allegations plausibly stated a state-created-danger claim and supported deliberate indifference. The court allowed the family's claim to proceed beyond qualified immunity. The Supreme Court denied review on May 13, 2024, leaving the favorable published rule in place as governing circuit law.
In Hampton, the Ninth Circuit largely preserved the Eighth Amendment claim and rejected Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act immunity at the pleading stage. The court held that statutory protection for administering or using a covered countermeasure did not automatically reach alleged failures to administer or use current testing and infection-control measures.
Together, the two published decisions supplied appellate answers to questions of first impression — the kind of precedent-building that extends a single lawyer's advocacy across an entire circuit.
Clinical Scope and Supervision
A 2024 jail settlement provided $5.9 million and required changes to medical care and procedures while preserving the family's anonymity.
The agreement prohibited assigning licensed vocational nurses work outside their legal scope as registered nurses or mental-health clinicians. It required individualized-treatment-plan retraining for mental-health staff, annual suicide-prevention training for personnel who interact with incarcerated people, and continuous clinical supervision for vocational nurses working in the jail.
The terms put those safeguards into daily operation: license scope determines what care a clinician may provide, continuous supervision keeps broader clinical authority available when risk changes, and annual training helps custody and medical staff recognize and communicate warning signs.
Practice and Leadership
Haddad was born in Detroit, graduated from Michigan State University's James Madison College and the University of Michigan Law School, and began practice at Goodman, Eden, Millender & Bedrosian — the storied Detroit firm known as the nation's first racially integrated law practice.
He moved to California in the 1990s and later formed Haddad & Sherwin with Julia Sherwin.
Haddad served as president of the National Police Accountability Project from 2010 through 2015, sat on its executive committee from 2000 through 2018, and continues on its board. Through co-counsel programs, amicus work, continuing education, and legislative advocacy, the organization supports lawyers handling civil-rights cases across the country.
His practice also represents conscientious law-enforcement officers and provides training on use of force, deadly force, mental-health encounters, search and seizure, and internal-affairs procedure — a breadth that keeps his courtroom advocacy grounded in how policing actually works.
His matters include deadly-force, prone-restraint, group-participation, state-created-danger, statutory-immunity, and jail-medical-scope issues arising in civil-rights litigation and appellate review.