Frye v. City of Sacramento

District Court, E.D. California·Decided April 18, 2024·No. 2:22-cv-01936·Unknown

Opinion

SHARRON FRYE, Case No. 2:22-cv-1936-DJC-CSK Plaintiff, ORDER v. (ECF Nos. 17, 19) CITY OF SACRAMENTO, et al., Defendants. Presently before the Court is Plaintiff’s motion to compel a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6) deposition of Defendant City of Sacramento and production of documents, and her corresponding motion for an extension of time to conduct this discovery.1 (ECF Nos. 17, 20.) The Court held a hearing on April 10, 2024, where attorney Glenn Katon appeared for Plaintiff and attorney Kate Daz Lynn Brosseau appeared for Defendants. For the reasons that follow and as stated at the hearing, Plaintiff’s motions are GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. As provided in more detail below, Plaintiff shall have until June 5, 2024 to conduct the Rule 30(b)(6) deposition as modified below, and Defendant shall have until June 5, 2024 to produce documents responsive to 1 This matter proceeds before the undersigned pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636, Fed. R. Civ. P. 72, and Local Rule 302(c)(1). Plaintiff’s Modified Requests for Production Nos. 8-10. Finally, the expert discovery deadlines are continued as outlined below. No other deadlines are continued. A. Facts Plaintiff asserts multiple federal and state law claims against the City of Sacramento and multiple Sacramento Police Department officers (collectively, the “City”) in connection with a June 2021 encounter with law enforcement. (ECF No. 1 (Compl.).) Plaintiff, “a petite 65-year-old African American great-grandmother,” alleges she “left her house to find officers surrounding her son’s vehicle[;] was concerned for her son’s life when she saw [this;] stopped well back from the officers[;] and yelled out for them not to shoot her son.” (Id. at ¶ 16.) Plaintiff alleges multiple officers then “aggressively approached [Plaintiff], who began to back away[;] nevertheless [she] was assaulted, battered, and shoved to the ground while she was defenseless.” (Id.) Plaintiff struck her head on the ground as a result,” which resulted in injuries. (Id.) Relevant to this discovery dispute, Plaintiff asserts a claim under Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978), against the City for failure to train, supervise, and discipline its officers in their use of force, as related to her Fourth Amendment excessive force claims against the individual officers brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. This includes allegations that the City: (a) employs officers with “dangerous propensities for abusing their authority and for mistreating citizens by failing to follow written City Police Department policies, including the use of excessive force, respect for the Fourth Amendment”; (b) fails to supervise, train, control, assign, and discipline officers known for having a “propensity for violence and the use of excessive force”; (c) maintains inadequate procedures for “reporting, supervising, investigating, reviewing, disciplining and controlling the intentional misconduct” of its officers; (d) fails to discipline officers’ conduct “including but not limited to unlawful seizures [and] excessive force”; (e) ratifies officers’ intentional misconduct; (f) maintains a policy, custom, and practice of “arresting individuals without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, and using excessive force”; and (g) fails to properly investigate claims of unlawful seizures and excessive force” by its officers. (Compl. ¶ 35.) Defendants answered, denying these allegations. (ECF No. 5 (Answer).) B. Events Relevant to the Discovery Dispute On March 7, 2023, Magistrate Judge Kendall Newman held a scheduling hearing. (ECF No. 10.) The Court entered a scheduling order setting the following deadlines: fact discovery cut-off of March 7, 2024; expert witness disclosures due by June 7, 2024; rebuttal expert disclosures due by July 7, 2024; expert discovery cut-off of August 7, 2024; dispositive motions filed by November 7, 2024; final pretrial conference set for April 22, 2025 before District Judge Dale Drozd; and jury trial set for June 23, 2025. (ECF No. 11 (March 9, 2023 Scheduling Order).) Upon reassignment to District Judge Daniel Calabretta, the final pretrial conference was reset to April 24, 2025, and all other dates remained the same. (ECF No. 13.) On June 15, 2023, Plaintiff propounded discovery on Defendants, which included the following three Requests for Production of Documents (RFPs) at issue here: No. 8: All DOCUMENTS RELATING TO any excessive use of force complaints made against any SPD [the City] police officers by any PERSON from 2013 to the Present. No. 9: All DOCUMENTS that RELATE TO any disciplinary actions taken against any SPD police officers for the use of excessive force from 2013 to the Present. No. 10: All DOCUMENTS that RELATE TO any investigations, by SPD or any other governmental agency, into complaints of SPD police officers’ use of excessive force. (ECF No. 22-12 at Exh. A (Pl. Jun. 2023 RFPs).) The City responded on July 17, 2023, objecting to RFPs 8-10 on relevance, proportionality, and privacy grounds. The City also stated: Subject to, and without waiving, these objections, and limiting its response to Officer Goetting . . ., Defendant will comply and produce all documents in its possession, custody or control, except to the extent of any objections as stated above. Having conducted a diligent search and inquiry, all documents responsive to this request, as limited, are available for downloading at link above. 2 All exhibits referenced were filed with the parties’ Joint Statement Re Discovery Disagreement. (ECF No. 22-1.) (Exh. B (Defs. Jul. 2023 RFP Responses).) A month later, Plaintiff responded by letter disputing many of the City’s responses. (Exh. C (Pl. Aug. 24, 2023 Letter).) The City did not respond, and months passed without any action by either party. On January 24, 2024, Plaintiff sent a follow-up letter requesting the City “confirm that you have complied fully with our June 15, 2023 Requests for Production.” (Exh. D (Pl. Jan. 24, 2024 Letter3).) Plaintiff also requested deposition dates for one of the named officers and for a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition of the City. Plaintiff attached a list of 33 different topics for the 30(b)(6) deposition of the City. (Id.) The parties conferred, narrowing some of their disputes (including a five-year limit from June 15, 2018 - June 15, 2023 for RFPs 8- 10), but arriving at no final consensus over the scope of RFPs 8-10 or the proposed 30(b)(6) topics. (Exh. E (Pl. Feb. 8, 2024 Letter).) On February 14, 2024, Plaintiff served a 30(b)(6) deposition notice on the City for March 4, attaching the same proposed 33 topics. (Exh. F (Pl. 30(b)(6) Depo Notice).) In response on the same day, the City agreed to produce witnesses for 13 of Plaintiff’s proposed topics and objected to the other 20 topics on various grounds including relevance, scope, burden, and ambiguity. (Exh. J (Defs. Feb. 14, 2024 Email)). The City also objected that Plaintiff’s 30(b)(6) notice for 33 topics counted as a request for 33 depositions, exceeding the ten deposition per side limit of Rule 30. (Exh. O (Defs. Feb. 21, 2024 Letter). Instead of proceeding with the 30(b)(6) depositions for the topics the parties were in agreement on and continuing to confer on the remaining topics at issue, discussions unfortunately devolved, and no 30(b)(6) depositions were taken. As to the outstanding RFPs, on February 20, 2024, the City stated that it had “produced all responsive documents” and “[n]o documents have been withheld notwithstan

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