Brass v. County of Los Angeles

• Decision Date: 15 May 2003
• Docket Number: No. 01-57249.,01-57249.
• Parties: Roger BRASS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, erroneously sued as Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors; Rick Thurlo, individually and as a peace officer, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

328 F.3d 1192

Roger BRASS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, erroneously sued as Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors; Rick Thurlo, individually and as a peace officer, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 01-57249.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted January 17, 2003.

Filed May 15, 2003.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Thomas E. Beck, Los Angeles, CA, for the plaintiff-appellant.

David J. Wilson, Los Angeles, CA; Denise M. Walter, Julie Fleming, Los Angeles, CA, for the defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; Lourdes G. Baird, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV 98-02052 LGB.

Before: FRIEDMAN,^* KOZINSKI, and RAWLINSON, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

FRIEDMAN, Circuit Judge.

The appellant Roger Brass challenges the district court's order granting summary judgment in favor of the County of Los Angeles ("County") on his complaint that the County violated 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by continuing his incarceration for 39 hours after a state trial judge had ordered him released. We affirm.

I

A. The relevant facts are undisputed. County Sheriff Deputy Thurlo was seeking to arrest James Nichols on a warrant for vehicular burglary. Brass's house was shown in the warrant as Nichols's address. Nichols reportedly had been seen near the house. Brass resembled Nichols's physical description, and both men had missing left-hand finger joints. On Sunday, April 6, 1997, Thurlo arrested and incarcerated Brass in the mistaken belief that he was Nichols.

Later that day, after Thurlo had left the station house, it was determined that Brass was not Nichols. The Sheriff's Department, however, continued to hold Brass and did not present him for arraignment until April 9, 1997, when, at 11:20 a.m., a state court judge ordered him released. The order, on a printed form, was directed to the County Sheriff, and stated in pertinent part:

THIS IS TO AUTHORIZE YOU TO RELEASE Brass, Roger ... FROM CUSTODY FOR THE FOLLOWING REASON Released on O/R, This Case Only.

The court's docket covering a case against Nichols further stated: "Request to Release on OR granted. Respondent released on own recognizance ... return on above date to be fingerprinted. Court indicates this may not be defendant in custody."

Although Brass stated in his brief that the order directed that he be released "forthwith," neither the release order nor the docket entries specified any time limit for his release.

Brass was released 39 hours after the release order was entered, at 3:00 a.m. on Friday, April 11. This 39-hour period for effecting his release is the gravamen of the case now before us.

B. Brass filed a suit for damages in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, naming as defendants the County, Thurlo and "DOES 2 through 100." His amended complaint contained six counts. The first three were federal claims, all alleging violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Count I charged all the defendants with depriving Brass of his liberty without due process and alleged that the "conduct ... was undertaken pursuant to the policies, practices and customs of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department." Count II alleged that the defendants had subjected him to unreasonable searches and seizures, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Count III, which charged only the County, alleged that Thurlo and the DOES had enforced the County's "policies, customs, practices and usages in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments." (This claim will be referred to as the Monell claim, as the parties do, based on Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978), discussed in Part III, below.) The fourth through sixth counts all stated claims under California law. The complaint stated that each DOE defendant "is responsible in some manner for the events and happenings herein referred to, and thereby proximately caused injuries and damages as herein alleged"; and that Brass did not know the DOES' "true names and capacities," but would seek to amend the complaint "to show their true names and capacities when same have been ascertained."

On the defendants' motion, the district court granted summary judgment dismissing the three federal claims and, declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, dismissed the state law claims without prejudice. The court dismissed the first claim against Thurlo because Brass had not shown that Thurlo was responsible for his continued detention after the state court had ordered his release. The court rejected Brass's unlawful arrest claim (Count II) because Thurlo had probable cause to arrest him, and therefore was entitled to qualified immunity. The court also dismissed Counts I and II against the County because the County could not be held liable under Section 1983 on a respondeat superior liability theory. Finally, the court granted summary judgment dismissing Count III, the Monell claim that the 39-hour detention resulted from a County policy or custom, on the ground that the County Sheriff acted as a state rather than as a county official in handling the release of prisoners.

On appeal, we affirmed the summary judgment in favor of Thurlo, but reversed the judgment in favor of the County. Brass v. County of L.A., 10 Fed.Appx. 412, 2001 WL 275076 (9th Cir. Mar. 19, 2001) (unpublished opinion). We held that Thurlo had probable cause to arrest Brass, and therefore qualified immunity. With respect to Brass's claim that the County "violated his constitutional rights when it failed to release him from jail until April 11, even though a judge ordered his release on April 9," we relied on our decision in Streit v. County of Los Angeles, 236 F.3d 552, 561 (9th Cir.2001), where we held that "when the Sheriff of Los Angeles County performs the function of `oversight and management of the local jail,' including, specifically, the effectuation of the release of prisoners, the `Sheriff acts for the County,' and not the state.... As a result, the County can be liable for Brass's delayed release and, therefore, the district court's summary judgment for the County must be reversed. We express no opinion on the merits of Brass' claim of untimely release." Id. at *3-5 (quoting Streit, 236 F.3d at 561).

C. On the remand, Brass moved for summary adjudication, and the County moved for summary judgment. In support of his motion, Brass asserted, in addition to his "policy or custom" claim against the County, "three additional bases to support his Section 1983 action," including the County's failure to arraign him timely. Brass previously had not explicitly made these three additional claims.

Brass also attempted to substitute four named County police officers for four of the DOES. Those officers allegedly had been involved in his 39-hour incarceration. He did not, however, move to amend his complaint to add those individuals as named defendants, but merely referred to them as defendants in various documents he filed.

The district court denied Brass's motion, granted the defendant's motion and dismissed the case. The court first held that the only issue properly before it was Brass's Monell claim against the County. It pointed out that it had initially granted summary judgment in favor of both Thurlo and the County; that we reversed only the ruling that the County was not liable on the Monell claim because the Sheriff acted as a representative of the state and not the County in handling the release of prisoners "thus leaving intact [its] findings that the County was not liable under Plaintiff's first two Section 1983 causes of action (for due process violations and unlawful arrest)"; and concluded therefore that the Monell claim "is the only viable federal claim before [it]." The district court then ruled that, because Brass had not previously "asserted" the additional claims he now sought to litigate, he had waived them.

Finally, the court held that it would be "inappropriate" to substitute the four named parties for the four DOE defendants, "especially" because Brass "has not even attempted to request leave from the Court to add new parties or to file an amended complaint. Plaintiff cannot take advantage of the Ninth Circuit's limited remand by now adding these new individuals to the litigation. Thus, the naming of these individuals as defendants and any allegations pertaining to them as named defendants are stricken."

The court denied Brass's motion for summary adjudication in his favor that the County violated his constitutional rights through its practice and custom of delaying his release for 39 hours "because he has failed to carry his burden of showing that this policy was actually applied to him in the instant case. Mere conclusory statements that this practice `caused [his] detention,' without more, does not constitute evidence sufficient to establish a nexus between the `policy' and Plaintiff's detention." The court concluded: "Because Plaintiff's 39-hour detention is within the presumptive constitutional time limit of 48 hours set by the McLaughlin court[discussed below] and because Plaintiff has not raised a genuine issue of material fact that his release was otherwise unreasonably delayed, Defendants' motion on Plaintiff's sole remaining Section 1983 cause of action alleging Fourth and Fourteenth amendment violations for overdetention is GRANTED."

Finally, the court again dismissed without prejudice Brass's state law claims.

II

The district court correctly held that the only issue properly before it was the validity of Brass's Monell claim against the County.

A. As noted, Brass's amended complaint contained three federal law counts. Count I charged all defendants (the County, Thurlo, and the DOES) with depriving Brass of his liberty without due process of law "pursuant to the policies, practices and customs" of the County's Sheriff's Department, and Count II, also directed against all the...