United States District Court, D. Arizona
ORDER
Honorable Susan M. Brnovich United States District Judge
Pending
before the Court is Defendant Maricopa County's Partial
Motion To Dismiss For Failure to State A Claim Upon Which
Relief May Be Granted (Doc. 42). Oral argument was held on
February 1, 2019. The Court has now considered the Motion
(Doc. 42, Mot.), Response (Doc. 45, Resp.), and Reply (Doc.
50, Reply) along with arguments of counsel and relevant case
law.
BACKGROUND
This
case arises from Plaintiffs Brian and Andrea Weymouth's
Complaint, originally filed on January 25, 2018, in the
Maricopa County Superior Court, and removed to this Court by
Defendants on May 1, 2018. Plaintiffs then filed a First
Amended Complaint (Doc. 38, “FAC”) on July 25,
2018. In the FAC, Plaintiffs bring claims against Maricopa
County, Brian Mackiewicz, Brian and Shawn O'Connor, and
multiple unnamed defendants. The claims stem from
Plaintiffs' allegations that Plaintiffs' property was
seized and impounded by the Maricopa County Sheriff's
Office, and then retrieved by Defendant Brian O'Connor,
without permission from the Plaintiffs and without a court
order. (FAC ¶¶ 27-28, 34-37). In regard to
Defendant Maricopa County (“Defendant County”),
Plaintiffs bring Count Sixteen for “Unconstitutional
Policies, Practices and Customs/42 U.S.C. § 1983”
and Count Seventeen for “Failure to Train/42 U.S.C.
§ 1983.” (FAC ¶¶ 194-215). Defendant
County now moves to dismiss Count Seventeen of
Plaintiffs' First Amended Complaint for failure to state
a claim upon which relief may be granted pursuant to
Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6).
DISCUSSION
I.
LEGAL STANDARDS
To
survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion for failure to state a claim,
a complaint must meet the requirements of Rule 8(a)(2). Rule
8(a)(2) requires a “short and plain statement of the
claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief, ”
so that the defendant has “fair notice of what the . .
. claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.”
Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007)
(quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47 (1957)).
Dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) “can be based on the lack
of a cognizable legal theory or the absence of sufficient
facts alleged under a cognizable legal theory.”
Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep't, 901 F.2d
696, 699 (9th Cir. 1988). A complaint that sets forth a
cognizable legal theory will survive a motion to dismiss if
it contains sufficient factual matter, which, if accepted as
true, states a claim to relief that is “plausible on
its face.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662,
678 (2009) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570).
Facial plausibility exists if the pleader sets forth
“factual content that allows the court to draw the
reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the
misconduct alleged.” Id. “Threadbare
recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by
mere conclusory statements, do not suffice.”
Id. “Determining whether a complaint states a
plausible claim for relief will . . . be a context-specific
task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its
judicial experience and common sense.” Iqbal,
556 U.S. at 679.
In
ruling on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the well-pled
factual allegations are taken as true and construed in the
light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Cousins v.
Lockyer, 568 F.3d 1063, 1067 (9th Cir. 2009). However,
legal conclusions couched as factual allegations are not
given a presumption of truthfulness, and “conclusory
allegations of law and unwarranted inferences are not
sufficient to defeat a motion to dismiss.” Pareto
v. FDIC, 139 F.3d 696, 699 (9th Cir. 1998).
II.
ANALYSIS
a.
Municipal Liability
“Neither
state officials nor municipalities are vicariously liable for
the deprivation of constitutional rights by employees.”
Flores v. Cty. of Los Angeles, 758 F.3d 1154,
1158-59 (9th Cir. 2014) (citing Monell v. Dep't of
Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 694 (1978)). A municipality
may, however, be liable under § 1983 if a plaintiff
shows “that a policy or custom led to the
plaintiff's injury, ” and “that the policy or
custom . . . reflects deliberate indifference to the
constitutional rights of its inhabitants.” Castro
v. Cty. of Los Angeles, 833 F.3d 1060, 1073 (9th Cir.
2016) (citations and quotation marks omitted). A municipality
may only be held liable for the inadequacy of police training
if Plaintiff shows “(1) he was deprived of a
constitutional right, (2) the [municipality] had a training
policy that amounts to deliberate indifference to the
constitutional rights of the persons with whom its police
officers are likely to come into contact; and (3) his
constitutional injury would have been avoided had the
[municipality] properly trained those officers.”
Blankenhorn v. City of Orange, 485 F.3d 463, 484
(9th Cir. 2007) (quotation marks, brackets, and citations
omitted); see also City of Canton v. Harris, 489
U.S. 378, 388 (1989) (municipality may only be held liable
for the inadequacy of police training “where the
failure to train amounts to deliberate indifference to the
rights of persons with whom the police come into contact,
” and the policy was “the moving force [behind]
the constitutional violation”) (quotation marks
omitted). However, a “municipality's culpability
for a deprivation of rights is at its most tenuous where a
claim turns on a failure to train.” Connick v.
Thompson, 563 U.S. 51, 61 (2011).
“‘[D]eliberate
indifference' is a stringent standard of fault, requiring
proof that a municipal actor disregarded a known or obvious
consequence of his action.” Id. (quoting
Bd. of Cty. Comm'rs of Bryan Cty., Okl. v.
Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 410 (1997)). “[T]he need for
more or different training [must be] so obvious, and the
inadequacy so likely to result in the violation of
constitutional rights, that the policymakers of the city can
reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to
the need.” Castro, 833 F.3d at 1076 (9th Cir.
2016) (quoting Canton, 489 U.S. at 390). “A
pattern of similar constitutional violations by untrained
employees is ‘ordinarily necessary' to demonstrate
deliberate indifference for purposes of failure to
train.” Connick, 563 U.S. at 62 (quoting
Bryan Cty., 520 U.S. at 409). “After all,
‘[w]ithout notice that a course of training is
deficient in a particular respect, decisionmakers can hardly
be said to have deliberately chosen a training program that
will cause violations of constitutional rights.'”
Hein v. City of Chandler, No. CV-15-01162-PHX-DJH,
2016 WL 11530432, at *6 (D. Ariz. Sept. 16, 2016) (quoting
Connick, 563 U.S. at 62). Although a pattern is
ordinarily necessary, “there exists a ‘narrow
range of circumstances [in which] a pattern of similar
violations might not be necessary to show deliberate
indifference.'” Flores, 758 F.3d at 1159
(quoting Connick, 563 U.S. at 63) (alterations in
original).
Here,
Defendant County first argues that Plaintiffs have not
alleged a “pattern” of similar constitutional
violations. In response, Plaintiffs contend that they have
“specified two distinct
events, one occurring in 2011 and the other in 2015, where
the Property Clerks permitted Plaintiffs' personal
property to be distributed to Defendant O'Connor without
Plaintiffs' permission or authority from the Maricopa
County Superior Court, ” and that “the Property
Clerks demonstrated consistency in
their denial of Plaintiffs' constitutional rights having
distribut[ed] Plaintiff's property to a stranger on
two occasions.” (Resp. at 5) (emphasis in
original). Plaintiffs further assert that the Defendant
County may be liable even with “one” isolated
event. (Resp. at 8).
This
Court has continuously recognized that complaints lacked
allegations of a “pattern” when plaintiffs
alleged only a single incident. See, e.g.,
Ericson v. City of Phoenix, No. CV-14-01942-PHX-JAT,
2016 WL 6522805, at *21 and n.13 (D. Ariz. Nov. 3, 2016)
(noting that plaintiff must proceed on a single incident
theory because plaintiff cited “to no incident besides
the one in this case”); Hein, 2016 WL
11530432, at *7 (“[T]he FAC does not allege a pattern
of similar violations, namely, of other officers citing and
arresting people to discourage them from filing lawsuits
against the City.”). But alleging more than
one incident does not automatically create a
“pattern.” The Ninth Circuit has affirmed a
district court's granting of a motion to dismiss a claim
for failure to train when plaintiff alleged that the
defendants were on notice of the lack of proper training
following another officer's conviction approximately five
years earlier. Flores, 758 F.3d at 1159 (“The
isolated incidents of criminal wrongdoing by one deputy other
than [the Deputy ...