Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-casd-3_10-cv-02465/USCOURTS-casd-3_10-cv-02465-2/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 360
Nature of Suit: Other Personal Injury
Cause of Action: 28:1332 Diversity-Personal Injury

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

RONG DONG LI,

Plaintiff,

CASE NO. 10cv2465-LAB (BGS)

ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND

DENYING IN PART AKAL’S

MOTION TO DISMISS

vs.

AKAL SECURITY, INC., et al.,

Defendants.

On April 3, 2011, the Court dismissed with prejudice most of Li’s claims against Akal

Security. One claim, for the negligent infliction of emotional distress, survived. The Court

found that Li hadn’t stated adequate facts to support that claim, but it allowed him the

opportunity to do so in amended complaint. Now before the Court is Akal’s motion to

dismiss Li’s First Amended Complaint. In addition to alleging the negligent infliction of

emotional distress, Li also alleges basic negligence.

I. Introduction

Li, an illegal immigrant and detainee at the El Centro Service Processing Center

(“Detention Center”), alleges that Akal Security is liable for personal injuries he sustained

when two other detainees attacked him in a bathroom. Akal is a private security company

that provided security for the Center pursuant to a contract with United States Immigration

and Customs Enforcement. 

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Li’s story is straightforward. He entered the men’s restroom at the Detention Center

and saw two men fighting. He alerted guards, who came quickly, broke up the fight, and

escorted the two men from the restroom. As he was washing his hands, after using the

restroom himself, one of the men who had been fighting, joined by another man, entered the

restroom and attacked Li. The attack lasted for three to four minutes, leaving Li bloody with

injuries to his face and body. 

II. Legal Standard

A rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim challenges the legal

sufficiency of a complaint. Navarro v. Block, 250 F.3d 729, 732 (9th Cir. 2001). In

considering such a motion, the Court accepts all allegations of material fact as true and

construes them in the light most favorable to Li, the non-moving party. Cedars-Sinai Med.

Ctr. v. Nat’l League of Postmasters of U.S., 497 F.3d 972, 975 (9th Cir. 2007). To defeat a

12(b)(6) motion, a complaint’s factual allegations needn’t be detailed, they must simply be

sufficient to “raise a right to relief above the speculative level . . . .” Bell Atl. Corp. v.

Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007). However, “some threshold of plausibility must be

crossed at the outset” before a case can go forward. Id. at 558 (internal quotations omitted).

A claim has “facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court

to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.”

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, — U.S. —, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009). “The plausibility standard is not

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

defendant has acted unlawfully.” Id. 

While the Court must draw all reasonable inferences in Li’s favor, it need not

“necessarily assume the truth of legal conclusions merely because they are cast in the form

of factual allegations.” Warren v. Fox Family Worldwide, Inc., 328 F.3d 1136, 1139 (9th Cir.

2003) (internal quotations omitted). In fact, the Court does not need to accept any legal

conclusions as true. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1949. A complaint does not suffice “if it tenders

naked assertions devoid of further factual enhancement” (id. (internal quotations omitted)),

nor if it contains a merely formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action (Bell Atl.

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Corp., 550 U.S. at 555). 

III. Discussion

Li’s grievance, in essence, is that Akal Security failed to protect him from the

aggressions of fellow detainees at the Detention Center. Typically, this is a civil rights claim

brought by prisoners under the Eighth Amendment, and it requires that prison officials

demonstrate “deliberate indifference” to “conditions posing a substantial risk of serious

harm.” Clem v. Lomelli, 566 F.3d 1177, 1181 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting Farmer v. Brennan,

511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994)). Li doesn’t allege, though, that his Eighth Amendment rights were

violated by Akal. He simply accuses Akal of negligence: (1) for failing to station guards

outside of the restroom to respond to emergencies therein; (2) for its employees’ failure to

respond to Li’s cries for help from within the restroom; (3) for its employees’ failure to

segregate or detain the man Li had seen fighting, and who subsequently attacked Li; and

(4) for failing to investigate the original fight. (Compl. ¶ 37.) 

A negligence claim is not implausible. “Tort law . . . imposes a duty of care on jailers

or prison employees to protect the life and health of prisoners in their custody and protect

the prisoners from foreseeable harm or unreasonable risk of physical harm.” See Pollard

v. GEO Group, 607 F.3d 583, 609 (9th Cir. 2010), overruled on other grounds by Minneci

v. Pollard, 2012 WL 43511 (Jan. 10, 2012). Akal acknowledges this principle, but attempts

to distinguish itself on the ground that it is a private security company at a detention center,

and thus had no duty of care to protect Li in the first instance:

Here, Plaintiff has failed to allege how he has a “special

relationship” with an unidentified Akal employee. Specifically,

Plaintiff has failed to allege how unidentified employees of Akal,

a private security company, owe a duty of care to protect an

illegal immigrant from harm at a detention center, such that Akal

can be held vicariously liable for negligence . . . . Akal’s counsel

is not aware of any published California case extending the

“special relationship” rule such that unidentified employees of a

private security company owe a duty of care to an illegal

immigrant detainee.”

(Br. at 7.) 

It is reasonable of Akal to question whether, as a private security company, it had a

duty to protect Li. In the Court’s judgment, this turns on the exact nature of Akal’s contract

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 The Court sees no reason to exempt Akal because the Detention Center is not, 1

technically, a prison or other correctional facility. A defendant may have an affirmative duty

to protect a plaintiff from the conduct of third parties when there is a special relationship

between the two parties. Giraldo v. Cal. Dep’t of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 168

Cal.App.4th 231, 245 (Cal. Ct. App. 2009). A special relationship typically arises where “the

plaintiff is particularly vulnerable and dependent upon the defendant who, correspondingly,

has some control over the plaintiff’s welfare.” Id. at 245–46 (quoting Kockelman v. Segal,

61 Cal.App.4th 491, 499 (Cal. Ct. App. 1998)). The court in Giraldo was concerned

particularly with the relationship between a jailer and prisoner, and it passed on the question

of “[w]ho comes within the category of jailer.” Id. at 253. Nonetheless, it recognized that

“important factors in determining whether a relationship is ‘special’ include vulnerability and

dependence,” and that a prisoner “is deprived of the normal opportunity to protect himself

from harm inflicted by others.” Id. at 386. These factors may be just as present in a

detention center for illegal immigrants as an actual prison, and the Court sees no reason not

to extend the tort principles recognized in Giraldo to the facts of this case. 

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with the United States—and probably with Immigration and Customs Enforcement—at the

Detention Center. On the one hand, Li alleges that Akal has a contract to “provide security

services.” (Compl. ¶ 2.) This could mean anything. It could mean that private security

officers simply oversee the grounds and the parking garage (as at the federal courthouse

in San Diego), in which case they can’t be considered to have the same duties of care as

actual jailors or prison employees. On the other hand, it could mean that Akal basically runs

the Detention Center. Li alleges the latter, more or less:

Akal had the physical custody of the detainees and had a duty

to assure the safety and security of detainees such as Plaintiff

while they were detained at the Center. Plaintiff believes and

thus alleges that twenty-four hours a day detainees at the Center

were under close monitoring and supervision by Akal’s

employees including the men’s bathroom where Plaintiff was

brutally attacked.

(Compl. ¶ 36.) Assuming these to be the facts, as the Court must in ruling on a motion to

dismiss, Akal is no different from any private company with a contract to run a correctional

facility, and that may be held liable for violations of inmate’s constitutional or common-law

rights. The Court therefore finds that Akal does have a duty of care with respect to Li, and 1

that the duty encompasses an obligation to protect him from foreseeable harms inflicted by

third parties.

The key word there, though, is “foreseeability,” which the court in Giraldo recognized

was “the most important consideration in establishing duty.” Id. at 386 (internal quotations

omitted). Even if the Court accepts that Akal had a general duty to protect Li from harms

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inflicted by a third party, the duty extends only to those harms that are foreseeable. This is

where Li’s complaint runs into problems. He alleges nothing more than that he reported a

fight in the bathroom to an Akal security guard, the two men fighting were escorted out of the

bathroom, and within moments one of the men came back into the bathroom and attacked

him. When the Court first dismissed Li’s negligent infliction of emotional distress claim, it

observed:

Li isn’t even clear on what he believes was negligent: Akal

releasing the men who been fighting, knowing they had a

propensity to violence, or Akal not responding when Li was

crying for help during the alleged attack. If the former, Li

certainly doesn’t allege adequate facts. He doesn’t explain how

the men were fighting, whether they resisted being escorted

away, whether they said anything to Li or hinted that they would

be back to retaliate against him, or any other facts that would

allow for the reasonable inference that Akal shouldn’t have

released the men and looked the other way.

(Dkt. No. 9 at 4–5.) Li still doesn’t allege those facts. Li admits he doesn’t allege those

facts. (Opp’n Br. at 3.) To be fair, it’s now clear that Li believes Akal was negligent for

releasing the fighting men and failing to respond to his cries for help, but he hasn’t alleged

any additional facts in his First Amended Complaint that explain why it was foreseeable that

either (a) fights would break out in the bathroom requiring Akal to station security guards

outside of it, or (b) one of the men in the fight that Li reported would return to the bathroom

to retaliate against Li. So, still, Li alleges no facts, as the Court said previously, “that would

allow for the reasonable inference that Akal shouldn’t have released the men and looked the

other way.” He asserts in a conclusory manner that “Akal knew or should have known that

John Doe One is a risk to other detainees, in particular, to Plaintiff who had just reported him

to guards.” (Compl. ¶ 37.) Li has to say more, though, to give rise to a reasonable

inference that it was foreseeable that John Doe One, simply in virtue of being in a fight that

Li reported, would seek Li out to retaliate against him. Li’s negligence claim therefore fails

to the extent it is based on Akal’s alleged failure to station guards near the restroom, or its

alleged failure to segregate John Doe One from the remainder of the detainee population.

To the extent Li’s negligence claim is based on the allegation that he took a beating

for 3-4 minutes in the Detention Center’s bathroom and Akal’s security guards must have

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heard him and did nothing, it is more plausible. But it’s not clear that this is Li’s claim. He

says,

Akal breached its duty . . . through the failure of its employees

who were stationed near the men’s restroom at the time of the

incident to respond to Plaintiff’s plea for help since it is

impossible for them not to hear Plaintiff’s loud plea had any of

Akal’s employees were stationed near the men’s bathroom at

issue.

(Compl. ¶ 37.) This sentence is unclear. On one hand, Li seems to be alleging that he

pleaded for help and Akal’s guards must have heard him. On the other hand, Li is alleging

that guards must have heard him had they been stationed outside the restroom, but the

Court has already determined this cannot be the basis of a negligence claim because Li

alleges insufficient facts to show that bathroom fights were so foreseeable that guards

should have been stationed outside of it. Elsewhere in his complaint, Li alleges that “[w]hile

it only takes seconds for guards to respond, no guards ever came to Plaintiff’s rescue.”

(Compl. ¶ 11.) He also alleges that his “severe and permanent injuries could have been

avoided had Akal responded to Plaintiff’s loud pleas for help.” (Compl. ¶ 38.) Missing in all

of these allegations is the unambiguous charge that Akal guards must have heard Li’s pleas

for help and chose to do nothing about them. The Court will give Li the benefit of the doubt,

though, and charitably interpret his complaint to allege that guards did hear him plead for

help from the bathroom and did nothing about it. Akal’s motion to dismiss is DENIED, but

Li’s negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress claims survive only to the narrow

extent that they are based on the failure of Akal security guards to respond to pleas for help

they must have heard. To the extent the negligence claims have any other basis, Li has

failed to allege adequate facts to support them and they are dismissed. 

The last matter to resolve is whether Li may seek punitive damages, which he inserts

into both his negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress claims. Akal is right to

ask that the request be stricken. Li alleges no facts to support the imposition of punitive

damages, seeks them in a completely conclusory manner, and indeed, punitive damages

cannot be staked on negligence claims as a matter of law. See Food Pro Intern., Inc. v.

Farmers Ins. Exchange, 169 Cal.App.4th 976, 994 (Cal. Ct. App. 2008); Woolstrum v.

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Mailloux, 190 Cal.Rptr. 729, 735 (Cal. Sup. Ct. 1983) (“Conduct which may be characterized

as unreasonable, negligent, grossly negligent or reckless does not satisfy the highly culpable

state of mind warranting punitive damages.”).

IV. Conclusion

Li’s negligence claims against Akal may proceed on one narrow construction—that

Akal security guards were negligent in their failure to respond to Li’s pleas for help during the

three to four minutes that he was attacked in the restroom of the Detention Center. Li may

not seek punitive damages for this alleged negligence. 

The Court notes that the United States and Robin Baker have not responded to Li’s

complaint. Li claims to have served them on October 11, 2011, and under Fed. R. Civ. P.

12(a)(3) their responses were due on December 12, 2011. The Court has doubts, though,

that these Defendants were properly served under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(i). Li must therefore

show cause, within 14 days of the date this Order is entered, why service of these

Defendants was proper. If Li does not respond within 14 days, he will have failed to serve

the Defendants in a timely manner under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m) and the Court will dismiss his

claims against them without prejudice. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

DATED: January 17, 2012

HONORABLE LARRY ALAN BURNS

United States District Judge

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