Bethany Farber v. City of Los Angeles

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: August 6, 2024
• Docket: 23-55541
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FILED FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT AUG 6 2024 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS BETHANY FARBER, No. 23-55541

Plaintiff-Appellant, D.C. No. 2:22-cv-01173-ODW-KS v.

CITY OF LOS ANGELES, a municipal MEMORANDUM* entity; DOES, 1 through 100, inclusive,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Otis D. Wright II, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted June 12, 2024** Pasadena, California

Before: W. FLETCHER, CHRISTEN, and VANDYKE, Circuit Judges.

A Texas grand jury mistakenly indicted Plaintiff-Appellant Bethany Kaley

Farber for an act of vandalism committed by Bethany Gill Farber. A Texas court

issued a no-bail warrant for Bethany Kaley Farber’s arrest. The warrant and

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). associated criminal database information identified Bethany Kaley Farber by her

full name, date of birth, address, driver’s license number, and physical descriptors.

Bethany Kaley Farber was arrested in Los Angeles and booked as a fugitive

on the Texas warrant. She spent twelve days in jail before the Texas court

informed the Los Angeles County Superior Court she had been incorrectly

identified as a suspect. She was released later that day.

Farber sued the City of Los Angeles and one hundred anonymous

defendants1 for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and various state-law causes of

action. The district court granted summary judgment to the City on all of Farber’s

claims. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.

We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo. Sharp v.

Cnty. of Orange, 871 F.3d 901, 909 (9th Cir. 2017). We evaluate the evidence in

the light most favorable to Farber, the non-moving party. Id. “We may affirm on

any ground supported by the record even if it differs from the rationale of the

district court.” Martinez-Villareal v. Lewis, 80 F.3d 1301, 1305 (9th Cir. 1996).

Farber’s § 1983 claims fail because she has not shown that a policy, custom,

or practice of the City caused her injury, see Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs. of City

1 Farber stated that she “makes no argument seeking to hold individual employees and officers liable and this Court need not rule on that issue.” Accordingly, we address only her claims against the City. 2 of New York, 436 U.S. 658, 694 (1978), or that the City was deliberately indifferent

to her constitutional rights, see City of Canton, Ohio v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 390

(1989). Farber argues the City has a de facto policy of allowing non-supervisory

officers to provide booking advice in violation of the written policy of the Los

Angeles Police Department (LAPD). But no reasonable jury could find that the

non-supervisory rank of the officer who advised on Farber’s booking was the

“actionable cause” of her arrest and detention. Tsao v. Desert Palace, Inc., 698

F.3d 1128, 1143 (9th Cir. 2012) (quoting Harper v. City of Los Angeles, 533 F.3d

1010, 1026 (9th Cir. 2008)). Instead, the undisputed evidence shows Farber was

arrested and detained because she was mistakenly indicted in Texas.

Farber has not introduced evidence to show that the risk of arresting and

detaining someone who was mistakenly indicted “was so ‘obvious’” to the City

“that ignoring it amounted to deliberate indifference.” Id. at 1145. “[T]here is no

indication that this problem has ever arisen other than in the case of [Farber]

herself,” and “it is far from obvious that” allowing a non-supervisory officer to

provide booking advice “would necessarily give rise to this situation.” Id.

Farber’s other theories of municipal liability are waived because she raised them

for the first time in her reply brief. See Graves v. Arpaio, 623 F.3d 1043, 1048

(9th Cir. 2010). Even if raised properly, we would reject them as without merit.

3 Farber’s § 1983 claims also fail because she has not shown an underlying

constitutional violation. Her arrest did not violate the Fourth Amendment because

the arresting officers “had a good faith, reasonable belief that [Farber] was the

subject of the warrant.” Rivera v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 745 F.3d 384, 389 (9th

Cir. 2014). The Texas court issued the warrant for Farber, and her identifying

information and physical descriptors matched the warrant exactly. Farber’s

protestations of innocence, without more, did not make the officers’ beliefs

unreasonable. See id.

Farber’s detention did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment for the same

reasons. See id. at 391 (explaining that “[t]he same considerations that made the

arrest reasonable bear on whether the circumstances of the detention should have

warned the [defendants] that [the plaintiff] might not be the true subject of the

warrant”). The Superior Court had already ordered Farber detained when the

LAPD received pictures from Texas that might have called the correctness of the

indictment into question. See id. at 392 (“If a suspect is held according to court

order, county officials are not required to investigate whether that court order is

proper.”). Farber was not denied access to the courts because she was timely

brought before the Superior Court and was able to request an identification hearing

4 four days after her arrest. See id. at 391 (“[T]he ‘denied access’ cases have

involved significant periods of deprivation.”).

The district court did not err in holding that the City was immune from

liability under California law. The arresting officers reasonably believed Farber

was the subject of a valid warrant, and the officers who jailed her were “entitled to

rely on process and orders apparently valid on their face.” Id. at 393 (quoting

Lopez v. City of Oxnard, 207 Cal. App. 3d 1, 9 (1989)).

AFFIRMED.