Hernandez v. Cnty. of Monterey

• Decision Date: 29 September 2014
• Docket Number: Case No. 5:13–cv–02354–PSG
• Citation: 70 F.Supp.3d 963
• Parties: Jesse Hernandez et al., Plaintiffs, v. County of Monterey, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California

70 F.Supp.3d 963

Jesse Hernandez et al., Plaintiffs

v.County of Monterey, et al., Defendants.

Case No. 5:13–cv–02354–PSG

United States District Court, N.D. California, San Jose Division.

Signed September 29, 2014

Donald Earl Landis, Jr., Monterey, CA, Gay Crosthwait Grunfeld, Krista Michelle Stone–Manista, Michael Louis Freedman, Micaela Davis, Michael William Bien, Van Swearingen, Rosen Bien Galvan and Grunfeld LLP, Alan Lawrence Schlosser, ACLU Foundation of Northern California, Inc., Sumana Cooppan, Rosen Bien and Galvan LLP, San Francisco, CA, Eric Balaban, American Civil Liberties Union, Washington, DC, James Samuel Egar, Salinas, CA, for Plaintiffs.

Susan K. Blitch, Salinas, CA, Michael Rudolph Philippi, State of California, San Francisco, CA, Jemma Allison Parker Saunders, Peter George Bertling, Bertling and Clausen, LLP, Santa Barbara, CA, for Defendants.

ORDER DENYING DEFENDANTS' MOTIONS TO DISMISS

(Re: Docket Nos. 44, 58, 75)

PAUL S. GREWAL, United States Magistrate Judge

The present motions in this civil rights suit raise two related issues: exactly who may challenge the conditions of a county jail and who exactly may be challenged? While standing and mootness disputes in cases such as this are hardly new, the question of whether a private provider of jail medical facilities are services can face scrutiny under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act does appear to be novel.¹

The first motion before the court is a motion to dismiss filed by Defendants County of Monterey and Monterey County Sheriff's Office.² The second motion to dismiss was filed by Defendant California Forensic Medical Group, Incorporated.³ Plaintiffs oppose,⁴ and the parties appeared for a hearing.⁵ Having considered the arguments, the court denies both motions.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual Background⁶

Plaintiffs are inmates or recently released inmates from the Monterey County jail.⁷ Each plaintiff has been jailed multiple times.⁸ The jail frequently houses more than 1,100 inmates per day,⁹ and inmates stay in the jail on average for 30–40 days.¹⁰ The vast majority of the jail's population constitutes pretrial detainees with unpredictable, but brief, lengths of stay. The complaint alleges a litany of substandard conditions at the jail, including: violence due to understaffing, overcrowding, inadequate training, policies, procedures, facilities, and prisoner classification; inadequate medical and mental health care screening, attention, distribution, and resources; and lack of policies and practices for identifying, tracking, responding, communicating, and providing accessibility for accommodations for prisoners with disabilities.¹¹

The County provides inmates access to health care and services under a contract with CFMG, a private company that administers all jail health care facilities and services.¹² The contract took effect on April 1, 2012.¹³ The contract provides that CFMG “shall be responsible for the medical care, dental care, and mental health care of an inmate commencing with [ ] booking.”¹⁴ CFMG is further responsible for “administering medications to inmates,” providing required “medical supplies, and medical record supplies,” and for “the cost of all pharmaceuticals administered.”¹⁵ Under the contract, CFMG “shall determine the method, details and means of performing services,” and CFMG's Medical Director is “responsible to assure the quality of health care provided.”¹⁶ CFMG employs over fifty staff members.¹⁷

B. Procedural Background

Five plaintiffs filed an initial complaint.¹⁸ In eight causes of action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of a putative class, the complaint alleges the conditions in the jail violate the Eights and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, Article I, Sections 7 and 17 of the California Constitution, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and Cal. Gov't Code Section 11135.¹⁹ In a first amended complaint, eight named plaintiffs were added.²⁰ In a second amended complaint, nine new plaintiffs were added and one plaintiff was dismissed, resulting in the current total of 21 named plaintiffs.²¹

The County and Sheriff's Office filed an initial motion to dismiss challenging the standing of one plaintiff not in custody when his claim was filed and the mootness of the claims of nine others who were no longer in custody.²² In the meantime, Plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification.²³ Plaintiffs seek certification of a prisoner class, consisting of all current and future prisoners in the jail, and a prisoners with disabilities subclass, consisting of all current and future prisoners who have a qualifying disability.²⁴

CFMG also filed a motion to dismiss of its own, joining the County and Sheriff's Office's motion based on standing as well as challenging Plaintiffs' sixth cause of action against CFMG under Title III of the ADA.²⁵ Defendants then amended their motion to dismiss by dropping one plaintiff based on his re-incarceration and adding two others because they had been released from custody.²⁶ In their reply brief, Defendants further dropped from their motion yet another plaintiff because he, too, returned to custody.²⁷

II. LEGAL STANDARDS

A. 12(b)(6) Motion to Dismiss

A complaint must contain “a short plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.”²⁸ If a plaintiff fails to proffer “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face,” the complaint may be dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.²⁹ A claim is facially plausible “when the pleaded factual content allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.”³⁰ But courts “are not bound to accept as true a legal conclusion couched as a factual allegation.”³¹ Under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), “dismissal can be based on the lack of a cognizable legal theory or the absence of sufficient facts alleged under a cognizable legal theory.”³² A court may dismiss a claim “only if it is clear that no relief could be granted under any set of facts that could be proved consistent with the allegations.”³³

B. Standing

To demonstrate standing to seek equitable relief, Article III of the U.S. Constitution requires that (1) a plaintiff has suffered an actual or threatened injury as a result of the defendant's alleged illegal conduct; (2) the injury is “fairly traceable” to the defendant's action; and (3) the injury is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision.³⁴ A plaintiff must establish standing as of the filing of the complaint.³⁵ Where multiple plaintiffs present the same class claims in multiple complaints, each plaintiff must establish standing as of the date of the filing in which the plaintiff first appears.³⁶ Where a plaintiff seeks prospective injunctive relief, he also must demonstrate “that he is realistically threatened by a repetition of [the violation].”³⁷ “Where a named plaintiff is a member of a plaintiff class, and ‘members of the class have repeatedly suffered personal injuries in the past that can fairly be traced to the [defendants'] standard ... practices,’ the defendant's treatment of the class as a whole must be considered to determine whether the individual plaintiff ‘ha[s] been and will continue to be aggrieved by the defendants' [illegal] pattern of conduct.”³⁸ Put another way, “[w]hen a named plaintiff asserts injuries that have been inflicted upon a class of plaintiffs, we may consider those injuries in the context of the harm asserted by the class as a whole, to determine whether a credible threat that the named plaintiff's injury will recur has been established.”³⁹

An exception to the general rules regarding standing pertains to past inmates under supervision.⁴⁰ When a past inmate remains supervised by law enforcement and subject to unlawful conditions without engaging in illegal activity, that plaintiff maintains standing with regard to the unlawful policies or conditions he or she may confront.⁴¹ The question is whether plaintiffs have “demonstrate[d] a concrete injury and a realistic likelihood that the injury will be repeated.”⁴² In Armstrong v. Davis, the Ninth Circuit held California parolees with disabilities could challenge policies and practices in state parole revocation proceedings that violated the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act.⁴³ The parolees could not be subjected to the discriminatory parole revocation proceedings unless they were arrested and charged with violating the terms and conditions of their parole. Because they could be arrested without a warrant and for violating parole terms that prohibited otherwise legal conduct,⁴⁴ parolees did not need to “engage in unlawful conduct to become subject to the unlawful practices they s[ought] to enjoin.”⁴⁵

C. Mootness

Mootness is “the doctrine of standing set in a time frame: The requisite personal interest that must exist at the commencement of litigation (standing) must continue throughout its existence (mootness).”⁴⁶ In general, a case is moot if there is no longer any personal stake in the outcome⁴⁷ or “ ‘present controversy as to which effective relief can be granted,’ ”⁴⁸ even if the plaintiff had standing at the time the complaint was filed.⁴⁹ In L.A. v. Lyons,⁵⁰ the Supreme Court held that where the plaintiff could only be “expos[ed] to the challenged course of conduct” by breaking the law, his claim was moot because the threat of future harm was too attenuated.

An exception to the mootness doctrine applies in class actions “where it is ‘certain that other persons similarly situated’ will continue to be subject to the challenged conduct and the claims raised are ‘so inherently transitory that the trial court will not have even enough time to rule on a motion for class certification before the proposed representative's individual interest expires.’ ”⁵¹ In determining whether prisoners' claims are inherently transitory, the court must focus on “the average length of...