Levin v. United Airlines

Decision Date10 January 2008
Docket NumberNo. B160939.,B160939.
Citation70 Cal.Rptr.3d 535,158 Cal.App.4th 1002
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeals
PartiesBarbara A. LEVIN, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. UNITED AIRLINES et al., Defendants and Respondents.

Barbara A. Levin, in pro per., for Plaintiff and Appellant.

Worthe Hanson & Worthe, Jeffrey A. Worthe and John R. Hanson, for Defendants and Respondents, United Airlines, Inc. and Mary Lynn Anderson.

Mendes & Mount, Alan H. Collier, Los Angeles, and Mark R. Irvine, for Defendants and Respondents, Argenbright Security, Inc., Gladys Block, Olympia Villafuerte Lynch, and William Aquino.

Vanderford & Ruiz, Rodolfo F. Ruiz, Pasadena, Heather J. Hamby and Kristen J. Nesbit, for Defendant and Respondent, City of Los Angeles.

MOSK, J.

INTRODUCTION

Plaintiff and appellant Barbara Levin (plaintiff) arrived at the United Airlines, Inc. (United)1 terminal at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) 20 minutes before the scheduled departure of her flight to Vancouver. A series of contentious exchanges ensued between plaintiff, on the one hand, and personnel, from United, Argenbright Security, Inc. (Argenbright), and the Los Angeles Airport Police, on the other, during which exchanges plaintiff admittedly made at least three separate references to a "bomb" in her luggage. The incident culminated in plaintiffs arrest for making a false bomb report, although she was never formally charged with a crime.

Plaintiff sued United, Argenbright, the City of Los Angeles, and several individuals alleging nine causes of action arising from the incident and her arrest. The jury returned a verdict in favor of each defendant and against plaintiff on all of her claims.

On appeal, plaintiff challenges, inter alia, the trial court's modified jury instruction on probable cause to arrest, contending that the erroneous modification prejudicially affected the outcome of the verdicts on her claims based on false arrest. In the published portion of this opinion, we hold that a false statement to airport personnel or peace officers about a bomb in luggage, even if not seriously made or understood, can be the basis for a violation of Penal Code section 148.1, subdivision (a) (section 148.1, subdivision (a)). Therefore, the trial court did not err when it modified the probable cause jury instruction because the modified instruction accurately stated the applicable law governing probable cause to arrest and the crime of making a false bomb report. Any claimed deficiency in other aspects of the instruction did not prejudicially affect the verdicts.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND
A. Plaintiffs Description of the Incident2

As part of a planned scuba diving trip, plaintiff purchased a ticket on United from LAX to Vancouver, British Columbia. From Vancouver, she would take a connecting flight on a Canadian airline to Port Hardy, from where the dive boat would leave. Her United flight was scheduled to depart on Saturday, August 21, 1999, at 12:40 p.m.

The morning of her United flight to Vancouver, plaintiff left home between 10:00 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. and arrived at "Lot B"3 an hour and a half before her 12:40 p.m. scheduled departure time. Because Lot B was crowded, it took about a half hour to find a parking space. Plaintiff parked a long distance from where the shuttle to LAX left, and it took five to ten minutes to walk to the shuttle. She carried her purse, "a metallic kind of grey-looking briefcase-sized bag containing about $5000 worth of underwater camera equipment that [she] had rented," and a "big dive bag which look[ed] like ... a lumpy duffel and ... ha[d] various compartments for various types of dive gear." She waited 10 minutes for the shuttle, and it took another 10 minutes for the shuttle to travel to the United terminal at LAX.

Plaintiff exited the shuttle at "Terminal 8," but soon discovered that her United flight would be departing from "Terminal 7." She walked as fast as she could to Terminal 7, where she saw a long line at the ticket counter. Realizing that she would miss her flight if she waited in line, plaintiff approached a United representative and inquired, "Excuse me. I have 20 minutes to catch my flight. Can you help me?" The United representative looked at the line "snaking out towards the door" and informed plaintiff, "Yep, you're going to miss it." Plaintiff asked if there was anything the representative could do, to which the representative replied, "Everybody is late." Plaintiff then asked if she could check her bag at the gate and the representative said, "Yes."

Plaintiff proceeded to the security screening area in Terminal 7 (screening area), and put her purse and camera case through the "x-ray machine." But when she lifted her dive bag to put it through, she saw a "plastic template" at the front of the machine that she had never seen before. Because her dive bag would not fit through the template, plaintiff "lifted the bag off, and as [she] did so, Argenbright [employee] ... Ralph Lopez [(Lopez)] came over to [her]" and said, "You have to check it back at the ticket counter," and pointed back to the counter. Plaintiff looked at her watch; it was approximately 12:20 p.m.

Plaintiff approached a United representative stationed outside the screening area who helped her obtain a luggage cart, and plaintiff then proceeded back to the ticket counter. Plaintiff "went right up to the ticket counter, ignored the line, ... and kind of barged in." She informed the ticket agent that she had only 15 minutes to make her flight and presented her ticket. The agent responded, "No. You only have ten minutes before your flight, and it's too late. The bag won't make it through the conveyor." Plaintiff asked about the next flight to Vancouver and learned that it arrived in Vancouver too late for her to make the connecting flight to Port Hardy. Plaintiff then asked if she could take her bags to the gate and check them there, and the agent said, "Yes."

Plaintiff returned to the same screening area and walked through the metal detector with all three of her bags. As Lopez approached her, she dropped all three bags and said, "Please do a manual search." Lopez replied, "It's not our protocol," and started walking back to his post. As he walked away, he pointed to the ticket counter, to which plaintiff replied, "I don't have time." Lopez then stated, `You can take it if you want to." Plaintiff moved her bags further into the "sterile" portion of the screening area, beyond the exit to the metal detector, opened her dive bag, and said to Lopez, "Look, no bomb. No gun. No knife. I'm going to the gate." When Lopez did not respond, plaintiff inexplicably left the dive bag and her purse, and proceeded to the gate with the camera case.

The plane was still at the gate when plaintiff arrived, but the door to the gateway to the plane was closed. Plaintiff handed her ticket to a person at the gate who said, "The plane is full." Plaintiff replied, "You mean you bumped me? Because I have assigned seats already on my ticket." The person responded, "No. You never checked in."

Plaintiff concluded that she had missed her vacation and was angry. She decided to return to the screening area, pick up her bags, and go home. As she was walking toward the screening area, she was approached by Lopez and his supervisor William Aquino (Aquino). Lopez said, "We have been looking for you," and plaintiff countered, "Now you can take all week to check [my bags] because I'm not going anywhere." Plaintiff was upset, but was not yelling.

Plaintiff walked back to the screening area with Lopez and Aquino. At the screening area, Lopez admonished, "You shouldn't have gone to the gate." Plaintiff replied, "I did everything I could do to get you to check my bags. I even opened one of them for you." Lopez responded, "That could have been a diversionary tactic." Hearing that, plaintiff threw up her hands, rolled her eyes, and said, "Yeah, right. It's a bomb."4 No one responded.

Plaintiff exited the screening area and went to the back of the security line in an effort to re-enter the screening area and retrieve her purse and dive bag. Before she reached the screening device, three Airport Police officers took her out of line and said, "Come with.us." Plaintiff later determined that the three officers were Ronald Code (Officer Code), Malvarene Hayes (Officer Hayes), and Officer Castro. The officers took plaintiff, who was still holding her camera bag, "[away] from the security area out of earshot of all the passengers and beyond a half a football [field] length [to] somewhere else."

None of the officers asked plaintiff what her bag contained. Plaintiff did not engage in any conversation with the officers as they walked her to the new location. After standing at the location for a few minutes, plaintiff overheard Officer Hayes say to Officer Castro, "criminal trespass" and "criminal conspiracy." Officer Hayes explained to plaintiff that the latter comment referred to the unit that handled these types of situations.

Plaintiff saw Officer Code return to the screening area and speak with Argenbright personnel. No one, however, was speaking to plaintiff.

As plaintiff stood with the other two officers, United supervisor Mary-Lynn Anderson (Anderson) approached them. Officer Code returned from the screening area and spoke to Anderson. Plaintiff heard Anderson state her name to Officer Code, identify herself as a United supervisor, and inform him that she was "just passing through." When plaintiff heard Anderson was a United supervisor, she waived her hand and said, "If your agent had helped me, I would have made my plane." Anderson replied, "Don't you wag your finger at me. I don't like your attitude." Plaintiff, "taken aback" by Anderson's attitude, responded angrily, "Well, if you're going to jerk me around, why shouldn't I jerk you around?" Anderson advised plaintiff that plaintiff was not taking...

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