American Ground Transportation, Inc. v. City of Anaheim

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: February 10, 2025
• Docket: 23-55730
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FEB 10 2025 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

AMERICAN GROUND No. 23-55730 TRANSPORTATION, INC., DBA 24/7 Taxi Cab, a California Corporation, D.C. No. 8:21-cv-01629-SSS-KES Plaintiff-Appellant,

v. MEMORANDUM*

CITY OF ANAHEIM; HARRY S. SIDHU, Mayor; STEPHEN FAESSEL, Mayor Pro Tem; DENISE BARNES, Councilperson; JORDAN BRANDMAN, Councilperson; JOSE F. MORENO; LUCILLE KRING, Councilperson; TREVOR ONEIL, Councilperson; SANDRA SAGERT, Community Preservation and Licensing Manager; DOES, 1 through 100, inclusive,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Sunshine Suzanne Sykes, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted January 13, 2025** Pasadena, California

Before: GOULD, BENNETT, and LEE, Circuit Judges.

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. Appellant American Ground Transportation (“AGT”) appeals the district

court’s order granting in part Appellees’ motion for summary judgment and

denying AGT’s request for judicial notice. AGT sued Appellees the City of

Anaheim and its government officials (collectively, “Anaheim”), petitioning for a

writ of administrative mandate and suing for declaratory relief and damages under

42 U.S.C. § 1983 (“Section 1983”). The district court held that the statute of

limitations had run on AGT’s Section 1983 claim and that the three exhibits on

which AGT sought judicial notice were irrelevant to AGT’s Section 1983 claim.

The district court remanded the state law claims to state court.

We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review a district court’s

grant of summary judgment de novo, Domingo ex rel. Domingo v. T.K., 289 F.3d

600, 605 (9th Cir. 2002), and we review rulings on requests for judicial notice for

abuse of discretion, Ritter v. Hughes Aircraft Co., 58 F.3d 454, 458 (9th Cir.

1995). “In reviewing decisions of the district court, we may affirm on any ground

finding support in the record.” Cigna Prop. and Cas. Ins. Co. v. Polaris Pictures

Corp., 159 F.3d 412, 418 (9th Cir. 1998). We affirm.

The statute of limitations for federal civil rights claims under Section 1983 is

“governed by the forum state’s statute of limitations for personal injury actions.”

Bonelli v. Grand Canyon University, 28 F.4th 948, 951 (9th Cir. 2022). As of

January 1, 2003, the statute of limitations for personal injury actions in California

2 is two years. Cal. Civ. Proc. § 335.1. “A claim accrues when the plaintiff knows,

or should know, of the injury which is the basis of the cause of action.” Fink v.

Shedler, 192 F.3d 911, 914 (9th Cir. 1999).

AGT’s Section 1983 claim alleges that Anaheim engaged in ethnic

discrimination against AGT and South Coast Cab Company, AGT’s predecessor

company. AGT’s claim relies on one instance of alleged discrimination that

allegedly occurred before 2005 in which an Anaheim employee told the owner of

South Coast Cab Company that “he should go back to Greece [and] that he would

never get a permit to operate ‘in this City.’” AGT contends that this allegation of

discrimination against South Coast Cab Company is linked to a continuing

violation against AGT, but AGT did not present any evidence to support this claim.

The statute of limitations has run on any Section 1983 claim stemming from this

alleged instance or any other alleged instance of discrimination against South

Coast Cab Company and AGT from the 1990s and early 2000s.

AGT’s Section 1983 claim incorporates by reference other parts of the

complaint that challenge Anaheim’s 2020 Request for Proposal (“RFP”) and its

allocation of taxi permits in 2020. To the extent AGT’s Section 1983 claim alleges

that Anaheim engaged in ethnic discrimination during the 2020 RFP, that

allegation would not be barred by the statute of limitations because the taxi permits

allocated after the 2020 RFP were distributed on October 6, 2020, and AGT filed

3 its complaint on December 31, 2020, within the two-year statutory limitations

period. AGT does not connect any incidents of alleged discrimination against

South Coast Cab Company to the 2020 RFP process. We affirm the district court’s

grant of summary judgment on allegations of ethnic discrimination arising during

the 2020 RFP process on the merits because there is no genuine issue of material

fact as to whether Anaheim engaged in ethnic discrimination against AGT during

the 2020 RFP or any other time during the statutory limitations period. See Cigna

Prop. and Cas. Ins. Co., 159 F.3d at 418.

On this appeal, AGT also asserts claims for deprivation of procedural and

substantive due process and equal protection, but AGT waived the right to bring

these claims because it did not raise them in its Section 1983 claim before the

district court. See United States v. Flores–Payon, 942 F.2d 556, 558 (9th Cir.

1991) (discussing how issues not presented to the district court cannot be raised for

the first time on appeal unless narrow exceptions apply).

Finally, the district court did not abuse its discretion when it denied AGT’s

request to judicially notice three exhibits because all three of those exhibits are

irrelevant to AGT’s Section 1983 claim. Fed. R. Evid. 401.

AFFIRMED.