Roger Brass v. County of Los Angeles, Erroneously Sued as Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Rick Thurlo, Individually and as a Peace Officer

328 F.3d 1192, 2003 Daily Journal DAR 5195, 2003 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 4044, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 9386, 2003 WL 21095589
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedMay 15, 2003
Docket01-57249
StatusPublished
Cited by97 cases

This text of 328 F.3d 1192 (Roger Brass v. County of Los Angeles, Erroneously Sued as Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Rick Thurlo, Individually and as a Peace Officer) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

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Roger Brass v. County of Los Angeles, Erroneously Sued as Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Rick Thurlo, Individually and as a Peace Officer, 328 F.3d 1192, 2003 Daily Journal DAR 5195, 2003 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 4044, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 9386, 2003 WL 21095589 (9th Cir. 2003).

Opinion

OPINION

FRIEDMAN, Circuit Judge.

The appellant Roger Brass challenges the district court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of the County of Los Angeles (“County”) on his complaint that the County violated 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by continuing his incarceration for 39 hours after a state trial judge had ordered him released. We affirm. .

I

A. The relevant facts are undisputed. County Sheriff Deputy Thurlo was seeking to arrest James Nichols on a warrant for vehicular burglary. Brass’s house was shown in the warrant as Nichols’s address. Nichols reportedly had been seen near the house. Brass resembled Nichols’s physical description, and both men had missing left-hand finger joints. On Sunday, April 6, 1997, Thurlo arrested and incarcerated Brass in the mistaken belief that he was Nichols.

Later that day, after Thurlo had left the station house, it was determined that Brass was not Nichols. The Sheriffs Department, however, continued to hold Brass and did not present him for arraignment until April 9, 1997, when, at 11:20 a.m., a state court judge ordered him released. The order, on a printed form, was directed to the County Sheriff, and stated in pertinent part:

THIS IS TO AUTHORIZE YOU TO RELEASE Brass, Roger ... FROM CUSTODY FOR THE FOLLOWING REASON Released on O/R, This Case Only.

The court’s docket covering a case against Nichols further stated: “Request to Release on OR granted. Respondent released on own recognizance ... return on above date to be fingerprinted. Court indicates this may not be defendant in custody.”

Although Brass stated in his brief that the order directed that he be released “forthwith,” neither the release order nor the docket entries specified any time limit for his release.

Brass was released 39 hours after the release order was entered, at 3:00 a.m. on Friday, April 11. This 39-hour period for effecting his release is the gravamen of the case now before us.

B. Brass filed a suit for damages in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, naming as defendants the County, Thurlo and “DOES 2 through 100.” His amended complaint contained six counts. The first three were federal claims, all alleging violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Count I charged all the defendants with depriving Brass of his liberty without due process and alleged that *1195 the “conduct ... was undertaken pursuant to the policies, practices and customs of the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department.” Count II alleged that the defendants had subjected him to unreasonable searches and seizures, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Count III, which charged only the County, alleged that Thurlo and the DOES had enforced the County’s “policies, customs, practices and usages in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.” (This claim will be referred to as the Monell claim, as the parties do, based on Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978), discussed in Part III, below.) The fourth through sixth counts all stated claims under California law. The complaint stated that each DOE defendant “is responsible in some manner for the events and happenings herein referred to, and thereby proximately caused injuries and damages as herein alleged”; and that Brass did not know the DOES’ “true names and capacities,” but would seek to amend the complaint “to show their true names and capacities when same have been ascertained.”

On the defendants’ motion, the district court granted summary judgment dismissing the three federal claims and, declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, dismissed the state law claims without prejudice. The court dismissed the first claim against Thurlo because Brass had not shown that Thurlo was responsible for his continued detention after the state court had ordered his release. The court rejected Brass’s unlawful arrest claim (Count II) because Thurlo had probable cause to arrest him, and therefore was entitled to qualified immunity. The court also dismissed Counts I and II against the County because the County could not be held liable under Section 1988 on a respondeat superior liability theory. Finally, the court granted summary judgment dismissing Count III, the Monell claim that the 39-hour detention resulted from a County policy or custom, on the ground that the County Sheriff acted as a state rather than as a county official in handling the release of prisoners.

On appeal, we affirmed the summary judgment in favor of Thurlo, but reversed the judgment in favor of the County. Brass v. County of L.A., 10 Fed.Appx. 412, 2001 WL 275076 (9th Cir. Mar.19, 2001) (unpublished opinion). We held that Thur-lo had probable cause to arrest Brass, and therefore qualified immunity. With respect to Brass’s claim that the County “violated his constitutional rights when it failed to release him from jail until April 11, even though a judge ordered his release on April 9,” we relied on our decision in Streit v. County of Los Angeles, 236 F.3d 552, 561 (9th Cir.2001), where we held that “when the Sheriff of Los Angeles County performs the function of ‘oversight and management of the local jail,’ including, specifically, the effectuation of the release of prisoners, the ‘Sheriff acts for the County,’ and not the state.... As a result, the County can be liable for Brass’s delayed release and, therefore, the' district court’s summary judgment for the County must be reversed. We express no opinion on the merits of Brass’ claim of untimely release.” Id. at *3-5 (quoting Streit, 236 F.3d at 561).

C. On the remand, Brass moved for summary adjudication, and the County moved for summary judgment. In support of his motion, Brass asserted, in addition to his “policy or custom” claim against the County, “three additional bases to support his Section 1983 action,” including the County’s failure to arraign him timely. Brass previously had not explicitly made these three additional claims.

Brass also attempted to substitute four named County police. officers for four of the DOES. Those officers allegedly had *1196 been involved in his 39-hour incarceration. He did not, however, move to amend his complaint to add those individuals as named defendants, but merely referred to them as defendants in various documents he filed.

The district court denied Brass’s motion, granted the defendant’s motion and dismissed the case. The court first held that the only issue properly before it was Brass’s MonfiU claim against the County. It pointed out that it had initially granted summary judgment in favor of both Thurlo and the County; that we reversed only the ruling that the County was not hable on the Monell

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328 F.3d 1192, 2003 Daily Journal DAR 5195, 2003 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 4044, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 9386, 2003 WL 21095589, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/roger-brass-v-county-of-los-angeles-erroneously-sued-as-los-angeles-ca9-2003.