A person can be liable in a civil lawsuit for excessive force, false arrest or false imprisonment even if the person did not physically touch the victim or physically participate in taking the victim into custody.

  A person who instigates illegal police misconduct can be held liable along with the police officers.

  A person does not instigate illegal police misconduct just by alerting the police to a situation or by accusing a specific person of wrongful conduct, so long as it is left to the police themselves to make the decision what is to be done.

  The patient does not allege in his lawsuit that his nurse persuaded or influenced the police officers to physically mistreat him as they did or to place him under arrest. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT ALABAMA August 3, 2015

  A hospital nurse was caring for a paraplegic patient after shoulder surgery.   He uses a wheelchair.

  The nurse was having difficulty with his IV. The patient became upset and told the nurse to get a different nurse.  Then he decided to wheel himself off the unit and outside the building to have a smoke.

  The nurse called hospital security who at the university hospital are not rent-a-cops but police officers sworn by the state.

  An altercation ensued in which the police forcibly pushed the patient in his wheelchair along a hospital corridor, dumped him out of his wheelchair on the floor and broke his cell phone while trying to take it away from him.

  The patient sued his nurse, the officers and the university health system alleging excessive force and violation of his civil and constitutional rights.

  The US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama ruled the nurse was not liable.

  The Court pointed out that a person does not have to be directly physically involved in an incident to be held liable afterward in a lawsuit for excessive force.

  However, in this case the nurse only reported that the patient was out of her control and had left the unit to go outside.  The nurse took no part in telling the officers how they should react to the situation.  To struggle with the patient while trying restrain and arrest him was their own decision.  Pollnitz v. Hospital, 2015 WL 4626882 (N.D. Ala., August 3, 2015).

Additional references from nursinglaw.com

http://www.nursinglaw.com/abuse-patient.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/alcohol-withdrawal-disability-discrimination.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/suicidal-mental-health-commitment.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/search-patient-property.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/arrest-warrant-patient.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/psychiatric-hold-nurse-negligence.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/mental-health-custody-control.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/hostage-drill-nursing-home.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/hospital-family-belligerent.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/forced-catheterization.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/emergency-department-nurse.htm