What liability is at stake when a county sheriff deputizes citizens, who then get badly hurt?

That's the question the Sacramento Bee story asked two years ago here, and today the California Supreme Court finally made a decision in the case.  Here's an excerpt from Ryan Sabalow's story today:

Nine years ago, a rural California sheriff’s corporal called Jim and Norma Gund and asked them to check on their neighbor, who had called 911 and hung up. When the Gunds arrived, a murderer armed with a Taser and hunting knife attacked the couple and almost killed them. 

Did the Gunds become de facto deputies when they agreed to help Cpl. Ron Whitman, or were they just being good neighbors? 

On Thursday, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office in a case that sought to answer whether people who volunteer to help law enforcement should be entitled to sue for damages if they get hurt, or if they’re merely eligible for workers’ compensation as employees.

“We conclude the Gunds were indeed engaged in ‘active law enforcement service,’” the Supreme Court wrote Thursday. “When the Gunds provided the requested assistance, they delivered an active response to the 911 call of a local resident pleading for help. A response of this kind unquestionably falls within the scope of a police officer’s law enforcement duties.” 

The sheriff’s attorneys argued the Gunds were volunteers and only entitled to workers’ compensation for their injuries.

This part of Sabalow's story sketches the remote context in which these events took place:

The Gunds’ story, which raises troubling questions about the lack of law enforcement in the vast rural reaches of California, began March 13, 2011, in the remote former timber town of Kettenpom, about 250 miles north of San Francisco.

The California Supreme Court decision uses the word rural only twice, both when referring to the Amicus Brief of the Rural County Representatives of California (who filed with California League of Cities on behalf of defendants/respondent, Trinity County.  One of those mentions is in the text of the opinion and another is in the listing of attorneys and briefs.     

Here's the salient excerpt with the word "rural" highlighted:

We have good reasons to embrace, in this context, a more capacious understanding of what “law enforcement service” means. For reasons detailed below, we conclude that the term “active law enforcement service” — as used in section 3366 — falls short of encompassing every conceivable function a peace officer can perform. But neither is it quite so narrow that we are compelled to hold it only applies to the arrest and detention of criminals, or the direct suppression of crime. We conclude that “active law enforcement service” includes a peace officer’s duties directly concerned with functions such as enforcing laws, investigating and preventing crime, and protecting the public. Whatever the outer limits of the term, “active law enforcement” certainly includes the arrest and detention of criminals, as well as — given the range of reasons that ordinarily trigger emergency calls to police — responses to emergency calls for unspecified assistance, such as Kristine’s 911 call for help. (See, e.g., Livingston, Police Discretion and the Quality of Life in Public Places: Courts, Communities, and the New Policing (1997) 97 Colum. L.Rev. 551, 559 [investigation, arrest, and prosecution of those committing serious crimes is “straightforward” police intervention]; see also id. at p. 567 [the modern “ ‘crime-fighting’ ” strategy of policing includes rapid response to 911 calls for service].)  

Consider at the outset the structure of section 3366. It applies when an individual is injured while engaged in active law enforcement service, either on command or voluntarily at the request of a peace officer. Government Code section 26604 indicates that sheriffs “shall command the aid” of inhabitants as they think necessary to execute their duties. This authority for calling forth citizens to aid in law enforcement is the posse comitatus power. (Kopel, The Posse Comitatus and the Office of Sheriff: Armed Citizens Summoned to the Aid of Law Enforcement (2015) 104 J.Crim. L. & Criminology 761, 769– 806.) The posse comitatus power predates the nation’s founding and has a complicated history. (Id. at pp. 792–793.) At the federal level, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 contained posse comitatus provisions enabling federal law enforcement officers to compel northerners to assist in the capture of enslaved people who had escaped bondage. (Id. at pp. 798–800.) After the Civil War, the power was used in reverse to enforce civil rights legislation in the Reconstruction south. (Id. at pp. 800–801.) But the more familiar use of the posse comitatus power was the western frontier version: where a sheriff summoned the posse to pursue an escaped outlaw or confront a violent gang. (Id. at p. 802.) During this era, preservation of the peace did not fall exclusively to peace officers. (Pressel, The Western Peace Officer (1972) pp. 30–31.) On the frontier, preserving the peace was public duty. (Ibid.) Amicus curiae Rural County Representatives of California explains that unlike with the large, organized police forces for urban centers, peace officers in remote areas — like Trinity County — still rely on community members to assist in ensuring community safety.

That last line has me querying:  Is this sort of rural or frontier "policing" the original "community policing" we hear so much about today?

This case also reminds me of my 2014 book chapter:  The Rural Lawscape:  Space Tames Law Tames Space.  There I argue that law enforcement agencies struggle to adequately police  remote and sparsely populated places.  That is the sense in which "space" tames or resists the authority of law/the state.