Opinion
CASE NO. 5:20-cv-00684-SVW (SK)
2022-03-18
Jose LOZANO, Plaintiff, v. John DOE 1 et al., Defendants.
Jose Lozano, Hemet, CA, Pro Se. Allen Christiansen, Ferguson Praet and Sherman APC, Santa Ana, CA, for Defendants The Riverside County, The Riverside County Sherriff Office, Sheriff Deputy Curtis, Sheriff Deputy Enoch.
Jose Lozano, Hemet, CA, Pro Se.
Allen Christiansen, Ferguson Praet and Sherman APC, Santa Ana, CA, for Defendants The Riverside County, The Riverside County Sherriff Office, Sheriff Deputy Curtis, Sheriff Deputy Enoch.
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION TO GRANT IN PART AND DENY IN PART DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
STEVE KIM, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
I.
INTRODUCTION
Plaintiff Jose Lozano sues two Riverside County deputy sheriffs, Defendants Enochs and Curtis, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for unlawful arrest and prolonged detention in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The deputies arrested Plaintiff in November 2019 just outside his home while issuing an excessive noise citation. He was then taken into custody (after Plaintiff refused to sign the citation) and jailed for more than 48 hours with no probable cause hearing. Defendants now seek summary judgment on these claims based on qualified immunity. Viewing the evidence and all reasonable inferences from it in Plaintiff's favor, as the Court must for now, a rational jury could find that Defendants unlawfully arrested Plaintiff in the curtilage of his home with no warrant and that they then held him in custody too long with no probable cause hearing. But only Plaintiff's right to a probable cause determination within 48 hours of his warrantless arrest was clearly established then. See County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 57, 111 S.Ct. 1661, 114 L.Ed.2d 49 (1991). Plaintiff has not proven that his arrest in his home's curtilage—during a consensual knock-and-talk—violated a clearly established right under then-binding Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit precedent. As a result, Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity on Plaintiff's unlawful arrest claim but not his prolonged detention claim. The Court recommends accordingly that their summary judgment motion be granted in part and denied in part. See 28 U.S.C. § 636 ; G.O. 05-07.
II.
BACKGROUND
The following material facts, except where otherwise noted, are undisputed and construed in the light most favorable to Plaintiff.
The material facts come from three sources: the parties’ combined statement of undisputed facts (ECF 58), documents produced in discovery (ECF 52-4; ECF 57), and police bodycam videos that the Court has viewed (ECF 52-7, Exhs. 3-4). There are "no allegations or indications that this videotape was doctored or altered in any way, nor any contention that what it depicts differs from what actually happened." Scott v. Harris , 550 U.S. 372, 378, 127 S.Ct. 1769, 167 L.Ed.2d 686 (2007). The Court thus credits the events depicted there with permissible inferences drawn in Plaintiff's favor so long as they are not "blatantly contradicted" by the video. Id. at 380-81, 127 S.Ct. 1769.
In early November 2019, Deputy Enochs was dispatched to Plaintiff's residence in Hemet, California, a rural area in Riverside County, to investigate a neighbor's noise complaint. This was not the first time the deputy had paid a visit to Plaintiff's house for complaints of excessive noise from loud music. Plaintiff lives in a 1,600 square foot house situated on about three acres of land surrounded by a covered chain link fence. Only the north side of his property, which has a wide metal gate across Plaintiff's driveway near the northwest corner, abuts the publicly accessible street. A few yards east at the property's northeast corner is a tall wooden door with a mailbox and "No Trespassing/Beware of Dog" sign in front. The distance from that wooden door to the house is about 120 feet. (ECF 52-4 at 74).
Deputy Enochs came with his partner, Deputy Ireland, who can be seen in the video footage. But because he is not named in this suit, and his incidental presence is irrelevant to any material dispute, Deputy Ireland will not be mentioned further.
As a visual aid, select screenshots from the bodycam videos depicting relevant areas of Plaintiff's property are included in the appendix.
When Deputy Enochs first arrived on the scene, he stopped his patrol car about 80 yards away from Plaintiff's property and confirmed that he could hear music from that distance in violation of Riverside County's noise ordinance. He then parked in front of the driveway gate from where he says he activated his airhorn and loudspeaker to draw any resident's attention. Plaintiff heard no loudspeaker announcements, however, and no one met Deputy Enochs at the driveway gate. The deputy still deduced someone was home because he claims he heard the music volume go down immediately. So Deputy Enochs walked east on the northern perimeter of the fence until he arrived at the wooden door, which was closed but unlocked. Meanwhile, Deputy Curtis arrived as backup. Both Defendants turned on their bodycams around the time they entered Plaintiff's property through the wooden door.
Plaintiff purports to dispute this fact because he says he received no dashcam video in discovery to confirm it. (ECF 58 at 2). But there is no evidence such video exists, and even if it does, Plaintiff never moved to compel its production.
Defendants claim that the door was open as shown at the start of Deputy Curtis’ bodycam video. (ECF 52-7, Exh. 4; ECF 58 at 3). But since Defendants started recording only after Deputy Curtis arrived on the scene, the Court credits Plaintiff's account that the door was closed but unlocked. (Id. ). Ultimately, even if disputed, this fact is immaterial to the outcome here.
While announcing his presence, Deputy Enochs walked to the east side of the house to the front door, where he was greeted by the young aunt of Plaintiff's two minor children who were also inside the house. Deputy Curtis, meanwhile, walked toward the north side of the house where he arrived at a nearby paved walkway that connected the front porch to the rear of the house. Plaintiff emerged from the back, asking Deputy Curtis what was happening and remarking that he thought someone was "trespassing." Deputy Curtis led Plaintiff a short way down the walkway to be met by Deputy Enochs at the northeast corner of his house. Plaintiff was holding a beer and appeared intoxicated but was neither belligerent nor incoherent. He continued sipping his beer while the three of them stood a few feet apart from each other and talked. The music had been turned down but not off. The deputies displayed no show of force, and Plaintiff exhibited no behavior suggesting he felt constrained in his movements.
The record does not disclose whether this young woman was a blood relative, Plaintiff's sister-in-law, or just an adult friend of the family. Since that relationship is not material, though, the Court relies on how she later told Deputy Enochs that Plaintiff's children were her nephews. (ECF 52-7, Exh. 3).
Deputy Enochs told Plaintiff he was there to investigate a neighbor's noise complaint, explained how he had confirmed that the music from Plaintiff's house could be heard at more than 200 feet away (thereby violating the noise ordinance), and claimed that Plaintiff had ignored his loudspeaker announcements. Plaintiff denied hearing any airhorn announcement from Deputy Enochs’ car, though he acknowledged that the deputy had recently come to his house and given him a warning before about excessive noise. Plaintiff otherwise deflected or downplayed his neighbor's noise complaints, which appeared to annoy Deputy Curtis, leading to some boorish exchanges between those two while Deputy Enochs was deciding whether to issue a noise citation. Plaintiff's general behavior around this time was defensive and discourteous but never dangerous; he was surly and gabby but neither aggressive nor threatening.
Defendants eventually decided to issue Plaintiff a $500 noise citation. But even then, Deputy Enochs offered to withdraw the ticket later if, between then and Plaintiff's noticed date to appear in court, the deputies received no more noise complaints from neighbors. So as Deputy Enochs moved a few steps away on the walkway to write the citation, Plaintiff said that he would wait somewhere else, gesturing nonchalantly toward the back of his house. Right as he started to move, however, Deputy Curtis instructed Plaintiff to stay near him, saying that he was being "detained" for a noise ordinance violation. Surprised but not alarmed, Plaintiff complied at first, standing near Deputy Curtis. He soon became agitated, though, and accused Defendants of trespassing and "breaking procedure" by coming onto his property without permission. When Deputy Enochs countered that he had found the wooden door unlocked and wide open, Plaintiff insisted it was closed and did not have to be locked to prevent trespassing. During some of that exchange, Plaintiff had drifted to Deputy Enochs, prompting Deputy Curtis to order him back to "come hang out" next to him while Deputy Enochs "gets the ticket ready."
But after some small talk with Deputy Curtis, Plaintiff turned his back to the deputy and ambled toward the north wall of his house as he faced Deputy Enochs. (Deputy Curtis would later report that he viewed Plaintiff's move as a "sign of aggression," though the video reveals nothing resembling that.) Deputy Curtis commanded Plaintiff to come back to him, but when he did not respond or comply instantly, the deputy charged Plaintiff, handcuffed his hands behind him, and repeated that he was being "detained for a violation of the noise ordinance" and restrained for failing to heed the deputy's instructions. It was around 4:34 pm by this time.
Defendants also cite 4:34 pm as the time of Plaintiff's arrest but elsewhere in their motion describe the arrest as having happened about 12 minutes later when Plaintiff is in the patrol car. (ECF 52-1 at 2, 10, 14). But the video confirms that Plaintiff was handcuffed at 4:34 pm and ordered detained about four minutes before that. Their own statement of undisputed facts puts the time of arrest at 4:34 pm, too. (ECF 52-2 at 6). Thus, the Court finds that the relevant seizure of Plaintiff happened around 4:34 pm at the northeast corner of his house on the paved walkway next to the home's north wall. That Defendants may have considered Plaintiff officially under arrest only when he refused to sign the citation and after they had decided to take him to jail is of no moment. Plaintiff is clear that he is challenging the legality of his seizure next to his house before he was escorted to the patrol car. (ECF 55 at 2-3; ECF 56 at 7).
After he had handcuffed Plaintiff, Deputy Curtis ordered Plaintiff to sit down or else be taken to the patrol car. Plaintiff refused to sit, so the deputy escorted him off the property and placed him in the back of his patrol car. The deputy told Plaintiff he would release him after Deputy Enochs had finishing writing the citation. Meanwhile, Deputy Enochs spoke with the young aunt who had greeted him at the front porch, who verified that Plaintiff's "attitude" was typical but exacerbated by alcohol. The deputy explained that he had written very few noise citations because most homeowners would turn down music with a warning and agree to be compliant rather than pay a $500 fine. He told the aunt, though, that Plaintiff could be released once he signed the citation. When she asked what would happen if he refused, Deputy Enochs said that he would be jailed for at least two or three days waiting to see a judge since no one would be available during the weekend. The aunt hinted that Plaintiff would likely refuse to sign the citation.
Her prediction turned out correct. By now angry that he had been handcuffed and forced to wait in the back of a police car, Plaintiff refused to sign the citation when Deputy Enochs presented it. Even after Defendants explained that he would be jailed if he refused and asked how they could persuade him to sign so he could be released, Plaintiff adamantly refused. He escalated the situation, in fact, demanding that Defendants call child protective services for his minor children at home while he went to jail. Their mother was out of the country, but Plaintiff refused to allow their aunt to stay and watch the children. Even after she reached Plaintiff's wife by phone and the two of them implored Plaintiff to sign the ticket and "fight it later," he refused to back down. Claiming to know that he would be in jail only one night, Plaintiff dared the deputies to take him into custody. Deputy Enochs obliged and, after waiting for child protective services, drove Plaintiff to the police station. By the time he was booked and jailed there, it was late evening of Sunday, November 3.
Plaintiff's stint in jail was not as short as he had expected: he remained in custody at least three nights. He had no court hearing the next full day (Monday November 4) at all. On the second day (Tuesday November 5), around 11:30 am, Plaintiff fell unconscious in his cell and had to be taken to a hospital by ambulance. He was treated and released the same day, returning to jail around 3:30 pm. That was evidently too late in the day, though, to make any court appearance. So Plaintiff had to stay in jail a third night until Wednesday November 6. Around 2:00 pm that day—by then almost 72 hours after his arrest—Plaintiff appeared before a judge for an unidentified proceeding, where the local district attorney said that she was unprepared to proceed with any misdemeanor charge against Plaintiff. (ECF 52-4 at 31).
Redacted jail records showed that Plaintiff had a "dry run" to court sometime, but there is no evidence of what that means. (ECF 57 at 17, 20). Defendants object to Plaintiff's use of that term, even though it appears on business records they themselves produced in discovery. (ECF 60-2 at 2). At any rate, whatever "dry run" might mean, the term is immaterial to the Court's analysis. Viewed in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, the only material fact is that Plaintiff was brought to a judge for an unspecified proceeding where "the District Attorney told the judge they were going to file charges for a misdemeanor for not signing the ticket," but when asked why they hadn't, the "District Attorney told the judge that they were still waiting." (ECF 52-4 at 31).
As it turned out, Deputy Enochs had not prepared his official incident report until two days after Plaintiff's arrest, sometime on Tuesday November 5. (ECF 57 at 6-8). That report charged Plaintiff only with violating the County's noise ordinance, not for refusing to sign the citation. (Id. at 6). (This omission was presumably why the district attorney said she was unprepared to proceed with the November 6 hearing.) It was not until the day after his hearing, in fact, on November 7, that Deputy Enochs finally prepared a supplemental report adding the charge for Plaintiff's refusal to sign his ticket, a misdemeanor offense. (Id. at 11-12). But by then, according to the same report, "[d]ue to medical concerns and a mix-up with paperwork," Plaintiff had been "released from custody per California Penal Code 825 before he could be seen by a judge or magistrate." (Id. at 12). So later that day, Deputy Enochs prepared an affidavit for a complaint and warrant to arrest Plaintiff for both the noise infraction and the refusal-to-sign misdemeanor charge. (Id. at 14-15).
According to his release order, Plaintiff's paperwork was not processed until very late the night of November 6, so he was not physically freed from jail until sometime after midnight in the early morning hours of Thursday November 7. (ECF 57 at 22; ECF 58 at 5). When released, he was given a "Certificate of Detention" dated November 6, 2019, which (as Deputy Enochs had said in his supplemental report) showed that Plaintiff was released under California Penal Code § 825 because he "[d]id not make last day arraignment." (ECF 52-4 at 82). Despite its odd name, a detention certificate is a document provided to arrestees on release when they are jailed but (for various reasons) not officially charged or formally brought before a judge. See Cal. Penal Code § 851.6. The § 851.6 certificate prevents the arrest from appearing on the suspect's criminal record by classifying his jail time as a "detention" only. Id.
Still, even after his release, the Riverside County District Attorney eventually charged Plaintiff as outlined in Deputy Enochs’ November 7 complaint. While it is unknown if Plaintiff was rearrested, he was sometime later still tried, convicted, and fined $2,125 with some monetary credit apparently for the three days he had spent in jail. (ECF 52-4 at 74; ECF 58 at 5).
III.
DISCUSSION
The Court may grant summary judgment only if the moving papers "show[ ] that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). The moving party bears the initial burden of presenting the basis of its motion and identifying those portions of the record it believes show, together with affidavits, the lack of a genuine issue of material fact. See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). A factual dispute is "material" if it might affect the outcome of the suit under governing law. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). A dispute about a material fact is "genuine" if an adequate evidentiary basis exists on which a reasonable jury could find for the nonmoving party. Id. Once the moving party meets its initial burden, the burden shifts to the nonmoving party to show with specific facts, not mere conclusory allegations, the existence of a genuine issue of disputed material fact. See id. at 249, 256, 106 S.Ct. 2505.
12 In determining whether any genuine issues of material fact exist, the Court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and draw all reasonable inferences supported by that evidence in favor of the nonmoving party. See Guidroz-Brault v. Mo. Pac. R. Co., 254 F.3d 825, 829 (9th Cir. 2001). If the nonmoving party is a pro se litigant, the Court must also construe his pleadings liberally. See Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94, 127 S.Ct. 2197, 167 L.Ed.2d 1081 (2007). Summary judgment is appropriate only when "the record taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the nonmoving party." Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. 557, 586, 129 S.Ct. 2658, 174 L.Ed.2d 490 (2009).
3456 Defendants move for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. That defense shields public officials sued for monetary damages unless their challenged conduct violates "clearly established" law that any reasonable officer would have known at the time of their conduct. See Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231-32, 129 S.Ct. 808, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009). To enter summary judgment on that basis here, the Court must find that (1) there is no genuine dispute of material fact over find that (1) there is no genuine dispute of material fact over whether Defendants violated a constitutional right, and (2) Plaintiff has proven that the violated right was clearly established at the time of Defendants’ misconduct. See Martinez v. City of Clovis, 943 F.3d 1260, 1270, 1275 (9th Cir. 2019) ; S.B. v. County of San Diego, 864 F.3d 1010, 1013 (9th Cir. 2017). Summary judgment on the first element "is not proper unless the evidence permits only one reasonable conclusion." Munger v. City of Glasgow Police Dep't, 227 F.3d 1082, 1087 (9th Cir. 2000). Whether a right has been clearly established is a question of law. See Morales v. Fry, 873 F.3d 817, 819 (9th Cir. 2017).
A. A Jury Could Find that Defendants Violated Plaintiff's Fourth Amendment Right to Be Free from a Warrantless Arrest in His Home's Curtilage
7891011 The protections of the Fourth Amendment are at their apex when it comes to the home. See Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511, 81 S.Ct. 679, 5 L.Ed.2d 734 (1961). That is why "searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable." Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 586, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980). But that protection can also extend beyond the home's physical walls, doors, and windows. The area immediately surrounding and intimately associated with the home—its "curtilage"—is part of the home too for Fourth Amendment purposes. Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170, 180, 104 S.Ct. 1735, 80 L.Ed.2d 214 (1984). So warrantless arrests in a home's curtilage are just as presumptively unreasonable as warrantless arrests inside the home. See Collins v. Virginia, ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 1663, 1670, 201 L.Ed.2d 9 (2018) ; United States v. Perea-Rey, 680 F.3d 1179, 1184 (9th Cir. 2012). And that shared presumption against warrantless arrests can usually only be rebutted in similar fashion—by a recognized exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement, the most familiar in this setting being exigent circumstances with probable cause of a crime. See Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 459-60, 131 S.Ct. 1849, 179 L.Ed.2d 865 (2011) ; Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403-04, 126 S.Ct. 1943, 164 L.Ed.2d 650 (2006) ; United States v. Struckman, 603 F.3d 731, 738-39 (9th Cir. 2010).
12 Invoking these principles, Plaintiff claims that Defendants unlawfully detained and arrested him in the curtilage of his home with no warrant or exigent circumstances. If Plaintiff is right, Defendants cannot prevail under the first prong of the qualified immunity analysis. For their part, Defendants concede they faced no exigencies—no dangerous threats, no imminent loss of evidence, no hot pursuit—during their encounter with Plaintiff. See LaLonde v. County of Riverside, 204 F.3d 947, 956 (9th Cir. 2000) ; United States v. Johnson, 256 F.3d 895, 908 n.6 (9th Cir. 2001). That is hardly surprising, for "it is difficult to conceive of a warrantless home arrest that would not be unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment when the underlying offense is extremely minor," Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U.S. 740, 753, 104 S.Ct. 2091, 80 L.Ed.2d 732 (1984), as it was here. "When the government's interest is only to arrest for a minor offense, that presumption of unreasonableness is difficult to rebut, and the government usually should be allowed to make such arrests only with a warrant issued upon probable cause." Id. at 750, 104 S.Ct. 2091 (footnote omitted); see Nishimoto v. City of Torrance, 2011 WL 13213634, at *11 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 6, 2011) ("The law in this Circuit has been consistent and clearly established: the need to abate a nuisance is insufficient to establish an emergency or exigent circumstances.").
131415 Still, Defendants maintain they had authority to detain and arrest Plaintiff based on probable cause alone if they were lawfully on his property in the first place. And Plaintiff cannot contest, after all, that they had probable cause to believe he had violated the local noise ordinance. Because he was ultimately convicted for that offense, he cannot now challenge that the music from his house was loud enough to be heard from a distance that violated the ordinance. See Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 486-87, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994). Even so, inside a private house or its curtilage "no amount of probable cause can justify a warrantless arrest or entry absent an exception to the warrant requirement." Struckman, 603 F.3d at 743. So whether Defendants unlawfully arrested Plaintiff still boils down to what exception could have justified his warrantless arrest. That issue, in turn, depends on whether Plaintiff was in his home's curtilage when seized, and if so, what authority and facts permitted Defendants to make the seizure.
Plaintiff argues that infractions like this are not arrestable crimes under California law. (ECF 56 at 8). Not quite. See Cal. Penal Code § 853.5. A suspect may be "arrested for an offense declared to be an infraction," but "taken into custody" only if (as pertinent here) the "arrestee refuses to sign a written promise" to appear. Id. At any rate, this argument is no help to him: "If an officer has probable cause to believe that an individual has committed even a very minor criminal offense in his presence, he may, without violating the Fourth Amendment, arrest the offender." Atwater v. City of Lago Vista , 532 U.S. 318, 354, 121 S.Ct. 1536, 149 L.Ed.2d 549 (2001). So while Defendants could in fact arrest Plaintiff for his infraction, whether it was an "arrestable offense" under state law is immaterial to the Fourth Amendment issue. See Virginia v. Moore , 553 U.S. 164, 167, 173-74, 128 S.Ct. 1598, 170 L.Ed.2d 559 (2008).
Nor can he create a "genuine" dispute about this fact just by refusing to accept the veracity of Deputy Enochs’ account unless he sees a dashcam video that may not even exist. And even if it does, it is not in the summary judgment record anyway because Plaintiff never moved to compel its production before fact discovery closed.
The curtilage question requires no extended discussion. Plaintiff does not claim (in this lawsuit anyway) that Defendants’ entry onto his property by the outermost wooden door was unlawful, rendering unnecessary any analysis of whether his home's curtilage extends that far. See United States v. Davis, 530 F.3d 1069, 1078 (9th Cir. 2008) ; Johnson, 256 F.3d at 902. Nor is there a need to find, as Defendants suggest (ECF 52-1 at 14), that the area between Plaintiff's house and his property's fence is an undeveloped "open field" entitled to no Fourth Amendment protection. Oliver, 466 U.S. at 182-83, 104 S.Ct. 1735. That is a fact-laden discussion unnecessary here, see United States v. Dunn, 480 U.S. 294, 301, 107 S.Ct. 1134, 94 L.Ed.2d 326 (1987), because Defendants do not contest that the spot where Plaintiff was arrested falls within his home's curtilage. It is near impossible anyway to see how they could contest that point, given how Plaintiff was arrested on a paved walkway connected to his front porch within arm's reach of the north wall to his house. See Oliver, 466 U.S. at 180, 182 n.12, 104 S.Ct. 1735 ; see also Morgan v. Fairfield County, 903 F.3d 553, 561 (6th Cir. 2018) (observing that it is "commonsense" and "easily understood" that area "an arm's-length from one's house" is curtilage). So Plaintiff's arrest undeniably "took place in a constitutionally protected area." Whalen v. McMullen, 907 F.3d 1139, 1147 (9th Cir. 2018).
1617 The only remaining question, then, is what authority and facts permitted Defendants to seize Plaintiff in his home's protected curtilage without a warrant (even if they had probable cause). But that is a triable issue here. It is no answer for Defendants to claim that they were lawfully present there under the so-called "knock and talk" exception. (ECF 52-1 at 13). See Madruga v. County of Riverside, 431 F. Supp. 2d 1049, 1057 (C.D. Cal. 2005) ("Simply stating post facto that an officer's entry was part of a ‘knock and talk’ is insufficient to justify the intrusion."). That warrant exception says that it cannot be illegal "for anyone openly and peaceably ... to walk up the steps and knock on the front door of any man's ‘castle’ with the honest intent of asking questions of the occupant there[,] whether the questioner be a pollster, a salesman, or an officer of the law." United States v. Cormier, 220 F.3d 1103, 1109 (9th Cir. 2000). Yet even if that exception authorized Defendants’ entry onto Plaintiff's property, their approach to his house, and the dialogue they had about the noise complaint, there remains the genuine dispute of material fact over whether Plaintiff's ensuing arrest exceeded the authority conferred by the exception under the circumstances.
18 A "knock and talk," as its name denotes, is exceedingly limited in scope—essentially, to two activities. Though that is an oversimplified description, to be sure, what is plain is that the exception does not say, "knock, talk, and arrest." The exception allows police to invade the curtilage of a home to ask questions of its occupant "precisely because that is ‘no more than any private citizen might do.’ " Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1, 8, 133 S.Ct. 1409, 185 L.Ed.2d 495 (2013). In other words, police avail themselves of the same implied license (or implicit consent) for such entry and interaction generally available to ordinary citizens—no more, no less. And the "scope" of such license "is limited not only to a particular area but also to a specific purpose." Id. at 9, 133 S.Ct. 1409. "Just as ‘the background social norms that invite a visitor to the front door do not invite him there to conduct a search,’ those norms also do not invite a visitor there to arrest the occupant." United States v. Lundin, 817 F.3d 1151, 1160 (9th Cir. 2016) (citation omitted).
1920 So while police, like "the Nation's Girl Scouts and trick-or-treaters," can approach a home to speak with its occupant, Jardines, 569 U.S. at 8, 133 S.Ct. 1409, nothing in the implied license to have that consensual interaction suggests a visitor can restrict the movements of a homeowner next to his own home any more than she could force the resident to buy cookies or hand out candy. See Lundin, 817 F.3d at 1158-59 ("The scope of the exception is coterminous with [the] implicit license" to "approach the home and knock"). Simply put, in typical cases, "if the police do not have a warrant they may ‘approach the home by the front path, knock promptly, wait briefly to be received, and then (absent invitation to linger longer) leave.’ " Id. at 1159 (quoting Jardines, 569 U.S. at 8, 133 S.Ct. 1409 ). Nowhere is a right to detain, arrest, or otherwise seize the homeowner implied by that license.
What's more, the homeowner can revoke any implied license. See, e.g., Davis v. United States , 327 F.2d 301, 303 (9th Cir. 1964), overruled on other grounds by Perea-Rey , 680 F.3d at 1187 ; Madruga , 431 F. Supp. 2d at 1059-61. Plaintiff, however, does not oppose Defendants’ motion on this basis; he accepts that they had the right to be where they ended up next to his house, challenging only their authority to arrest him once there. (ECF 55 at 2-3; ECF 56 at 7). Even if Plaintiff had opposed on this basis, though, he would lose the argument for the same reason he ultimately cannot overcome qualified immunity on his unlawful arrest claim: the lack of a clearly established right. Compare Davis , 327 F.2d at 303, and Madruga , 431 F. Supp. 2d at 1059-61, with Oliver , 466 U.S. at 181, 104 S.Ct. 1735, and United States v. Carloss , 818 F.3d 988, 994-95 (10th Cir. 2016).
Thus, viewing the evidence and all reasonable inferences in Plaintiff's favor, a rational jury could find that Defendants exceeded the scope of a valid knock-and-talk once they restricted Plaintiff's movements. That seizure occurred perhaps as soon as Deputy Curtis "detained" Plaintiff while Deputy Enochs wrote the citation, but by no later than when Deputy Curtis handcuffed Plaintiff about four minutes later for not standing where the deputy had ordered. It does not matter that the encounter started as a valid knock-and-talk. It is for a jury to decide whether that consensual encounter evaporated (and became nonconsensual) no later than the moment that Deputy Curtis seized Plaintiff rather than let him move about his property as he saw fit. See Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 436-37, 111 S.Ct. 2382, 115 L.Ed.2d 389 (1991) ; United States v. Washington, 387 F.3d 1060, 1069 (9th Cir. 2004).
After all, a jury could find that Plaintiff posed no threat when Deputy Curtis handcuffed him. He may have been truculent, churlish, and ill-humored, to be sure. But a jury viewing the bodycam footage of that moment in Plaintiff's favor—especially Deputy Enochs’ reaction as the deputy deftly grabbed Plaintiff's beer out of his hand without even flinching—could find that Plaintiff was no danger to anyone. If, on the other hand, the Court "were to construe the knock and talk exception" as categorically as Defendants suggest—"to allow officers to meander around the curtilage and engage in warrantless detentions and seizures of residents"—the narrow "exception would swallow the rule that the curtilage is the home for Fourth Amendment purposes." Perea-Rey, 680 F.3d at 1189.
B. Plaintiff Has Not Met His Burden to Prove that Defendants Violated a Fourth Amendment Right Clearly Established at the Time of His Warrantless Arrest
21222324 While the application of these legal principles to the facts here (construed in Plaintiff's favor of course) could lead a reasonable jury to find that Defendants violated the Fourth Amendment when they arrested him in the curtilage of his home, it does not mean that Defendants could have predicted that outcome then. In § 1983 actions, qualified immunity protects government officials "from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Pearson, 555 U.S. at 231, 129 S.Ct. 808. The doctrine's purpose is to balance two important yet competing interests: "the need to hold public officials accountable for irresponsible actions, and the need to shield them from liability when they make reasonable mistakes." Morales, 873 F.3d at 822. To that end, it "gives government officials breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions." Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 743, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (2011). Defendants are therefore entitled to qualified immunity if Plaintiff's asserted Fourth Amendment right was not clearly established at the time of the alleged police misconduct. See Pearson, 555 U.S. at 231-32, 129 S.Ct. 808. And it is Plaintiff who "bears the burden of proof" on that issue. Shooter v. Arizona, 4 F.4th 955, 961 (9th Cir. 2021), cert. denied, ––– U.S. ––––, 142 S. Ct. 898, 211 L.Ed.2d 605 (2022) ; see Martinez, 943 F.3d at 1275.
2526272829 To be clearly established, "[t]he contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right." Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). While there need not be "a case directly on point, [ ] existing precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate." al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 741, 131 S.Ct. 2074. And to have the force of being "clearly established," existing precedents must usually come from the Supreme Court itself or binding Ninth Circuit opinions. See Boyd v. Benton County, 374 F.3d 773, 781 (9th Cir. 2004). Even then, it is not enough that a "rule is suggested by then-existing precedent. The precedent must be clear enough that every reasonable official would interpret it to establish the particular rule the plaintiff seeks to apply." District of Columbia v. Wesby, ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 577, 590, 199 L.Ed.2d 453 (2018). This demanding standard protects "all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law." Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986).
3031 Plaintiff has not met his burden to prove that Defendants rank among those "plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law" as to his unlawful arrest claim. He has not shown that his warrantless arrest in November 2019, occurring as it did during a valid knock-and-talk, was prohibited conduct that any reasonable police officer should have known then. In his attempt to make that showing, Plaintiff refers only to the overarching Fourth Amendment right—generally enjoyed by all—to be free of warrantless arrests in or near one's home. (ECF 56 at 9). "But if the test of ‘clearly established law’ were to be applied at this level of generality," Plaintiff "would be able to convert the rule of qualified immunity ... into a rule of virtually unqualified liability simply by alleging violation of extremely abstract rights." Anderson, 483 U.S. at 639, 107 S.Ct. 3034. So Plaintiff cannot define his infringed right as abstractly as the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable seizures or warrantless arrests. See Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 615, 119 S.Ct. 1692, 143 L.Ed.2d 818 (1999). That "general proposition ... is of little help in determining whether the violative nature of particular conduct is clearly established." al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 742, 131 S.Ct. 2074. More specificity is required, especially "in the Fourth Amendment context," because "it is sometimes difficult for an officer to determine how the relevant legal doctrine ... will apply to the factual situation the officer confronts." Kisela v. Hughes, ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 1148, 1152, 200 L.Ed.2d 449 (2018).
Plaintiff does not claim, nor could he, that his case is that rare "obvious case" when the unlawfulness of Defendants’ conduct is so clear even without existing precedent based on similar facts. Brosseau v. Haugen , 543 U.S. 194, 199, 125 S.Ct. 596, 160 L.Ed.2d 583 (2004) (per curiam).
Yet Plaintiff points to no precedents at all (ECF 56 at 9)—much less to any binding authorities defining the relevant "contours" of his Fourth Amendment right at the necessary level of specificity for qualified immunity analysis. For this reason alone, Defendants may be granted summary judgment on Plaintiff's unlawful arrest claim. See Shooter, 4 F.4th at 961 ; Shafer v. County of Santa Barbara, 868 F.3d 1110, 1118 (9th Cir. 2017). But even if Plaintiff had meaningfully tried to carry his burden, the Court is unaware of controlling Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit precedent that would have placed Defendants on notice—"beyond debate"—that a warrantless arrest cannot be executed during a knock-and-talk if the arrestee is standing in the curtilage of his home. See Gordon v. County of Orange, 6 F.4th 961, 969 (9th Cir. 2021).
32 Consider Jardines itself. Despite its salient discussions of the limits of knock-and-talk authority, Jardines was a Fourth Amendment search case involving a drug-detecting dog no less—not a seizure case like this one with any remotely similar facts. 569 U.S. at 9 n.4, 133 S.Ct. 1409. It is also not obvious what was "clearly established" in Jardines, on its own terms, for qualified immunity purposes. In a recent First Circuit decision, for example, the panel majority described Jardines as clearly establishing that "the scope of the knock and talk exception to the warrant requirement is controlled by the implied license to enter the curtilage." French v. Merrill, 15 F.4th 116, 132-33 (1st Cir. 2021). That reading, incidentally, tracks the Court's own reasoning here. But the dissent in French construed Jardines much more narrowly, limited to its facts, prohibiting only the use of a drug-sniffing dog to gather information while on curtilage before speaking to the property owner first. See id. at 134, 142. "If judges thus disagree on a constitutional question, it is unfair to subject police to money damages for picking the losing side of the controversy." Wilson, 526 U.S. at 618, 119 S.Ct. 1692 ; cf. United States v. Iwai, 930 F.3d 1141, 1159 (9th Cir. 2019) (Bybee, J., dissenting) ("[W]e and other courts have struggled to define the contours of an appropriate knock and announce."); Bovat v. Vermont, ––– U.S. ––––, 141 S. Ct. 22, 22, 208 L.Ed.2d 240 (2020) (Gorsuch, J., statement respecting cert. denial) ("[W]ith the rise of the knock and talk have come more and more cases testing the boundaries of the consent on which they depend.").
Nor could the Ninth Circuit's opinions in Perea-Rey or Lundin have given all reasonable police officers fair warning that Plaintiff's warrantless arrest amid an otherwise valid knock-and-talk would lead to § 1983 liability. In line with happened here, Perea-Rey reiterated that police may "approach a home to contact inhabitants" so long as their "actions are consistent with an attempt to initiate consensual contact with the occupants of the home." 680 F.3d at 1187-88. It also provided, consistent with what occurred here, that "[o]fficers conducting a knock and talk also need not approach only a specific door if there are multiple doors accessible to the public," but may instead "approach any part of the building where uninvited visitors could be expected." Id. at 1188 (cleaned up). Those principles would have reinforced rather than cast doubt on Defendants’ actions here. True, Perea-Rey went on to invalidate an officer's warrantless seizure of a suspect in a home's curtilage—but only because the officer never "attempted a consensual knock and talk." Id. "He simply identified himself and ordered Perea-Rey not to move" at the very outset. Id. So the Ninth Circuit there "conclude[d] that [police] did not engage in a consensual ‘knock and talk’ " at all. Id. It had no occasion to decide the issue here: whether a warrantless arrest is allowed if there was a valid consensual knock-and-talk at the start that only later led to a warrantless arrest (supported by probable cause).
Similarly, reasonable police officers could have read Lundin to permit—or at least not prohibit—what Defendants did here. Lundin confirmed, as happened here, that an "officer does not violate the Fourth Amendment by approaching a home at a reasonable hour and knocking on the front door with the intent merely to ask the resident questions." 817 F.3d at 1160. This rule does not change "even if the officer has probable cause to arrest the resident" beforehand. Id. In other words, Lundin confirmed, as happened to be the case here, that police may conduct a "knock and talk" even if they have preexisting "probable cause to arrest a resident" but no "arrest warrant." Id. What separates Lundin from this case is that, first, the knock and talk there happened very early (at 4:00 am when no resident would reasonably expect unannounced visitors). See id. at 1159. And second, the knock-and-talk was done solely for the targeted purpose of arresting the home's occupant. See id. at 1159-60. In those circumstances, unlike the case here, the Ninth Circuit held that the knock-and-talk exception did not apply. See id. at 1160 ; cf. Jardines, 569 U.S. at 9 n.4, 133 S.Ct. 1409 (act of speaking with home's occupant, even to gather investigative information, "does not cause it to violate the Fourth Amendment," "[b]ut no one is impliedly invited to enter the protected premises of the home in order to do nothing but conduct a search").
Finally, it would not have been unreasonable for Defendants to believe that their lawful presence on the curtilage during a knock-and-talk permitted a warrantless arrest just as sometimes a warrantless arrest inside a home might be allowed if voluntary consent to enter were obtained beforehand. See Struckman, 603 F.3d at 747 ("[P]olice officers must either obtain a warrant or consent to enter before arresting a person inside a home or its curtilage." (emphasis added)); United States v. Lowe, 676 F. App'x 728, 732 (9th Cir. 2017) ("[O]nce law enforcement receives consent to enter the home, the officers may arrest a suspect and search the suspect incident to that arrest without having to first acquire a warrant, so long as the arrest is supported by probable cause."). While there are no doubt differences, including of constitutional significance, between in-home arrests on the one hand and curtilage-arrests on the other, the point is that officers could hardly be faulted for thinking—even if mistakenly—that analogous law in the first area might reasonably guide their actions in the second.
Other circuits also appear to have endorsed this idea of in-home warrantless arrests if police had consent to enter beforehand and of course probable cause to arrest. See, e.g., Moore v. Pederson , 806 F.3d 1036, 1043 (11th Cir. 2015) ("warrantless arrest in a home" allowed if "arresting officer had probable cause to make the arrest and either consent to enter or exigent circumstances demanding that the officer enter the home without a warrant"); Sheik-Abdi v. McClellan , 37 F.3d 1240, 1245 (7th Cir. 1994) ("Once the veil of the home has been legally pierced, we see no need for police officers to turn a blind eye to crime, so long as the arrest is otherwise effected in compliance with the constitutional requirement of probable cause."); Vizbaras v. Prieber , 761 F.2d 1013, 1017 (4th Cir. 1985) ("Once the officers were inside the house, they had a right to arrest [resident] because they had probable cause to believe that he had been involved in an attempted breaking and entering."); United States v. Briley , 726 F.2d 1301, 1303 (8th Cir. 1984) ("[V]alid and voluntary consent may be followed by a warrantless in-home arrest.").
It is one thing to conclude, as the Court does here, that the reasoning of Jardines, Perea-Rey , Lundin, and like cases prohibited what happened to Plaintiff: a warrantless arrest for a minor infraction while the arrestee was standing in his home's curtilage during a consensual knock-and-talk encounter that presented no exigencies. It is quite another matter, however, to say that no reasonable police officer facing that same scenario in November 2019 could have failed to realize that the Fourth Amendment prohibited a warrantless arrest in those circumstances. In other words, even though a rational jury viewing the evidence in Plaintiff's favor could find now that Defendants unlawfully arrested him under the Fourth Amendment, the unconstitutionality of that arrest was not that apparent then according to binding Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit authorities. Defendants are thus entitled to summary judgment on Plaintiff's claim of unlawful arrest.
C. Plaintiff Had a Clearly Established Right to a Timely Probable Cause Determination After His Warrantless Arrest
3334 The same is not true for Plaintiff's prolonged detention claim. "The consequences of prolonged detention may be more serious than the interference occasioned by arrest." Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 114, 95 S.Ct. 854, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975). "Pretrial confinement may imperil the suspect's job, interrupt his source of income, and impair his family relationships." Id. That is why the Fourth Amendment "requires a prompt judicial determination of probable cause following an arrest made without a warrant." Powell v. Nevada, 511 U.S. 79, 80, 114 S.Ct. 1280, 128 L.Ed.2d 1 (1994). But because that general principle sowed confusion and disagreement in lower courts about what qualifies as "prompt," the Supreme Court—over three decades ago in County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44, 111 S.Ct. 1661, 114 L.Ed.2d 49 (1991) —created a (near) bright-line rule that warrantless arrests must be followed by a probable cause hearing within 48 hours to comply with the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 56-57, 111 S.Ct. 1661.
In short, after Defendants arrested him, Plaintiff had the same and obvious right under the Fourth Amendment—enjoyed nationwide for over 30 years by identically situated suspects—"to a hearing at which he [was] presented with the probable cause of his arrest within forty-eight hours of the arrest." Benson v. Chappell, 958 F.3d 801, 823 (9th Cir. 2020). Defendants cannot responsibly or tenably deny that the Supreme Court's decades-old decision in McLaughlin —involving Riverside County's own detention and hearing procedures then—would have alerted any reasonable officer in Defendants’ shoes that Plaintiff had a right to a prompt and timely probable cause determination within 48 hours of his arrest. See Mackinney v. Nielsen, 69 F.3d 1002, 1009 (9th Cir. 1995) ; Gorromeo v. Zachares, 15 F. App'x 555, 557 (9th Cir. 2001).
Indeed, because of McLaughlin ’s near-categorical requirement for a judicial finding of probable cause within 48 hours of a warrantless arrest, the Court is unaware of any jurisdiction since that ruling came down in 1991 that has not instituted procedures for after-hours or weekend probable-cause determinations. See, e.g., Probable Cause Determination, L.A. Cnty. Super. Ct., at https://www.lacourt.org/division/criminal/CR0034.aspx (last visited Mar. 15, 2022). It is thus puzzling, to be sure, why the Riverside County Superior Court states on its public website that a probable cause hearing can normally take longer than 48 hours under conditions (like intervening weekends) that were rejected in McLaughlin over 30 years ago. See https://www.riverside.courts.ca.gov/Divisions/Criminal/criminal.php (last visited Mar. 15, 2022). The notice suggests, in other words, that 48 hours is the minimum time an arrestee may be held without a probable cause hearing rather than the presumptive maximum time limit under McLaughlin . In any event, the Court need not delve into the particulars of how Riverside County honors the McLaughlin rule systemically. It is enough that, for whatever reason, Defendants failed to honor that clearly established constitutional rule here. The main disincentive they used to encourage Plaintiff to sign the noise citation, in fact, was the prospect that he would be unable to see a judge for two to three days because of the weekend arrest.
On the other hand, the County's § 851.6 detention certificate form has a checkbox option—not used for Plaintiff here—titled "On Call Magistrate rejected Probable Cause Statement." (ECF 52-4 at 82).
D. A Jury Could Find that Defendants Violated Plaintiff's Fourth Amendment Right to a Prompt Probable Cause Hearing
353637 Under McLaughlin, if an arrestee receives a probable cause hearing after 48 hours have lapsed since arrest, the government bears the burden "to demonstrate the existence of a bona fide emergency or other extraordinary circumstance" for the untimely probable cause determination. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. at 57, 111 S.Ct. 1661. With no such extraordinary reasons, a delay longer than 48 hours violates the Fourth Amendment. See Powell, 511 U.S. at 80, 114 S.Ct. 1280. Not only that, but even if an arrestee is provided an otherwise timely hearing within 48 hours, it may still violate the Fourth Amendment "if the arrested individual can prove that his or her probable cause determination was delayed unreasonably." McLaughlin, 500 U.S. at 56, 111 S.Ct. 1661. A delay can be unreasonable in that situation, for instance, if the delay is motivated by ill will or imposed arbitrarily just for delay's sake. See id. None of Defendants’ proffered reasons for failing to ensure that Plaintiff received a probable cause hearing within 48 hours of his warrantless arrest compels summary judgment in their favor.
3839 To start, contrary to Defendants’ argument (ECF 52-1 at 10-11), intervening weekends and court holidays—as made painstaking clear in McLaughlin itself—do not count as extraordinary circumstances excusing a delay. See McLaughlin, 500 U.S. at 57-58, 111 S.Ct. 1661 ; United States v. Hernandez-Orellana, 2006 WL 8439365, at *4 (S.D. Cal. May 25, 2006). In fact, the state statute Defendants rely on to advance their weekend/holiday tolling rule—California Penal Code § 825 —is the very state law found deficient in McLaughlin itself (against Riverside County no less) for permitting such unconstitutional tolling on the face of the statute. See 500 U.S. at 47, 58, 111 S.Ct. 1661 ; see also Cherrington v. Skeeter, 344 F.3d 631, 643-44 (6th Cir. 2003) (recognizing that a municipality's "part-time court scheme, under which court was never held on weekends or holidays, would very likely run afoul of the forty-eight hour time limit ... in cases of warrantless arrests on Friday evenings or Saturday mornings") (cleaned up). And the 48-hour clock, as McLaughlin also made clear, starts to run from the time of arrest, see id. at 57, 111 S.Ct. 1661 —not at the stroke of midnight after arrest, as Defendants claim. (ECF 52-1 at 11).
40 Nor are Defendants entitled to summary judgment based on their contention that Plaintiff's medical emergency on Tuesday November 5—which started and ended the same day—bought them more time to comply with McLaughlin . (Id.). At most, that emergency might help fend off the claim that Defendants had unreasonably delayed Plaintiff's probable cause hearing within the presumptive 48-hour limit, but even then, it does not resolve the claim with no jury finding. Whether and how Plaintiff's emergency room visit made it hard to obtain a hearing within 48 hours of arrest remains a genuinely disputed question of material fact. Viewed in Plaintiff's favor for now, the evidence of his medical emergency the morning of November 5 could still permit a jury to find that he could have had a timely probable cause determination within 48 hours—anytime the day before or sometime afterward on November 5.
Indeed, there remains a genuine dispute of material fact over whether Plaintiff had a valid probable cause hearing at all (even if untimely) on November 6 before his late-night release. Defendants point to no admissible evidence proving that the appearance before a judge that Plaintiff had around 2:00 pm on Wednesday November 6—which by then was already 70 hours after his arrest—was a preliminary hearing or anything resembling a probable cause proceeding. Just because Plaintiff saw a judge says nothing about the type and substance of the judicial proceeding. Indeed, construed in Plaintiff's favor, Deputy Enochs’ own supplemental report and the detention certificate Plaintiff received both suggest the opposite: that Plaintiff was neither seen by a judge nor able to make his "last day arraignment" because of "medical concerns" and a "mix-up" with paperwork. (ECF 52-4 at 82; ECF 57 at 12). What's more, if the purpose of the detention certificate is to prevent a criminal arrest from appearing on an arrestee's record, see Cal. Penal Code § 851.6(d), it would be odd for Plaintiff to have had a probable cause hearing for a crime that could not appear on his record even as an arrest. At a minimum, a jury must have the chance to sort out these discrepancies.
Finally, Defendants maintain that they had "no control over Plaintiff being taken before a judge after he was jailed nor [could they] have known that Plaintiff would have a medical emergency while in custody." (ECF 52-1 at 16). While the latter claim is no doubt true, it is beside the point, as explained above. The first claim, on the other hand, is untenable. (Never mind that Plaintiff would not have been in custody but for his unconstitutional warrantless arrest by Defendants in the first place.) In Defendants’ reckoning, deputies in Riverside County can arrest citizens, even for minor infractions, but then wash their hands of that arrest once the arrestee steps foot into a locked cell. That is not only alarmingly cavalier, but also legally wrong. See, e.g., People v. Valenzuela, 86 Cal.App.3d 427, 150 Cal. Rptr. 314, 315 (1978) ("The failure of the arresting officer to do the paperwork necessary to cause the complaint to be filed at an earlier time reflects against the legality of the detention."); Cal. Penal Code § 145 ("Every public officer or other person, having arrested any person upon a criminal charge, who willfully delays to take such person before a magistrate having jurisdiction, to take his examination, is guilty of a misdemeanor."). Nor can Defendants "shield themselves from liability by blaming the district attorney's office or others for a delayed detention that violates the Fourth Amendment." Williams v. Block, 1999 WL 33542996, at *3 (C.D. Cal. Aug. 11, 1999). Maybe there was ultimately no causal connection between Defendants’ actions at the jailhouse after Plaintiff's arrest (including their delinquent paperwork) and his prolonged detention before a probable cause hearing (if Plaintiff even had one). But that is for a jury to decide at trial, not for the Court to resolve on summary judgment.
IV.
CONCLUSION
For all these reasons, the Court recommends that Defendants’ summary judgment motion be granted in part (as to Plaintiff's unlawful arrest claim) based on qualified immunity, but that it be otherwise denied (as to Plaintiff's prolonged detention claim under McLaughlin ) for lack of qualified immunity.
APPENDIX
ORDER ACCEPTING REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION TO GRANT IN PART AND DENY IN PART DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
STEPHEN V. WILSON, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
In accordance with 28 U.S.C. § 636, the Court has reviewed the attached Report and Recommendation to grant in part and deny in part Defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Defendants object to the recommendation to deny them qualified immunity for Plaintiff's Fourth Amendment prolonged detention claim under County of Riverside v. McLaughlin , 500 U.S. 44, 111 S.Ct. 1661, 114 L.Ed.2d 49 (1991). The objections lack merit for two reasons.
First , Defendants present no good reason why the Magistrate Judge's recommendation should be rejected based on new arguments raised for the first time only in their objections. See United States v. Howell , 231 F.3d 615, 621-23 (9th Cir. 2000). For instance, Deputy Curtis argues that he should be dismissed because he could not have caused Plaintiff's prolonged detention. (ECF 63 at 2-4). But in seeking summary judgment, Deputy Curtis never asked for individual dismissal independent of Deputy Enochs. Instead, with no distinctions between them, both deputies sought summary judgment together for the same combined reasons. And, in any event, when viewed with all permissible inferences drawn in Plaintiff's favor, the evidence presents a genuine, material dispute about both deputies’ roles in Plaintiff's detention. Perhaps the facts at trial will exonerate Deputy Curtis, but nothing he argues now—much less anything he argued in seeking summary judgment—proves that he alone should be dismissed as a matter of law. There remains a genuine, material dispute about whether Deputy Curtis, having helped arrest Plaintiff, had any culpable role in Plaintiff's detention without a timely probable cause determination.
Likewise, neither deputy argued—as they do now for the first time (id. at 4-6)—that they deserve qualified immunity against Plaintiff's prolonged detention claim for lack of a clearly established right. The single sentence in Defendants’ motion—that they "would have no control over Plaintiff being taken before a judge after he was jailed" (ECF 52-1 at 16)—certainly did not do the required legal work. In fact, they barely even alluded to the controlling Supreme Court precedent of McLaughlin in their summary judgment briefs. (ECF 52-1 at 10-11, 15-16; ECF 60 at 2-3). So Defendants cannot claim (with a straight face) that they had argued for qualified immunity against a claim for prolonged detention when they never even tried to analyze the seminal Supreme Court precedent on the topic. Thus, the Court is "not required" to consider such untimely and last-ditch arguments "presented for the first time in a party's objection to a magistrate judge's recommendation." Howell , 231 F.3d at 621.
Second , even if the Court were to consider Defendants’ qualified immunity argument, it would still not compel summary judgment in their favor. Defendants argue that no clearly established law put them on notice "that arresting officers are liable for an unreasonably prolonged detention after delivering the arrestee to the custody of the jail." (ECF 63 at 4). But to be clearly prohibited conduct for qualified immunity purposes, "the very action in question need not have previously been held unlawful." Tarabochia v. Adkins , 766 F.3d 1115, 1125 (9th Cir. 2014) (cleaned up). Nor must there be "a case directly on point" with near identical facts to recognize a clearly established right. Ashcroft v. al-Kidd , 563 U.S. 731, 741, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (2011). Not every constitutional rule is "inherently incapable of giving fair and clear warning." Hope v. Pelzer , 536 U.S. 730, 741, 122 S.Ct. 2508, 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002). Indeed, if there is any Fourth Amendment rule capable of giving fair and clear warning to all reasonable officers, it is the McLaughlin requirement—now three decades old—that suspects arrested without a warrant receive a probable cause hearing within 48 hours of the warrantless arrest.1 No doubt that is why it has been long established in the Ninth Circuit that arresting officers (here, that would be both Defendants) are under a constitutional duty to ensure that an arrestee is promptly brought before a judicial officer as part of their booking responsibilities. See Hallstrom v. City of Garden City , 991 F.2d 1473, 1478, 1482 (9th Cir. 1993).
For these reasons, the Court concurs with and accepts the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the Magistrate Judge in the attached Report and Recommendation. Defendants’ motion for summary judgment is accordingly GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. As soon as it can be scheduled, the parties are ordered to attend a pretrial status conference with the Magistrate Judge before the matter is transferred for trial.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
DATED: May 24, 2022