United States District Court, E.D. California
ORDER DENYING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR
RECONSIDERATION ORDER DENYING DEFENDANTS’ SECOND MOTION
TO DISMISS (DOC. NOS. 32, 39)
On June
17, 2016, defendants Merced County, Charles Hale, and Jose
Sam Sanchez filed a motion for reconsideration, requesting
reconsideration of a portion of this court’s June 13,
2016 order granting their previously filed motion to dismiss
in part. (Doc. No. 32.) Defendant Erick Macias joined the
motion to reconsider. (Doc. No. 35.) Plaintiff filed an
opposition on June 29, 2016. (Doc. No. 36.) Defendants
replied on July 13, 2016. (Doc. No. 38.) Pursuant to Local
Rule 230(g), the court finds this motion suitable to
disposition without oral argument, and accordingly issues
this order denying defendants’ motion.
District
courts “possess[] the inherent procedural power to
reconsider, rescind, or modify an interlocutory order for
cause seen by it to be sufficient.” City of L.A.,
Harbor Div. v. Santa Monica Baykeeper, 254 F.3d 882, 885
(9th Cir. 2001) (citations and internal quotation marks
omitted). A motion for reconsideration, however,
“should not be granted, . . . unless the district court
is presented with newly discovered evidence, committed clear
error, or if there is an intervening change in the
controlling law.” 389 Orange St. Partners v.
Arnold, 179 F.3d 656, 665 (9th Cir. 1999) (citing
Sch. Dist. No. 1J v. ACandS, Inc., 5 F.3d 1255, 1263
(9th Cir. 1993)). Reconsideration of a prior order is an
extraordinary remedy “to be used sparingly in the
interests of finality and conservation of judicial
resources.” Kona Enters., Inc. v. Estate of
Bishop, 229 F.3d 877, 890 (9th Cir. 2000) (citations
omitted); Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of Indians v.
Hodel, 882 F.2d 364, 369 n.5 (9th Cir. 1989)
(“[T]he orderly administration of lengthy and complex
litigation such as this requires the finality of orders be
reasonably certain.”). In its prior order, concerning
defendants’ motion to dismiss plaintiff’s Bane
Act claim under California Civil Code § 52.1 the
undersigned stated as follows:
Until the California Supreme Court or the Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals holds otherwise, the undersigned will follow the
weight of authority among District Courts in California and
find that there is no need for a plaintiff to allege coercion
independent from the coercion inherent in the seizure of the
plaintiff without probable cause to state such a claim.
(Doc. No. 31 at 21-22.) Defendants point the court to
Lyall v. City of Los Angeles, 807 F.3d 1178 (9th
Cir. 2015), cited in their original reply brief, which holds,
in pertinent part, “[n]umerous California decisions
make clear that a plaintiff in a search-and-seizure case must
allege threats or coercion beyond the coercion inherent in a
detention or search in order to recover under the Bane
Act.” Lyall, 807 F.3d at 1196. Plaintiff
objects, noting that Lyall is factually
distinguishable. (Doc. No. 36 at 3-4.) For the reasons stated
below, the court denies defendants’ motion for
reconsideration.
It is
true this court did not specifically address or distinguish
Lyall in its initial ruling on defendants’
voluminous motion to dismiss, which raised fourteen separate
arguments seeking the dismissal of various causes of action
set forth in plaintiff’s complaint. That said,
Lyall and the cases it relies on are indeed
distinguishable. Lyall concerned claims for
violation of the plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment right to
be free from unreasonable searches and seizures after police
officers allegedly subjected the plaintiffs to unreasonable,
warrantless searches and seizures while attempting to locate
suspects who had stolen alcohol from a local convenience
store. 807 F.3d at 1181-85. Notably, the plaintiffs in
Lyall contended the district court had erred by
instructing the jury-which had found defendants did not
violate the Bane Act-that plaintiffs were required to prove
“the [police] threats, intimidation, or coercion were
independent from the acts inherent in the detention and
search.” Id. at 1195. The Ninth Circuit noted
“[n]umerous California decisions make clear that a
plaintiff in a search-and-seizure case must allege threats or
coercion beyond the coercion inherent in a detention or
search in order to recover under the Bane Act.”
Lyall, 807 F.3d at 1196 (citing Allen v. City of
Sacramento, 234 Cal.App.4th 41 (2015), Quezada v.
City of Los Angeles, 222 Cal.App.4th 993 (2014), and
Shoyoye v. Cty. of Los Angeles, 203 Cal.App.4th 947
(2012)). This statement by the court in Lyall is
undoubtedly true: a plaintiff cannot prevail on a Bane Act
claim which alleges a wrongful search or a wrongful seizure
without alleging some threat, intimidation, or coercion that
goes beyond the simple fact of the coercion inherent in any
seizure. To the extent this court’s prior order could
be read as indicating otherwise, it was incorrect.
Lyall, however, is a holding of limited application
to the current case.
The
California decisions on which the Ninth Circuit relied in
Lyall-Allen, Quezada, and
Shoyoye-show this rule of law is perhaps better
articulated as stating a defendant may not be held liable
under the Bane Act for an unintentional violation of
one’s right to be free from unlawful searches and
seizures. See also Dillman v. Tuolumne Cty.,
1:13-cv-00404 LJO SKO, 2013 WL 1907379, at *20 (E.D. Cal. May
7, 2013) (noting that “the relevant distinction for
purposes of the Bane Act is between intentional and
unintentional conduct”). In the earliest of these, the
plaintiff was erroneously detained in a county jail longer
than he should have been because of a data entry error in the
jail’s computer system. See Shoyoye, 203
Cal.App.4th at 950-52. The California Court of Appeals noted:
The evidence presented at trial showed only that County
employees were negligent in assigning to Shoyoye a parole
hold in the computer system, and in failing to detect the
error during the subsequent quality control procedure. . . .
Any intimidation or coercion that occurred was simply that
which is reasonable and incident to maintaining a jail. The
coercion was not carried out in order to effect a knowing
interference with Shoyoye’s constitutional rights. This
is in stark contrast to Venegas II [Venegas v.
Cty. of Los Angeles, 32 Cal.4th 820 (2004)], for
example, in which the evidence presented could support a
finding that the probable cause that initially existed to
justify stopping the plaintiffs eroded at some point, such
that the officers’ conduct became intentionally
coercive and wrongful, i.e., a knowing and blameworthy
interference with the plaintiffs’ constitutional
rights.
Id. at 961 (emphasis added). In Quezada,
three police officers were the subjects of an internal
investigation following their off-duty discharge of a firearm
after they had been drinking. 222 Cal.App.4th at 996-1001.
They alleged violations of the Bane Act because their
vehicles were allegedly unlawfully searched as part of the
investigation. Id. at 1007. The California Court of
Appeals noted that the plaintiffs had “failed to show
that there were any undue threats or coercion,
” because the only alleged threats were entirely lawful
actions for the investigating officers to take in the
circumstances. Id. at 1007-08 (emphasis added).
Finally, the most recent of the cases, Allen,
“involve[d] an allegedly unlawful arrest but no alleged
coercion beyond the coercion inherent in any arrest, ”
which was insufficient to state a Bane Act claim. 234
Cal.App.4th at 69.
The
principle emerging from these decisions is that, in cases
alleging a violation of a plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment
right to be free from unlawful searches and seizures, there
must be some additional evidence of threat, intimidation, or
coercion beyond the coercive nature inherent in each and
every arrest to sustain a claim under the Bane
Act.[1]
This standard could obviously be met in some cases solely
alleging a Fourth Amendment wrongful search-and-seizure
violation. See Shoyoye, 203 Cal.App.4th at 961
(contrasting with a case in which “the probable cause
that initially existed to justify stopping the plaintiffs
eroded at some point, such that the officers’ conduct
became intentionally coercive and wrongful, i.e., a knowing
and blameworthy interference with the plaintiffs’
constitutional rights”). Notwithstanding any
hypothetical applications, it is certainly met here.
In this
case, the allegations of plaintiff’s original complaint
and now second amended complaint remain the same concerning
the Bane Act cause of action: “Defendants caused the
initiation of a malicious criminal prosecution against
Plaintiff in violation of his First and Fourth Amendment
rights under the United States Constitution and corresponding
rights under the California Constitution.” (Doc. No. 37
at ¶ 68.) Further, the defendants allegedly “acted
toward Plaintiff with malice, oppression, fraud, and with
willful and conscious disregard to Plaintiffs rights,
entitling Plaintiff to awards of punitive damages.”
(Doc. No. 37 at ¶ 71.) Whatever the precise contours of
the alleged constitutional violations are, it is clear that
plaintiff alleges more than a mere unintentional violation of
his Fourth Amendment rights which would be present in any
arrest without probable cause. Plaintiffs essential
allegations in this case are that defendants arrested him and
charged him with murder in order to retaliate against his
father, a local elected official who had publically
criticized their performance as police officers.
(See Doc. No. 37 at ¶¶ 23-49.) This goes
far beyond the allegations present in Shoyoye,
Quezada, and Allen, which at most alleged
unintentional violations of the plaintiffs’
constitutional rights. Accordingly, defendants’ motion
for reconsideration will be denied.
On July
13, 2016, defendants Merced County, Charles Hale, and Jose
Sam Sanchez filed a motion to dismiss plaintiffs second
amended complaint pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6). (Doc. No. 39.)
Defendant Macias joined this motion on the same date. (Doc.
No. 41.) Because the argument advanced in support of
defendants’ motion to dismiss the second amended
complaint is nearly identical to that made in support of
defendants’ motion for reconsideration, the motion to
dismiss will be denied for the same reasons set forth above.
CONCLUSION
For the
reasons set forth above, defendants’ motion for
reconsideration (Doc. No. 32) is denied. In addition and for
the same reasons, defendants’ ...