Mortimer v. Baca

• Decision Date: 05 February 2010
• Docket Number: No. 07-55393.,07-55393.
• Citation: 594 F.3d 714
• Parties: Roger D. MORTIMER, individually and as representative of the class of persons defined in averment 15; Deane Dana; Don Knabe, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Leroy D. BACA, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

594 F.3d 714

Roger D. MORTIMER, individually and as representative of the class of persons defined in averment 15; Deane Dana; Don Knabe, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Leroy D. BACA, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 07-55393.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted August 7, 2009.

Filed February 5, 2010.

Marion R. Yagman (argued) and Joseph Reichmann, Yagman & Yagman & Reichman, Venice Beach, CA, for the plaintiffs-appellants.

David D. Lawrence, Michael D. Allen (argued), and Justin W. Clark, Lawrence, Beach, Allen & Choi PC, Glendale, CA, for the defendant-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California, Dean D. Pregerson, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-00-13002-DDP.

Before: KIM McLANE WARDLAW and CONSUELO M. CALLAHAN, Circuit Judges, and RALPH R. BEISTLINE,^* Chief District Judge.

CALLAHAN, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Los Angeles County Sheriff, Leroy Baca ("Baca"), in his official capacity. Plaintiffs allege that their civil rights were violated when they were kept in custody by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department ("LASD") for periods of time ranging from twenty-six to twenty-nine hours after the court had authorized their releases, and that their overdetentions were the result of a policy of deliberate indifference to their constitutional rights. We determine that our prior opinion in this litigation, Berry v. Baca, 379 F.3d 764 (9th Cir.2004), did not preclude the district court from considering defendant's motion for summary judgment on its merits, and that the court properly granted defendant's motion for summary judgment because the proffered evidence would not support a finding of deliberate indifference.

I

As noted in our prior opinion, plaintiff Roger Mortimer was acquitted at 11:45 a.m. on August 14, 2000, the Superior Court authorized his release, and he was released on August 15, 2000 at 4:57 p.m. Berry, 379 F.3d at 767. The Superior Court ordered plaintiff Anthony Hart's release from jail on August 17, 2000, and he was released on August 18, 2000, at 2:02 p.m., just over twenty-nine hours after the court authorized his release. Id. The Superior Court authorized the release of plaintiff Rodney Berry on February 1, 2001 at 11:30 a.m., and he was released on February 2, 2001, at 2:02 p.m. Id. Plaintiff S.A. Thomas was held in the Los Angeles County Jail until June 23, 2004, but claims that he should have been released two days earlier on June 21, 2004. Plaintiffs filed their actions in the United States District Court for the Central District of California alleging "a policy of deliberate indifference to their constitutional rights that resulted in unlawful periods of over-detention." Id. at 766. Their cases were consolidated before the district court. Id.

A. Berry v. Baca, 370 F.3d 764.

On May 29, 2003, the district court granted Baca's motion for summary judgment based on the Ninth Circuit's decision in Brass v. County of Los Angeles, 328 F.3d 1192 (9th Cir.2003). Plaintiffs appealed and we reversed and remanded. Id. at 773. We first set forth the applicable law and explained the district court's ruling as follows:

In order to hold Baca liable under § 1983, plaintiffs must demonstrate that "`action pursuant to official municipal policy of some nature caused a constitutional tort.'" Brass, 328 F.3d at 1198 (quoting Monell, 436 U.S. at 691 [98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611]. . .). We have stated that "a local governmental body may be liable if it has a policy of inaction and such inaction amounts to a failure to protect constitutional rights." Oviatt v. Pearce, 954 F.2d 1470, 1474 (9th Cir.1992) (citing City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 388, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 103 L.Ed.2d 412, . . . (1989)). However, the policy of inaction must be more than mere negligence, see Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 333-36, 106 S.Ct. 662, 88 L.Ed.2d 662, . . . (1986); it must be a conscious or deliberate choice among various alternatives. See Lee v. City of Los Angeles, 250 F.3d 668, 681 (9th Cir.2001).

In order to impose liability based on a policy of deliberate inaction, the "plaintiff must establish: (1) that he possessed a constitutional right of which he was deprived; (2) that the municipality had a policy; (3) that this policy `amounts to deliberate indifference' to the plaintiff's constitutional right; and (4) that the policy [was] the `moving force behind the constitutional violation.'" Oviatt, 954 F.2d at 1474 (quoting City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 389-91 [109 S.Ct. 1197, 103 L.Ed.2d 412], . . .).

The district court did not discuss this four-step showing, because it did not address the plaintiffs' claims that the County's policies amount to a policy of deliberate indifference to their constitutional rights. Instead, the district court found that it "is bound by the holding in Brass and finds that the County's challenged policies did not result in a violation of the plaintiffs' constitutional rights."

Id. at 767.

We then found that Brass was distinguishable. We noted that "Brass's primary claim focused on the County's policy of releasing prisoners pursuant to court order only after the completion of processing all inmates scheduled for release on that day." Id. at 768. We explained Here, in contrast to Brass, the plaintiffs do not limit their challenge to the County's specific policies. Rather, as argued in their briefs to this Court, they challenge the policy "in toto . . . that simply delays all releases until the system, in its sweet time, and with the resources it chooses . . . is ready to make releases." Stated another way, the plaintiffs in this case challenge the implementation of the County's policies, rather than the specific policies themselves. They claim that the County's unreasonably inefficient implementation of its administrative policies amounts to a policy of deliberate indifference to their constitutional rights.

While on first glance this may appear a subtle difference, in fact there is a crucial distinction between the challenge to specific policies in Brass and the challenge to the implementation of the policy "in toto" in this case. It cannot be the case that, if the County's system of administratively processing releases took several days or weeks to complete, its policy could not be challenged as one of "deliberate indifference" simply because each of the administrative procedures employed is theoretically reasonable. As a matter of law, the County's system of administrative processing cannot be immune from allegations that, in practice, it amounts to a policy of deliberate indifference. Brass did not raise this type of challenge, because Brass focused his challenge upon the County's release policies themselves. Tellingly, nowhere in the Brass opinion does the panel discuss the "deliberate indifference" line of Monell cases, because this was not the claim at issue. Here, in contrast, deliberate indifference is precisely the claim at issue.

Id. at 768.

We then found the case to be more closely related to Oviatt v. Pearce, 954 F.2d 1470, where the plaintiff alleged that he had been held without arraignment for 114 days because the county's "policy regarding missed arraignments constituted a policy of deliberate indifference to the inmates' constitutional rights." Berry, 379 F.3d at 768-69. The panel noted that Berry concerned only 29 hours of over-detention rather than 114 days, and that the defendants had offered "more substantial justifications for its delay," but concluded that at the summary judgment stage the Oviatt framework applied. Id. at 769.

At the end of the opinion, the panel returned to "Oviatt's four-step framework for resolving Monell claims of deliberate indifference." Id. at 773. The court commented:

In order to impose liability based on a policy of deliberate inaction, the plaintiff must establish that he possessed a constitutional right of which he was deprived. Here, the plaintiffs possessed a constitutional right to freedom from imprisonment a reasonable time after they were judicially determined to be innocent of the charges against them. See Oviatt, 954 F.2d at 1474 (stating that "[t]he Supreme Court has recognized that an individual has a liberty interest in being free from incarceration absent a criminal conviction"); cf. Brass, 328 F.3d at 1200 (recognizing that the plaintiff "may have had a due process right to be released within a reasonable time after the reason for his detention ended").

Step two of Oviatt — the existence of a municipal policy — is uncontested. Both parties agree that the County has a set of administrative policies that guide releases after judicial determinations of innocence. Both parties also agree on step four: these policies resulted in delays in the release of each of the plaintiffs, ranging from twenty-six to twenty-nine hours after their court-ordered release.

Step three of Oviatt remains: did this set of policies — or, alternatively, the lack of policies to expedite the process — amount to a policy of deliberate indifference to the plaintiffs' constitutional rights? This question turns on whether the County's implementation of its policies was reasonable in light of the delay that resulted. Baca concedes that he knew that the implementation of the County's policies was resulting in delays of up to 48 hours. Therefore, if the delays were not reasonably justified, the § 1983 claim against the County has merit, because the County was continuing to adhere to a policy that it knew resulted in unlawful detentions without reasonable cause. See Bd. of County Comm'rs v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 407, 117 S.Ct. 1382, 137 L.Ed.2d 626, . . . (1997) We find that this question of reasonableness is properly conceived of as a jury determination.

Id.

B. Proceedings on remand.

On remand both sides submitted evidence in the form of exhibits and declarations. The district court found that defendant's...