Cano-Diaz v. City of Leeds

882 F. Supp. 2d 1280, 2012 WL 3139700, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107590
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Alabama
DecidedAugust 1, 2012
DocketCase No. 2:11-CV-3448-VEH
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 882 F. Supp. 2d 1280 (Cano-Diaz v. City of Leeds) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cano-Diaz v. City of Leeds, 882 F. Supp. 2d 1280, 2012 WL 3139700, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107590 (N.D. Ala. 2012).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION

VIRGINIA EMERSON HOPKINS, District Judge.

Before the court is the Defendants’ Motion To Dismiss Plaintiffs’ First Amended Complaint (the “Motion”) (doc. 33), filed on May 29, 2012, by Defendants City of Alabaster, Alabama, City of Irondale, Alabama, and City of Leeds, Alabama.1 The Motion has been fully briefed by the parties (see docs. 38, 42). Additionally, the court heard oral argument on the Motion on July 10, 2012. Therefore, the Motion is under submission and ripe for the court’s decision.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Procedural History

Originally, there were eleven (11) individual plaintiffs who jointly filed a Complaint (doc. 1) in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama on September 23, 2011, along with a Motion for Leave to Proceed Anonymously (doc. 3), which the court ultimately denied. (See Order dated April 26, 2012, Doc. 28). The court required repleader, ordering the previously unnamed plaintiffs to file an Amended Complaint that “must set out each Plaintiffs name and provide the necessary facts to meet notice pleading standards as to each claim against each Defendant,” no later than May 14, 2012. (Id. at 16). More specifically, this court stated the following with respect to the Amended Complaint:

As the Plaintiffs will be required to re-plead to provide their names, the court finds that judicial efficiency dictates that they will also be required, under Rule 12(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, to re-plead each claim as to each Plaintiff separately against each Defendant, setting out as to each claim with the requisite specificity the allegations upon which it is based. At a minimum as to each Plaintiffs traffic stop claim, in addition to the name of the plaintiff, this means the approximate date on which and place where the traffic stop occurred.

(Id.).

The First Amended Complaint was filed on May 14, 2012. (Doc. 29). Several motions to dismiss followed. Defendant City of Pelham, Alabama, filed its Motion To Dismiss First Amended Complaint on May 29, 2012. (Doc. 30).2 Defendants City of [1283]*1283Alabaster, Alabama, City of Irondale, Alabama, and City of Leeds, Alabama, filed their Motion To Dismiss First Amended Complaint — the Motion presently pending before the court — on May 29, 2012. (Doc. 33). At the request of the parties (doc. 34), the court heard oral argument on the pending Motions To Dismiss. Counsel for the City of Pelham argued on behalf of all municipal defendants in light of the overlapping issues raised and arguments made in the defendants’ briefing.

After hearing oral argument and putting the parties on notice of the court’s views on the proper party-alignment of this case, the court entered an order sua sponte severing the claims of the individually named plaintiffs against the various municipal defendants. (Doc. 45). In its opinion and order, the court directed that “[t]he claim(s) of Plaintiff Cecilia Cano-Diaz will proceed in this action, numbered 2:11-cv-03448-VEH, against the City of Leeds, Alabama.” (Id. at 8). Therefore, the court’s analysis in this opinion concerns only the claims of Plaintiff Cano-Diaz against the City of Leeds, and the court will evaluate the pending Motion from that perspective.

B. Facts3

In light of the foregoing procedural history, the court focuses its statement of the facts solely on the claims of Plaintiff CanoDiaz against the City of Leeds.

In the First Amended Complaint, Cano-Diaz is described as “a 22-year-old Hispanic woman who resides in Moody, Alabama in Jefferson County.” (Doc. 29 ¶ 13). She “frequently visits or travels through municipalities where officers of the Defendant’s police departments have been deployed and conduct traffic stops, frisks and make arrests.” (Id.). Defendant City of Leeds is described as a “municipal corporation! ] organized and existing under the laws of the State of Alabama” that is “authorized under the State of Alabama to maintain a police department, which act[s] as [its] agent[] in the area of law enforcement and for which [the City of Leeds] is ultimately responsible.” (Id. ¶ 20).

Generally speaking,

[Cano-Diaz] aver[s] that the Defendant [City of Leeds] ha[s] implemented, enforced, encouraged and sanctioned a policy, practice and/or custom of suspicionless traffic stops and/or frisks in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This unconstitutional conduct is a direct and proximate result of policies, practices and/or customs of supervisory personnel within the Defendant's] respective police department[ ] as well as the elected May- or! ] and City Council[ ] of the [City of Leeds]. These individuals have acted with deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights of those who would come into contact with police officers by: (a) failing to properly screen, train, and supervise police officers, (b) inadequately monitoring such officers and their stop and frisk practices, (c) failing to sufficiently discipline officers who engage in constitutional abuses, and (d) encouraging, sanctioning and failing to rectify the unconstitutional practices, (e) the explicit and tacit encouragement, sanctioning and ratification of [1284]*1284and failure to rectify their respective police department’s] rampant unconstitutional practices. Defendant] knew or should have known that as a direct and proximate consequence of the policies, practices and/or customs described herein, the constitutional rights of thousands of individuals, particularly Black and Latino individuals, would be violated. Despite this knowledge, and with deliberate indifference to and reckless disregard for the constitutional rights of such individuals, Defendant [City of Leeds] ha[s] implemented, enforced, encouraged, sanctioned and failed to rectify such policies, practices and/or customs.

(Id. ¶ 28).

The allegations specific to Cano-Diaz are stated as follows:

On or about the 21st day of February, 2012[,] Plaintiff Cecilia Cano-Diaz was driving through the City of Leeds, Alabama[,] and was stopped by an officer of the Leeds Police Department for allegedly crossing outside the fog line multiple times. She was asked for a driver’s license and when she could not produce one, was arrested and incarcerated for some hours. She was charged with the offenses of driving without first obtaining a driver[’]s license and “failure to maintain lane”, but was required to post a bond for “Violation of Immigration Act”. She has not been convicted of any of the offenses for which she was charged as of the date of filing hereof. Plaintiffs traffic stop was pretextual and was effected solely in order to harass or intimidate the Plaintiff because of her ethnicity, Hispanic, and improperly to enforce Alabama’s Immigration Act.

(7<1¶ 21).

Based on these alleged facts, Cano-Diaz asserts five claims against the City of Leeds: Fourth Amendment violations brought by and through 42 U.S.C. § 1983

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Bluebook (online)
882 F. Supp. 2d 1280, 2012 WL 3139700, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107590, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cano-diaz-v-city-of-leeds-alnd-2012.