Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-casd-3_15-cv-02232/USCOURTS-casd-3_15-cv-02232-2/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 42:1983cv Civil Rights Act - Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

DAVE THOMAS, as Guardian ad Litem 

on behalf of JONATHAN THOMAS,

Plaintiff,

v.

COUNTY OF SAN DIEGO, et al.,

Defendants.

Case No.: 3:15-cv-02232-L-AGS

ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND 

DENYING IN PART DEFENDANT 

CONNIE MAGANA’S MOTION [Doc. 

60] TO DISMISS

Pending before the Court is Defendant Connie Magana’s (“Magana”) motion to 

dismiss. Pursuant to Civil Local Rule 7.1(d)(1), the Court decides the matter on the 

papers submitted and without oral argument. For the foregoing reasons, the Court 

GRANTS IN PART and DENIES IN PART Magana’s motion. 

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I. BACKGROUND

This litigation arises from a young man named Jonathan Thomas (“Thomas”) 

attempting suicide by jumping off an upper tier of an inmate housing unit. Thomas has 

suffered from a variety of mental disorders throughout his life. He has been diagnosed 

with epilepsy, mania, depression, and schizophrenia. Because of his disorders, Thomas 

has experienced hallucinations and delusions daily and has attempted suicide on multiple 

occasions. Such troubles led Thomas’ father (“Plaintiff”)1to conclude that Thomas 

required the constant observation of mental health professionals. Dave therefore checked 

Thomas into a home that provided twenty-four-hour monitoring and therapy.

A few months after admission, Thomas attempted to set a small couch on fire 

inside of the psychiatric home. He was subsequently arrested for arson of an inhabited 

structure and sent to pretrial detention. While in detention, Thomas attempted suicide 

twice by jumping off the second tier of his housing unit. Shortly after the second suicide 

attempt, Thomas pled guilty to arson of an inhabited structure and received a sentence of 

three years. Two years into his sentence, Thomas was transferred to Atascadero State 

Hospital (“ASH”), because the authorities found that he represented a substantial danger

of physical harm to himself and others. Thomas’ commitment to this mental institution 

has been involuntarily extended for a period of one year on three occasions.

In October of 2014, Thomas was transferred to San Diego Central Jail (the “Jail”) 

to await a routine court hearing before the San Diego Superior Court. Upon learning that 

his son had been transferred to the Jail, Plaintiff called the San Diego County Office of 

the Public Defender. Plaintiff spoke with defendant Magana who, though never counsel 

to Thomas, was a supervising public defender. Plaintiff told Magana that “[Thomas] had 

jumped twice from a top tier cell in the past and that if [Thomas] was housed on a top tier 

again, he would jump.” (FAC [Doc. 38] ¶ 11.) Magana responded by saying that 

 

1 Thomas’ father is suing as guardian ad litem on his son’s behalf. 

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“[Thomas] is in a place where that can’t happen” and then hung up. (Id.) Shortly after 

Magana hung up, Plaintiff’s friend Joanne Bailey called Magana and repeated the 

warning about Thomas’ history of jumping off upper tiers. Magana responded by stating 

“those things just don’t happen there. I will inform the proper personnel.” (Id. ¶ 12.) 

Despite this assurance, Plaintiff alleges, based on a review of Jail records, that Magana 

did not adequately relay these warnings to Jail staff. (Id. 31.) Jail staff decided to house 

Thomas in PSU Mainline, an upper tier of a housing area comparable in supervision 

levels to general population. Thomas again jumped from the upper tier, sustaining 

substantial injuries.

On October 6, 2015, Plaintiff filed a complaint on behalf of his son against the 

County of San Diego, Dr. Alfred Joshua–the San Diego Chief Medical Officer for the 

Sheriff’s Detention Services, and William D. Gore–the Sheriff of San Diego County. 

The Complaint alleged claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for cruel and unusual punishment 

against all Defendants and negligence against Defendants Alfred Joshua and William D. 

Gore. (See Compl.) Plaintiff subsequently moved for leave to file an amended complaint 

adding Jail employed nurses Larry Deguzman, Mary Montelibano, and Marylene Allen; 

doctors Rick Leigh Malaguti and Jorge Naranjo; Deputy David Guzman; and Magana. 

The Court granted this motion and Plaintiff has filed the First Amended Complaint. 

(FAC [Doc. 38].) Magana now move to dismiss the First Amended Complaint as to her. 

(MTD [Doc. 60].) Plaintiff opposes. (Opp’n [Doc. 63].) 

II. LEGAL STANDARD 

The court must dismiss a cause of action for failure to state a claim upon which 

relief can be granted. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) 

tests the complaint’s sufficiency. See N. Star Int’l v. Ariz. Corp. Comm’n., 720 F.2d 578, 

581 (9th Cir. 1983). The court must assume the truth of all factual allegations and 

“construe them in the light most favorable to [the nonmoving party].” Gompper v. VISX, 

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Inc., 298 F.3d 893, 895 (9th Cir. 2002); see also Walleri v. Fed. Home Loan Bank of 

Seattle, 83 F.2d 1575, 1580 (9th Cir. 1996). 

As the Supreme Court explained, “[w]hile a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) 

motion to dismiss does not need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff’s obligation to 

provide the ‘grounds’ of his ‘entitlement to relief’ requires more than labels and 

conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.” 

Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 1964-65 (2007) (internal citations and

quotation marks omitted). Instead, the allegations in the complaint “must be enough to 

raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Id. at 1965. A complaint may be 

dismissed as a matter of law either for lack of a cognizable legal theory or for insufficient 

facts under a cognizable theory. Robertson v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., 749 F.2d 530, 

534 (9th Cir. 1984).

III. DISCUSSION

The First Amended Complaint names Magana on the first and fifth causes of action 

only. The first cause of action alleges deliberate indifference to a serious medical need in 

violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and 42 U.S.C. § 

1983. The fifth cause of action alleges negligence. 

A. 42 U.S.C. § 1983

Magana contends she cannot be liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 because she was not 

acting under color of state law. As a general matter, a public defender is not acting under 

color of state law when undertaking the traditional role as counsel to a criminal 

defendant. Polk County v. Dodson, 454 U.S. 312, 325 (1981). The rationale behind this 

standard is the fact that, when serving an individual client as counsel, a public defender is 

postured as an adversary to state action. Id. at 322 n.13. However, a public defender can 

be liable for certain administrative actions unrelated to the representation of a specific 

client. Miranda v. Clark Cnty of Nevada, 319 F.3d 465 (9th Cir. 2003). Thus, in 

Miranda, the Ninth Circuit held that the administrative head of a public defender’s office 

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was acting under color of state law when he instituted a policy of polygraphing all 

criminal defendants and devoting less resources to defendants whose results suggested 

they were guilty of the charged crime. Miranda, 319 F. 3d at 469. In so holding, the 

Ninth Circuit emphasized that this type of a macro-level decision amounted to 

policymaking action. Id. at 469–70. 

Here, by contrast, Magana’s actions of agreeing to contact Jail personnel but 

allegedly failing to properly execute do not amount to policymaking action. Magana was 

not performing an administrative task unrelated to the legal representation of any specific 

client. Rather, her action involved an undertaking to help protect one specific client from 

state action. Thus, like the associate public defender in Miranda, she was not acting 

under color of state law and is therefore not properly named as a Defendant under 42 

U.S.C. § 1983. The Court GRANTS Magana’s motion to dismiss as to the first cause of 

action. 

B. Negligence

To sustain a negligence claim, a plaintiff must show (1) a duty of care owed to 

plaintiff; (2) defendant’s breach of that duty; (3) proximate cause between the breach and 

(4) plaintiff’s injury. Mendoza v. City of Los Angeles, 66 Cal. App. 4th 1333, 1339 

(1998). Magana argues that Plaintiff has failed to allege the duty of care or proximate 

cause elements. 

As to the duty of care element, Plaintiff concedes that Magana did not owe a duty 

of care prior to representing that she would notify the appropriate personnel of Thomas’ 

proclivity for attempting suicide by jumping from the upper tier. (Opp’n 16.) However, 

under the good Samaritan doctrine, one who had no initial duty to come to another’s aid 

can assume such a duty if (1) they undertake to provide aid and (2), in so doing, induce 

another to rely on such undertaking to their detriment. Williams v. State of California, 34 

Cal. 3d 18, 23 (1983). 

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Here, the first element of the good Samaritan doctrine is clearly met as Magana 

stated “I will inform the proper personnel.” Construing all allegations in favor of 

Plaintiff, the Court finds the second element met too. From the fact that (1) Plaintiff and 

Joanne Bailey quit calling Magana only after she represented she would convey their 

warning and (2) Plaintiff did not subsequently contact the Jail, it appears that Plaintiff in 

fact relied on Magana’s undertaking to pass the warning along to the proper personnel. 

Furthermore, Plaintiff alleges that, had Magana properly followed through, Thomas 

would not have been able to again attempt suicide by jumping as he would have been 

housed in a safer situation. 

Magana also argues that, even if she breached a duty owed to Plaintiff, such breach 

was not a proximate cause of Thomas’ decision to jump. This argument consists only of

assertions that it was not reasonably foreseeable that Thomas would attempt suicide by 

jumping and Magana did not have direct control over Thomas’ housing assignment. 

These arguments are unpersuasive. In light of Plaintiff’s explicit warnings that Thomas 

would jump if housed on an upper tier and a history including two such jumps, the Court 

simply cannot hold, as a matter of law, that it was not reasonably foreseeable that 

Thomas would do exactly that if given the opportunity. And though it appears true that 

Magana lacked direct control over Thomas’ housing assignment, Plaintiff has alleged that 

the Jail would have housed Thomas in a safer situation had Magana properly conveyed 

Thomas’ warnings. Accordingly, the Court DENIES Magana’s motion to dismiss as to 

the fifth cause of action. 

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IV. CONCLUSION & ORDER

For the foregoing reasons, the Court GRANTS IN PART and DENIES IN PART

Magana’s motion to dismiss as follows:

 The first cause of action is dismissed as to Magana.

 The fifth cause of action may proceed against Magana. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: September 19, 2017

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