Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-casd-3_11-cv-00450/USCOURTS-casd-3_11-cv-00450-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 550
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Civil Rights (U.S. defendant)
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Prisoner Civil Rights

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

SEAN HOFFARTH,

Plaintiff,

CASE NO. 11cv0450-LAB (BLM)

ORDER RE: MOTION TO

vs. DISMISS

COUNTY OF SAN DIEGO; et al.,

Defendants.

I. Introduction

Plaintiff Sean Hoffarth accuses the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department of ignoring

his pleas for medical attention over a two week period in which he repeatedly complained

of a painful rash. When a doctor finally saw him, he was diagnosed with a staph infection

that, he alleges, had become life threatening and took two weeks to treat.

Hoffarth brings five claims against the County of San Diego: two Monell claims and

claims for negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and intentional infliction of

emotional distress. Now pending is the County’s motion to dismiss Hoffarth’s complaint for

failure to properly state those claims.

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 Hoffarth. 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, but they must be sufficient to

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“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, 556 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 Hoffarth’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.

Corp., 550 U.S. at 555.

III. Discussion

A. The Monell Claims

It is unclear to the Court, and probably unclear to the County, precisely what

Hoffarth’s Monell claims are. Under the heading “Policy, Custom or Practice Causing

Constitutional Violation,” Hoffarth alleges in his complaint that the County “maintained a de

facto unconstitutional informal and/or formal policy, custom or practice of permitting, ignoring

and condoning its agents and police officers to ignore complaints of pain or need for medical

attention expressed by arrestees.” (Compl. ¶ 20.) Under the heading “Cruel and Unusual

Punishment,” he alleges essentially the same thing: the County “maintained a de facto

unconstitutional informal and/or formal, policy, custom or practice of ignoring the medical

risks to detainees who suffer infections” and also “maintained a de facto unconstitutional

formal and/or informal policy, custom or practice of ignoring detainees’ request for medical

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 This claim doesn’t arise, also, under the Fourteenth Amendment, a point of law on 1

which Hoffarth appears to be confused. The Fourteenth Amendment is implicated in this

action only because it is under the Fourteenth Amendment that the Eighth Amendment’s ban

on cruel and unusual punishment is extended to pre-trial detainees. Ammons v. Washington

Dep’t of Soc. and Health Servs., 648 F.3d 1020, 1029 (9th Cir. 2011). It has no independent

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care or treatment, even when requested through the proper means.” (Compl. ¶ 25.) As far

as Hoffarth’s complaint goes, then, his first and second causes of action really collapse into

one: Hoffarth was injured by the County’s policy of indifference to his medical needs, which

is itself an Eighth Amendment violation. See Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104 (1976).

Hoffarth’s opposition brief muddles this further. In the very beginning, he labels his

first claim “Policy, custom, or practice causing Constitutional violations” (which is not really

a claim) and his second claim “Violation of the 8th and 14th Amendments prohibiting cruel

and unusual punishment” (which is not necessarily a Monell claim). (Dkt. No. 11 at 1.) He

then bifurcates the second claim into two, calling his first cause of action “Policy, Custom or

Practice Causing a Violation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution” and his

second cause of action “Cruel and Unusual Punishment in Violation of the 8th Amendment

to the U.S. Constitution.” (Dkt. No. 11 at 5–6.) To make matters worse, he argues for

liability under Monell by alleging that “the legal cause of Mr. Hoffarth’s injuries was

Defendant’s known and constant disregard for the California Code of Regulations (CCR)

minimum standards for Local Detention Facilities in regards to inmate requests for medical

attention, procedures for dealing with communicable diseases, and procedure for prompt

attention and access to inmates with such diseases.” (Dkt. No. 11 at 7.) The problem with

this, of course, is that Monell liability is simply municipal liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and

for liability under § 1983 to attach in the first place there needs to be a constitutional

violation. See Dougherty v. City of Covina, 653 F.3d 892, 900 (9th Cir. 2011). The County’s

alleged disregard for CCR policy, in and of itself, cannot give rise to liability under Monell.

Putting aside Hoffarth’s pleadings, which in their imprecision only confuse the Court

as to the nature and bases of his Monell claims, Hoffarth essentially brings a single Monell

claim: he was injured pursuant to a County policy of deliberate indifference to the medical

needs of those in the Sheriff’s custody, which is itself a violation of the Eighth Amendment.1

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force or substance, and does not give rise to any separate rights. See Clouthier v. County

of Contra Costa, 591 F.3d 1232, 1241 (9th Cir. 2010) (“We have long analyzed claims that

correction facility officials violated pretrial detainees’ constitutional rights by failing to address

their medical needs . . . under a ‘deliberate indifference’ standard.”); Frost v. Agnos, 152

F.3d 1124, 1128 (9th Cir. 1998) (“Because pretrial detainees’ rights under the Fourteenth

Amendment are comparable to prisoners’ rights under the Eighth Amendment . . . we apply

the same standards.”); Cabrales v. County of Los Angeles, 864 F.2d 1454, 1461 & n.2 (9th

Cir. 1988) (explaining that “the fourteenth amendment due process rights of pretrial

detainees are analogized to those of prisoners under the eighth amendment”).

Under certain circumstances, “a single decision by municipal policymakers” can give 2

rise to Monell liability even in the absence of a municipal policy or custom, but that theory

is not implicated in Hoffarth’s action. See Pembaur v. City of Cincinnati, 475 U.S. 469, 480

(1986). See id. at 481 (“If the decision to adopt [a] particular course of action is properly

made by [the] government’s authorized decisionmakers, it surely represents an act of

official government ‘policy’ as that term is commonly understood.”)

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It isn’t enough for Hoffarth to allege that the County was deliberately indifferent to his

medical needs; a Monell claim requires the allegation (and the proof) that it was the County’s

policy to be deliberately indifferent to the medical needs of those in the Sheriff’s custody.

“[I]t is when execution of a government’s policy or custom, whether made by its lawmakers

or by those whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy, inflicts the

injury that the government as an entity is responsible under § 1983.” Monell v. Dep’t of

Social Servs. of City of New York, 436 U.S. 658, 694 (1978).2

Hoffarth’s allegations to this effect, unfortunately, are wholly speculative and cannot

withstand the pleading standards set forth in Iqbal. The only reasonable inference that the

factual allegations of Hoffarth’s complaint allow is that his medical needs were met with

deliberate indifference. The allegation that his treatment was the regular, customary

treatment afforded to those in County custody is precisely the kind of “naked assertion” that

Iqbal holds cannot survive a motion to dismiss. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1949. It is no help that

Hoffarth points to multiple incidents in which his jailers were allegedly deliberately indifferent

to his medical needs; he is still only referencing his own treatment and leaving the Court with

nothing other than the “sheer possibility” that the County’s policy for treating inmates in need

of medical attention violates the Eighth Amendment. Id. Nor is it any help that Hoffarth

believes his factual allegations “would raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will

reveal evidence of express or implicit agreements amongst the Department as to the

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permitting, ignoring, or condoning this informal and/or formal custom in disregard of

Detention Policy and the United States Constitution.” (Dkt. No. 11 at 5, 7.) Hoffarth is not

entitled to take discovery to investigate his claims. He has to plead facts at the outset that

“raise a right to relief above the speculative level,” Twombly at 555, and he has failed to do

that. Hoffarth’s first and second causes of action—his Monell claims—are therefore

DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE. It is apparent to the Court that amendment would be futile.

B. The State Law Claims

Hoffarth’s state law claims are all negligence-based, and the County objects to them

on the ground that “a public entity may not be held directly liable for general common law

negligence under any circumstances.” (Dkt. No. 3-1 at 7.) Indeed, under California law “[a]

public entity is not liable for an injury, whether such injury arises out of an act or omission

of the public entity or a public employee or any other person.” Cal. Gov. Code § 815(a). 

There is an exception to this rule, however, “[w]here a public entity is under a mandatory

duty imposed by an enactment that is designed to protect against the risk of a particular kind

of injury.” Cal. Gov. Code § 815.6. In this circumstance, “the public entity is liable for an

injury of that kind proximately caused by its failure to discharge the duty unless the public

entity establishes that it exercised reasonable diligence to discharge the duty.” Id.

There are three components to liability under § 815.6. First, Hoffarth must point to

some specific enactment intended to protect against the particular kind of injuries he

allegedly suffered. Second, that enactment must be obligatory, rather than merely

discretionary or permissive, in its directions to the County. Third, the County’s failure to fulfill

its duty must be a proximate cause of Hoffarth’s injuries. See de Villers v. County of San

Diego, 156 Cal.App.4th 238, 256 (Cal. Ct. App. 2007). Hoffarth’s complaint states his

negligence claims in thin air, completely untethered to any statutory obligation of the County.

In his opposition brief, however, it becomes clearer: he alleges that his injuries were caused

by the County’s disregard for Title 15 of the California Code of Regulations, which sets

minimum standards for inmates’ medical care, as well as a “Health Care Procedures

Manual” developed pursuant to Title 15. (See Dkt. No. 11 at 8.) There are at least two

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problems with this. First, Hoffarth can’t expect the Court or the County to piece together his

state law claims based on explanations in his opposition brief. If Hoffarth believes Title 15

and the Manual are “enactments” within the meaning of § 815.6, he needs to lay out in his

complaint precisely what they obligate the County to do and precisely how the County failed

these obligations. Second, while Hoffarth may bring a general negligence claim under §

815.6, it isn’t clear to the Court how he can bring his emotional distress claims under the

statute. Those claims are collateral to his actual injuries arising out of his staph infection,

and it is those injuries that, presumably, Title 15 and the Manual were designed to protect

against. 

IV. Conclusion

The pleadings in this case leave much to be desired, but the Court is willing to allow

Hoffarth another try. His Monell claims are DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE. The facts he

alleges in his complaint are simply too inadequate to support those claims. His state law

claims for negligence, however, are DENIED WITHOUT PREJUDICE. Within two weeks of

the date this Order is entered, Hoffarth should file an amended complaint that lays out in

rigorous detail why the County is negligent under § 815.6. Hoffarth should also give serious

thought to the viability of his emotional distress claims under § 815.6. Finally, the Court is

confused as to the status of Hoffarth’s claims, presumably rooted in § 1983, against the

individual Defendants. They are named anonymously in Hoffarth’s complaint, but it appears

they have not been served or made any kind of appearance in this case. If Hoffarth intends

only to pursue his claims against the County of San Diego at this point, his amended

complaint should reflect that.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

DATED: November 29, 2011

HONORABLE LARRY ALAN BURNS

United States District Judge

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