Case ID: f-appx_512/html/0694-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Paul TAPIA, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. HUNTINGTON PARK POLICE DEPARTMENT, Erroneously Sued As City of Huntington Park; City of Huntington Park; Michael Trevis; Paul Wadley; Elba Guererro, Defendants-Appellees.
    No. 11-55433.
    United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
    Argued and Submitted Jan. 9, 2013.
    Filed March 20, 2013.
    Sid Greenbaum, Esquire, Mathews Funk & Associates, Laguna Hills, CA, Stanton T. Mathews, Senior Litigation Counsel, Stanton T. Mathews & Associates, Laguna Hills, CA, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
    Pancy Lin Misa, S. Frank Harrell, Lyn-berg and Watkins A Professional Corporation, Orange, CA, for Defendants-Appel-lees.
    Before: REINHARDT and WARDLAW, Circuit Judges, and BELL, District Judge.
    
    
      
       The Honorable Robert Holmes Bell, District Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, sitting by designation.
    
   MEMORANDUM

Paul Tapia appeals the District Court’s grant of summary judgment to the Huntington Park Police Department and the City of Huntington Park. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1343(a)(3), and we affirm.

The district court correctly found that Tapia failed to provide adequate probative evidence on his theory of Monell liability to defeat summary judgment against him. See Monell v. Dept. of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). Tapia’s § 1983 action was based on his contentions that Mayor and City Council member Elba Guererro pressured the Chief of Police to wrongfully terminate him from the police department, and that the Mayor is a policymaker for whose actions municipal liability attaches. Pemb-aur v. City of Cincinnati, 475 U.S. 469, 480, 106 S.Ct. 1292, 89 L.Ed.2d 452 (1986). However, as permitted by California law, under the City of Huntington Park’s municipal code neither the mayor nor any other individual council member has independent policymaking authority over personnel decisions. Only the City Council when sitting in a duly held meeting of the Council may give orders or instructions to the City Manager, who acts as the Council’s agent with respect to such decisions. Huntington Park Muni. Code §§ 2-3.409, 2-3.411. The Huntington Park Municipal Code § 2-3.411 specifically prohibits individual council members from instructing the City Manager or employees under the City Manager’s jurisdiction, which includes the Police Chief. Huntington Park Muni. Code § 2-3.405(b). Tapia failed to adduce evidence that the Council as a whole instructed anyone to terminate him or even that any council member other than Guer-erro was aware of his termination.

AFFIRMED. 
      
       This disposition is not appropriate * for publication and is not precedent except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
     
      
      . The district court held that the City Manager may have been such a policymaker. As the district judge noted, however, Tapia does not allege that the City Manager was responsible for his termination.