Canatella v. Van De Kamp

• Decision Date: 03 May 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-15186.,06-15186.
• Citation: 486 F.3d 1128
• Parties: Richard A. CANATELLA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. John K. VAN DE KAMP; Marie M. Moffat; Jay Goldman; Nancy McCarthy; California Bar Journal; Robert Hawley; Zanassi; Martha Daetwyler, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

486 F.3d 1128

Richard A. CANATELLA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. John K. VAN DE KAMP; Marie M. Moffat; Jay Goldman; Nancy McCarthy; California Bar Journal; Robert Hawley; Zanassi; Martha Daetwyler, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 06-15186.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted October 16, 2006.

Filed May 3, 2007.

Richard A. Canatella, Ronald Toran, Cotter & Del Carlo, San Francisco, CA, for the plaintiff-appellant.

R. Scott Erlewine, Phillips, Erlewine, & Given LLP, San Francisco, CA, for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California; Bernard Zimmerman, Magistrate, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-05-02415-BZ.

Before: J. CLIFFORD WALLACE and JAY S. BYBEE, Circuit Judges, and DEAN D. PREGERSON,^* District Judge.

BYBEE, Circuit Judge.

Appellant Richard Canatella ("Canatella") appeals the United States District Court's order dismissing his civil rights suit against the State Bar of California ("California Bar"), several officers of the California Bar (collectively, with the California Bar, "Appellees"), and attorney Martha Daetwyler ("Daetwyler"). The district court disposed of Canatella's civil rights claims against Appellees on statute of limitations grounds and Canatella's claims against Daetwyler on state action and privilege grounds. We now deal with Canatella's claims against Appellees¹ and affirm the district court's dismissal order.

I

Canatella is a California attorney, who has been repeatedly sanctioned by both state and federal courts.² At some point after 1992, the California Bar initiated disciplinary proceedings against Canatella in connection with those sanctions. Canatella challenged those proceedings in federal court, but his suit was dismissed on abstention grounds. After that dismissal, Canatella and the California Bar reached an agreement concerning his professional conduct, and as part of that agreement, Canatella consented to a thirty-day suspension of his license and a probationary period of eighteen-months. When the California Supreme Court approved that agreement in August 1999, the sanction and suspension became part of Canatella's public disciplinary record. See CAL. BUS. & PROF. CODE § 6086.1(a)(1) (providing that "records of original disciplinary proceedings in the State Bar Court shall be public").

Thereafter, in February 2000, pursuant to California law, the California Bar Journal published an identical summary of Canatella's disciplinary sanction in both its paper and online editions.³ That summary, which Canatella concedes he read in the print version of the California Bar Journal, read as follows:

RICHARD A. CANATELLA [# 53264], 61, of San Francisco was suspended for 18 months, stayed, placed on 18 months of probation with a 30-day actual suspension, and was ordered to take the MPRE within one year. The order took effect Sept. 17, 1999.

Canatella stipulated to filing numerous frivolous actions in courts in San Mateo, San Francisco, and Santa Clara county courts, as well as in the California Court of Appeal and federal district and appeals courts.

Six were civil matters he filed relating to a criminal case in which he represented a babysitter who was convicted of second degree murder and felony child abuse. The civil cases, filed on behalf of the babysitter and her parents, who owned the house where she lived, included legal malpractice, insurance bad faith, and allegations that various defendants conspired to deprive his clients of their constitutional rights.

Canatella's involvement in nine other matters also was the subject of discipline.

Sanctions were ordered against him or his clients 37 times. Courts repeatedly found him responsible for frivolous, meritless and vexatious actions. Sanctions totaled more than $18,000 in one matter, and the opposing parties were granted all fees and costs in another.

In one case, a federal judge said, "This complaint is a paradigm for `frivolous.'" Wrote another federal jurist: "Plaintiff's repeated attempt to challenge the sanctions and judgments . . . in the face of clear authority that his claim is frivolous evidences his bad faith and wrongful purpose."

In mitigation, Canatella has no record of discipline since beginning to practice law in 1972 and he demonstrated his good character by presenting testimonials from eight people, including four attorneys and three judges. He also presented a lengthy list of his professional accomplishments.

In addition to containing an electronic version of the California Bar Journal, the California Bar's website also contains a member search function that allows the public to search for information on California attorneys. Before 2003, if a member had a disciplinary record, a member search would only reveal the existence— but not the content—of that record. At some point after March 2003, however, that same search would reveal both the existence of a disciplinary record and the California Bar Journal's summary of that record.⁴ Consequently, at some point after August 2003,⁵ the same disciplinary summary that appeared in the online California Bar Journal also appeared in response to a member search for Canatella's name.

On July 27, 2004, Daetwyler—who represented a client adverse to Canatella's in a state probate proceeding—cited the disciplinary summary that appears on Canatella's member search page in support of a motion to recover court costs. Though the probate court denied that motion, Canatella filed this suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, in July 2005, claiming that when Daetwyler cited that record she and Appellees violated his First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.⁶ As part of his prayer for relief, Canatella sought both damages and "[d]eclaratory or injunctive relief enjoining the [Appellees] from republishing the offending summary on the [California] Bar['s] internet web site [sic], and directing [Appellees] to remove the offending summary."

Thereafter, Daetwyler and Appellees filed motions to dismiss pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The district court granted Daetwyler's motion, and at the same time, when "it became apparent that" Canatella's claims against Appellees might be barred by the statute of limitations, the district court "as permitted by [Federal] Rule [of Civil Procedure] 12(b)(6) . . . gave the parties an opportunity to take limited discovery on [that] issue and to submit matters outside the pleadings to see if [that] potentially dispositive issue could be resolved at the outset." Based on information obtained in that manner, the district court granted Appellees' motion to dismiss. Canatella appeals that dismissal.

II

A

Canatella filed suit against Appellees pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which provides in pertinent part:

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. . . .

Canatella challenges the district court's decision granting Appellees' motion to dismiss his claims pursuant to Rule 12(b). Because limited "matters outside the pleading[s] [were] presented to" the district court in ruling on that motion, Canatella's "motion [is] treated as one for summary judgment and disposed of as provided in Rule 56." FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b). We review such rulings de novo. Orr v. Bank of Am., 285 F.3d 764, 772 (9th Cir.2002). In so doing, "[w]e must determine, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and drawing all justifiable inferences in its favor, whether there are any genuine issues of material fact and whether the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Id.; accord Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). Furthermore, "[a] district court's decision as to whether a claim is barred by the statute of limitations is reviewed de novo," Santa Maria v. Pac. Bell, 202 F.3d 1170, 1175 (9th Cir.2000), as is the question of when "the statute of limitations begins to run," Orr, 285 F.3d at 780. Applying that standard, we affirm the district court's decision because under California law, the statute of limitations ran on Canatella's claims before he filed his complaint.⁷

"For actions under 42 U.S.C. § 1983," like Canatella's, "courts apply the forum state's statute of limitations for personal injury actions, along with the forum state's law regarding tolling, including equitable tolling, except to the extent any of these laws is inconsistent with federal law." Jones v. Blanas, 393 F.3d 918, 927 (9th Cir.2004), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 126 S.Ct. 351, 163 L.Ed.2d 61 (2005). Thus, "California['s] statute of limitations for assault, battery, and other personal injury claims" applies to Canatella's § 1983 claims unless it is inconsistent with federal law. Id. The current version of that statute, which became effective on January 1, 2003, provides that personal injury actions must be brought within two years after the cause of action arose. See Maldonado v. Harris, 370 F.3d 945, 954-55 (9th Cir.2004); see also CAL. CIV. PROC. CODE § 335.1. Because that statute does not apply retroactively, any cause of action that was more than one-year old as of January 1, 2003 would be barred under the previous one-year statute of limitations. Jones, 393 F.3d at 927 & n. 4; see also Maldonado, 370 F.3d at 954-55.

The parties dispute when Canatella's claims arose, and that dispute is relevant to determining whether California's previous one-year statute of limitations or the newly enacted two-year limitation period applies to Canatella's claim. Canatella contends that his claims did...