Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-azd-2_13-cv-00397/USCOURTS-azd-2_13-cv-00397-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Civil Rights Act

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

PATRICK WHITE, )

)

Plaintiff, ) 2:13-cv-00397 JWS

)

vs. ) ORDER AND OPINION

)

DAVID M. STIERS, et al., ) [Re: Motion at docket 6]

)

Defendants. )

)

I. MOTION PRESENTED

At docket 6 defendants David M. Stiers (“Stiers”), Frank Milstead (“Milstead”),

and the City of Mesa (“City”) (collectively “Defendants”) move to dismiss the Amended

Complaint filed by plaintiff Patrick White (“White”) pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). 

White responds at docket 7, and Defendants reply at docket 10. Oral argument was

heard on July 10, 2013. 

II. BACKGROUND

According to White’s Amended Complaint, during the summer of 2010 another

man exposed himself in front of four different women on a total of six occasions in the

vicinity of the La Costa Apartment Complex at Dobson Ranch (“La Costa”). Stiers, who

was employed as a police detective by the City, was placed in charge of the City’s

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investigation. Providing information separately, all four women described the

perpetrator as an athletic looking man about 6 feet tall, weighing 165 to 200 pounds

with a balding head of blondish hair of an age in his 30's or 40's who had exposed

himself between 5:30 and 6:30 AM in the vicinity of La Costa. The similar descriptions

supported a conclusion that the same man was involved in each incident. White was a

little over 6 feet tall, weighed more than 220 pounds, lacked an athletic build, and had a

full head of black hair with some gray on the sides of his head. After listing numerous

questionable actions and failures to act by Stiers, the Amended Complaint alleges that

Stiers wrongfully arrested White at his law office on January 14, 2011, for exposing

himself to the women. The City’s prosecutor then filed three misdemeanor charges

against White connected to the incidents at La Costa. All charges against White were

dismissed by the prosecutor on November 10, 2011, after being advised of Stiers’

conduct and other information uncovered by White’s lawyer. 

The Amended Complaint alleges four counts brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983. The first seeks compensatory damages from Stiers in both his official and his

individual capacities and punitive damages from Stiers in his individual capacity for

arresting White in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment protections

against unreasonable searches and seizures. The second seeks compensatory

damages from Stiers in both his official and individual capacities and punitive damages

from Stiers in his individual capacity based on a denial of substantive due process

arising from Stiers’ knowing and intentional provision of false information to the city

prosecutors and his knowing and intentional concealment of exculpatory evidence. 

The third count is a stand alone demand for punitive damages against Stiers in his

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individual capacity. The fourth count seeks compensatory damages from the City and

Chief of Police Milstead acting in his official capacity for violation of the Fourth and

Fourteenth Amendments arising from policies which resulted in a failure to adequately

train and supervise Stiers and encouraged his conduct.

White’s original Complaint was filed on February 25, 2013. The Amended

Complaint was filed on March 4, 2013. In addition to his claims for compensatory and

punitive damages, White seeks an award of costs and attorneys’ fees pursuant to 42

U.S.C. § 1988.

III. STANDARD OF REVIEW

Rule 12(b)(6) tests the legal sufficiency of a plaintiff’s claims. In reviewing such

a motion, “[a]ll allegations of material fact in the complaint are taken as true and

construed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party.” Dismissal for failure to

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state a claim can be based on either “the lack of a cognizable legal theory or the

absence of sufficient facts alleged under a cognizable legal theory.” “Conclusory 2

allegations of law . . . are insufficient to defeat a motion to dismiss.”3

To avoid dismissal, a plaintiff must plead facts sufficient to “state a claim to relief

that is plausible on its face.” “A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads 4

factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the

Vignolo v. Miller, 120 F.3d 1075, 1077 (9th Cir. 1997).

1

Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dept., 901 F.2d 696, 699 (9th Cir. 1990).

2

Lee v. City of Los Angeles, 250 F.3d 668, 679 (9th Cir. 2001).

3

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 4

U.S. 544, 570 (2007)).

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defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” “The plausibility standard is not akin to 5

a ‘probability requirement,’ but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant

has acted unlawfully.” “Where a complaint pleads facts that are ‘merely consistent’

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with a defendant’s liability, it ‘stops short of the line between possibility and plausibility

of entitlement to relief.’” “In sum, for a complaint to survive a motion to dismiss, the 7

non-conclusory ‘factual content,’ and reasonable inferences from that content, must be

plausibly suggestive of a claim entitling the plaintiff to relief.”8

IV. DISCUSSION

White does not oppose dismissal of his third count, nor does he oppose

dismissal of the official capacity claims. The only claim against Milstead was pled as an

official capacity claim, so the complaint will be dismissed as to Milstead. White

opposes dismissal of the individual capacity claims against Stiers in the first and second

counts, and the claim against the City in the fourth count.

Defendants’ first argument for dismissal is that the claims are time barred,

because the complaint was filed more than two years after White’s arrest on

January 14, 2011. The parties agree that the applicable statute of limitation is the twoyear Arizona limitation on tort actions for personal injuries. Defendants contend that

White’s claims necessarily accrued on the day he was arrested. White maintains that

Id. 5

Id. (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556). 6

Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557). 7

Moss v. U.S. Secret Serv., 572 F.3d 962, 969 (9th Cir. 2009); see also Starr v. Baca,

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652 F.3d 1202, 1216 (9th Cir. 2011). 

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his claims did not accrue until November 7, 2011. On that date, White asserts he first

learned of the facts giving rise to his claim that “a constitutionally deficient investigation

[which relied] on information that was clearly and demonstrably false [to support

White’s] arrest” resulted in an unreasonable seizure of his person. 

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While the statute of limitation for claims brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is

borrowed from state law, the time when a claim accrues is decided under federal law as

explained by the Supreme Court in Wallace v. Kato. In Wallace, the Supreme Court 10

also said that the statute of limitation for a claim of false arrest would normally run from

the date of the arrest, because the plaintiff could file suit at that time. However, the

court found that the particular claim before it was better characterized as a claim for

false imprisonment, a claim that “is subject to a distinctive rule–dictated, perhaps, by

the reality that the victim may not be able to sue while he is still imprisoned.” The 11

Court held that the statute of limitation on a claim of false imprisonment begins to run

when the imprisonment ends. 

Defendants rely on Wallace and this district’s decision in Wilson v. Yavapai

County Sheriff’s Office to establish the proposition that claims based on a false arrest 12

accrue at the time the plaintiff is detained. This court does not find Wallace to be

controlling on the issue to be resolved here. Wallace noted that the statute of limitation

Doc. 7 at p. 6. 9

549 U.S. 384, 387-88 (2007).

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Id. at 389. 11

2012 WL 1067959, at *5 (D. Ariz. Mar. 29, 2012). 

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for a claim of false arrest would “normally” begin to run at the time of the arrest, and

then went on to find an exception to the normal rule for the case before it which it

characterized as a claim for false imprisonment. Wallace did not concern a case such

as the one at bar in which the claim based on seizure of White’s person is not

predicated on the mere arrest of an innocent person, but rather, on an innocent

person’s arrest caused by what is alleged to be a constitutionally deficient investigation. 

Wilson provides no more focused guidance. The Wilson court simply cited Wallace and

found the two-year statute on a claim for false arrest began running on the date of the

arrest. As in Wallace there is no discussion of the possibility that what made the arrest

false was a constitutionally defective investigation, a subject that would not ordinarily

be–and certainly was not here–known to the arrested person at the time of the arrest.

White relies on the proposition that a § 1983 claim accrues when the plaintiff

knows or should know of his injury, citing Maldonado v. Harris. However, like the 13

cases relied upon by Defendants, Maldonado did not deal with facts that are analogous

to those presented here. Yet, the general proposition that a claim accrues when the

plaintiff knows of or has reason to know of his injury provides guidance. Here, the injury

of which White complains is the seizure of his person caused by what he charges was a

constitutionally defective investigation. While the court is doubtful that White was “in

the dark” until November 7, 2011, given the letter his lawyer wrote on August 22, 2011,

outlining most of the defects in the investigation, the lawsuit was filed considerably less

than two years after the August date.

370 F.3d 945, 955 (9th Cir. 2004).

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It is the court’s conclusion that White’s claim of unreasonable seizure caused by

an investigation that violated his constitutional rights did not accrue until he knew about

the defects in the investigation. It is correct to say that because he was innocent and

knew he was innocent, a simple state law claim for false arrest accrued on the date

White was arrested. It is incorrect to say that a claim for being deprived of his rights

under the Constitution by virtue of a constitutionally defective investigation accrued on

the date of the arrest. White could not possibly have known he had such a claim until

considerably later. 

For the reasons above, the first count in the Amended Complaint withstands

scrutiny under Rule 12(b)(6). By similar reasoning, the second and fourth counts must

also be considered timely. Given these decisions, it is unnecessary to consider the

parties’ arguments about tolling the statute of limitation.

Defendants advance another reason for dismissal of the second claim. Their

argument begins with the proposition that this claim is in reality a claim that there was a

violation of the due process duty to provide exculpatory evidence to White as required

by the Supreme Court in Brady v. Maryland. Defendants contend that a Brady claim 14

is not viable if the violation of the Brady doctrine did not result in a conviction. Of

course, the charges against White were dismissed, so he did not even go to trial, much

less get convicted. Defendants also argue that White obtained the same information

Stiers failed to disclose through White’s public records request, so he was not harmed.

373 U.S. 83 (1963). 14

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Defendants are attacking a procedural due process claim, but as pled, the

second count makes a substantive due process claim. The Supreme Court has

explained that substantive due process claims that involve conduct which “is covered by

a specific constitutional provision, such as the Fourth or Eighth Amendment, . . . must

be analyzed under the standard appropriate to that specific provision, not under the

rubric of substantive due process.” That is precisely the situation here. The 15

underlying harm to White flows from an allegedly unreasonable seizure of his person,

the very subject matter of the Fourth Amendment. The court concludes that the second

count should be dismissed without prejudice to the first count. It must be added that in

deciding to analyze Stiers’ actions under the Fourth Amendment, the court is not

suggesting that evidence of Stiers’ allegedly knowing and intentional provision of

misinformation to the prosecutors and allegedly knowing and intentional withholding of

information–accusations made in the text of the second count–should not be

considered in determining whether to award punitive damages on the first count.

Defendants contend that the fourth count should be dismissed. Their sole

argument to support the request is that there is no viable underlying claim in the first or

second counts. The court having found the claim in the first count viable, this 16

argument fails.

County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 843 (1998) (quoting United States v. 15

Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 272 n.7 (1997)). 

Doc. 6 at pp. 5-6; doc. 10 at p. 11. 16

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V. CONCLUSION

For the reasons above, the motion at docket 6 is GRANTED in part and DENIED

in part as follows: The official capacity claim against Stiers in the first count is

DISMISSED, but the individual capacity claims against defendant Stiers for

compensatory damages and punitive damages remain for resolution; the second count

is DISMISSED in its entirety without prejudice to White’s pursuit of the first count

against Stiers; the third count is DISMISSED in its entirety without prejudice to White’s

pursuit of his claim for punitive damages in the first count; the fourth count is

DISMISSED as to defendant Milstead only and remains for resolution with respect to

the City. 

The Clerk is directed to terminate Milstead as a defendant, because the only

claim pled against him has been dismissed.

DATED this 1st day of August 2013.

 /S/ 

JOHN W. SEDWICK

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

 

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