Harper v. City of Los Angeles

• Citation: 533 F.3d 1010
• Decision Date: 14 July 2008
• Docket Number: No. 06-55715.,No. 06-55519.,06-55519.,06-55715.
• Parties: Paul D. HARPER; Brian D. Liddy; Edward Ortiz, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES, a municipality; Bernard Parks, Defendants-Appellants, and County of Los Angeles; Gil Garcetti; Laura Laesecke; Anne Ingalls; Rafael Perez, Defendants. Paul D. Harper; Brian D. Liddy; Edward Ortiz, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. City of Los Angeles, a municipality; Bernard Parks, Defendants-Appellants, and County of Los Angeles; Gil Garcetti; Laura Laesecke; Anne Ingalls; Rafael Perez, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

533 F.3d 1010

Paul D. HARPER; Brian D. Liddy; Edward Ortiz, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES, a municipality; Bernard Parks, Defendants-Appellants, and County of Los Angeles; Gil Garcetti; Laura Laesecke; Anne Ingalls; Rafael Perez, Defendants.

Paul D. Harper; Brian D. Liddy; Edward Ortiz, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. City of Los Angeles, a municipality; Bernard Parks, Defendants-Appellants, and County of Los Angeles; Gil Garcetti; Laura Laesecke; Anne Ingalls; Rafael Perez, Defendants.

No. 06-55519.

No. 06-55715.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted November 7, 2007.

Filed July 14, 2008.

Edward J. Horowitz, Office of Edward J. Horowitz, Pacific Palisades, CA; Dale B. Goldfarb, Harrington, Foxx, Dubrow &

Canter, Los Angeles, CA, for the defendants-appellants.

Jeffrey Isaac Ehrlich, The Ehrlich Law Firm, Claremont, CA; Joseph Y. Avrahamy, Law Offices of Joseph Y. Avrahamy, Encino, CA; Etan Z. Lorant, Law Offices of Etan Z. Lorant, Encino, CA, for the plaintiffs-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; Cormac J. Carney, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-03-00959-CJC.

Before: JEROME FARRIS and RICHARD A. PAEZ, Circuit Judges, and FREDERIC BLOCK,^* District Judge.

PAEZ, Circuit Judge:

This case arises from the Los Angeles Police Department's ("LAPD") investigation and prosecution of three former police officers, Paul Harper, Brian Liddy, and Edward Ortiz. These officers were implicated in wrongdoing by former LAPD officer Rafael Perez in an event that came to be known as the "Rampart Scandal"—an event that, based on Perez's own unlawful conduct and his allegations of corruption at the Rampart Division, launched an internal investigation that ultimately implicated scores of police officers, overturned dozens of convictions, and generated intense media scrutiny. The criminal charges against these officers resulted in acquittals. Harper, Liddy, and Ortiz (the "Officers") subsequently brought suit against a number of actors, including Perez, the district attorneys, the City of Los Angeles, and former Chief of Police Bernard Parks for violations of their constitutional civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, contending among other claims that the defendants had conducted an improper and negligent investigation, and that they had been arrested without probable cause for falsifying a police report and conspiring to file such a report.

The Officers' claims against the County of Los Angles, District Attorney Gil Garcetti, Rafael Perez, and Deputy District Attorneys Laesecke and Ingalls were dismissed on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) motions or motions for summary judgment, and the case proceeded to trial against the City of Los Angeles and Chief Parks ("the City"). After an eleven-day trial, the jury returned a special verdict in favor of the Officers, finding that the Officers' constitutional rights were violated by the City and by Chief Parks in his official capacity.¹ The jury awarded each officer compensatory damages in the amount of $5,000,001. The City thereupon filed a number of post-judgment motions, including a renewed motion under Rule 50(b) for judgment as a matter of law. The district court denied the motions, and the City appealed. We affirm. "[W]e do not lightly cast aside the solemnity of the jury's verdict." Graves v. City of Coeur D'Alene, 339 F.3d 828, 844 (9th Cir.2003). Both the jury's verdict and the jury's damages award are supported by substantial evidence. We also affirm the district court's challenged evidentiary rulings. Because we affirm both the verdict and the district court's determination on the post-judgment motions, we also affirm the district court's award for attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988.²

I. Background

In March 1998, several kilos of cocaine were found missing from an LAPD evidence locker. The investigation soon focused on Rafael Perez, a police offer who, at that time, was working in Rampart's elite narcotics and anti-gang C.R.A.S.H. (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) unit. Perez was arrested and charged with the theft, but the jury ultimately deadlocked 8-4 in favor of conviction. In lieu of a retrial, Perez entered into a confidential plea agreement with the prosecution, wherein he agreed to identify other police officers involved in crimes or misconduct in exchange for a reduced sentence on the drug charges and immunity from further prosecution on misconduct short of murder.

Upon entering his plea pursuant to the agreement, Perez gave extensive interviews to the District Attorney's Office and the LAPD, the transcripts of which totaled some three thousand pages. Some of those interviews consisted of information that Perez volunteered, but the LAPD in conjunction with the District Attorney's office also provided Perez with 1,500 arrest reports prepared by the Rampart Division's C.R.A.S.H. unit, from which he made additional allegations.³ When Perez's accusations, many of which were spectacular, leaked to the media, Chief Parks formed the Rampart Corruption Task Force ("the Task Force") to investigate those allegations.

One of the cases that Perez flagged from the arrest reports was the arrest of Allan Manriques Lobos ("Lobos") on April 26, 1996, which also came to be known as the "parking lot incident" and implicated Officers Harper, Liddy and Ortiz.

Because the Lobos arrest—during which Perez alleged that the Officers planted a gun on Lobos—is central to this appeal, what follows is a detailed account of the facts of that arrest as explained at trial. Given the jury verdict for the Officers, the Officers are "entitled to have the evidence viewed in a light most favorable to [them], resolving conflicts in [their] favor and giving [them] the benefit of reasonable inferences, to determine whether substantial evidence supported the verdict." Murphy v. F.D.I.C., 38 F.3d 1490, 1495 (9th Cir. 1994). That account is followed by Perez's accusations about the arrest, and a brief chronicle of the subsequent Task Force investigation, which resulted in the arrest and criminal trial of the Officers. Whether the Officers' arrest for those charges violated their constitutional rights, whether those violations were the result of the City's policy, custom, or pattern, and whether the violations caused damages are the central issues on appeal in this case.

A. The Lobos Arrest

On April 26, 1996, at 22:30 (10:30 p.m.), a call came in to the Rampart C.R.A.S.H. unit that shots had been fired near the 1700 block of Third Street. Liddy and Harper responded, as did other C.R.A.S.H. officers. As their vehicle approached the intersection of Fourth and Hartford streets, Liddy and Harper noticed a group of gang members standing near the entrance of a parking lot known to be a hangout for the "18th Street" Gang. The officers decided to detain them to investigate whether they were connected either to the shots-fired call or to a shootout several days earlier in which Frosty, a member of the rival Rockwood gang, had been killed.

At Liddy's suggestion, Harper got out of the car and Liddy drove toward the back of the lot to prevent anyone from escaping through a hole in the back fence. Harper followed Liddy's car into the parking lot and then took cover. When the gang members saw Liddy pull up, two males made a run for the fence; then a third male started running. When Liddy arrived at the other end of the parking lot, he radioed a request for back-up and for an airship (LAPD helicopter), and got out of the car. Liddy's call for back up was recorded on the communications tape at 22:39.

As Harper dealt with the group at the front of the lot, which included a known soldier of the Mexican Mafia called Termite, Liddy dealt with the runners. Harper saw one of the males, who turned out to be Lobos, running between some parked cars with his hand on his waistband. Harper yelled at him to stop, but Lobos did not stop and he disappeared from Harper's view. Liddy noticed that Lobos had a gun in his waistband and yelled "gun." Harper took cover behind the engine block of one of the parked cars and tried to keep control of the group in front of him. Liddy illuminated Lobos with his flashlight and he observed Lobos crouch down by the left front tire of one of the parked cars, a blue Honda. At the sound of the approaching helicopter, Lobos stood up and surrendered, telling Liddy, "Don't shoot, I ain't got no gun."

Within moments, at 22:42, the back-up units arrived, one including Ortiz and one including Perez. The airship, over cross-talk on the communications tape, radioed, "Air 3 to Rampart control, is there a request?" At 22:44 Ortiz, who on arrival became the commanding officer at the scene, radioed a "Code 4" indicating that enough units had arrived on the scene to control the situation. Liddy informed Ortiz that he had one individual in custody for possession of a gun and that he needed the parking lot and the roof of the adjacent building cleared. Both Liddy and Ortiz proceeded to communicate with the airship on a local, unrecorded frequency, and the pilots checked the area with infrared in an attempt to locate the runners. Liddy directed Perez to look for a gun near where Lobos had been crouching. Perez returned with a loaded .45 pistol. Liddy wrote in his report that Perez had recovered the weapon, but Perez did not tell Liddy that he had been directed to the gun's location by a patrolman named Ray Mejia.⁴ Mejia's Daily Field Activity Report (DFAR) showed that he arrived at the scene with the other back-up units at 22:40, but because he forgot to radio his arrival, the communications tape did not record his location until 23:07 when he radioed, "Show me out to Fourth and Hartford."

Seven gang members, including Lobos, were detained and brought to the station to establish their identities and to see if they could provide any intelligence on the Frosty shooting. Five women who...