Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-12-57269/USCOURTS-ca9-12-57269-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
City of Glendale
Appellee
Petros Kmbikyan
Appellee
Michael Lizarraga
Appellee
Robert Yousefian
Appellant

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ROBERT YOUSEFIAN,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

CITY OF GLENDALE; MICHAEL

LIZARRAGA; PETROS KMBIKYAN,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 12-57269

D.C. No.

2:11-cv-03579-

DMG-MAN

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Dolly M. Gee, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

February 5, 2015—Pasadena California

Filed March 5, 2015

Before: Stephen Reinhardt and Ronald M. Gould, Circuit

Judges, and Robert W. Gettleman, Senior District Judge.*

Opinion by Judge Reinhardt

* The Honorable Robert W. Gettleman, Senior District Judge for the

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by

designation.

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2 YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE

SUMMARY**

Civil Rights

The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment

in an action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging

false arrest and malicious prosecution.

Plaintiff was arrested by City of Glendale police officers

for an alleged assault on his father-in-law. After plaintiff’s

arrest, plaintiff’s wife met with one of the police officers and

gave him drugs which she purported to have found in

plaintiff’s car. Soon thereafter, the police officer and

plaintiff’s wife began a sexual relationship. Plaintiff was

charged with assault, elder abuse and two counts of drug

possession. The drug charges were eventually dismissed for

lack of probable cause, a jury acquitted plaintiff of the assault

and elder abuse charges and, after conducting an internal

investigation, the City terminated the police officer for

conduct inconsistent with the proper administration of the

department and unbecoming an officer. 

The panel held that notwithstanding plaintiff’s selfdefense claim, there was indisputably probable cause to arrest

and prosecute plaintiff for assault and elder abuse. The panel

further determined that because the police officer’s romantic

relationship with plaintiff’s wife began after all of the

evidence relating to the altercation had been collected and

documented in official reports, the police officer’s later

misconduct did not undermine the existence of probable

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE 3

cause. The panel also affirmed the summary judgment as to

the individual defendants on the malicious prosecution claim

arising from the charge of drug possession on the grounds

that plaintiff failed to demonstrate a Fourth Amendment

seizure. Finally, the panel held that because plaintiff’s § 1983

claims against the individual police officers failed, his

municipal liability claim also necessarily failed. The panel

urged municipalities and other employers of law enforcement

officers to ensure that conduct like the police officer’s in this

case is neither permitted in the course of officers’ official

duties nor condoned thereafter.

COUNSEL

Mark J. Geragos (argued), Shelley Kaufman, and Tina

Glandian, Geragos & Geragos, Los Angeles, California, for

Plaintiff-Appellant.

Ann Marie Maurer (argued), Senior Assistant City Attorney,

and Michael J. Garcia, City Attorney, Glendale City

Attorney’s Office, Glendale, California, for DefendantsAppellees City of Glendale and Petros Kmbikyan.

David D. Lawrence I (argued) and Christina M. Sprenger,

Lawrence Beach Allen & Choi, Glendale, California; Daniel

S. Cha, Lawrence Beach Allen & Choi, Santa Ana,

California, for Defendant-Appellee Michael Lizarraga.

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4 YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE

OPINION

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge:

In this § 1983 false arrest and malicious prosecution case,

the district court granted summary judgment to both

defendant officers and to the City of Glendale (sued under

Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978)). We

affirm.1

I.

On August 19, 2007, Robert Yousefian called the police

to report that he had been attacked by his father-in-law,

Matavos Moradian, in his home. Officer Michael Lizarraga

of the Glendale Police Department responded, as did three

other officers. They saw Moradian, an elderly man, lying on

the floor, bleeding profusely from a wound to his head.

Yousefian, by contrast, was not seriously injured and refused

any medical care. Everyone agreed that Yousefian struck

Moradian in the head with a glass candle-holder. Yousefian

claimed he did so to defend himself, after Moradian began to

hit him with his cane, while Moradian and his wife told police

that no such provocation had occurred. Yousefian told the

officers that he had asked his in-laws to come over to discuss

the whereabouts of his estranged wife, Nora2– Moradian’s

1 Because we are reviewing a grant of summary judgment, we construe

the record in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, Yousefian.

A grant ofsummary judgment is reviewed de novo, and we may affirm on

any ground supported by the record. Devereaux v. Abbey, 263 F.3d 1070,

1074 (9th Cir. 2001).

2 Nora is referred to here by her first name because she shares a surname

with the plaintiff, her ex-husband.

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YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE 5

daughter – and the couple’s children. In his statement to the

police, Yousefian also accused Nora of various forms of

sexual impropriety. Lizarraga placed Yousefian under arrest

for assault with a deadly weapon. Yousefian was booked at

the police station and, later that evening, released on bond.

Lizarraga prepared and filed a report describing the physical

evidence at the scene and the statements of Yousefian,

Moradian, and Moradian’s wife, concluding that he found

probable cause to arrest Yousefian on the basis of those facts.

The reports filed by the other responding officers

corroborated the facts as Lizarraga described them.

In the late afternoon, Lizarraga met Nora (who had not

been home at the time of the altercation) at the hospital where

Moradian was receiving treatment for his injuries. Nora

accused Yousefian of drug possession, and urged Lizarraga

to search his car and home. Lizarraga declined, but gave Nora

his cell phone number and told her to call him if she found

any drugs. Shortly thereafter, Nora called, and told him that

she had found drugs in Yousefian’s car. When Lizarraga and

another officer arrived, she handed them drugs she purported

to have found. Lizarraga booked them into evidence but did

not re-arrest Yousefian.

Soon thereafter, Lizarraga began to flirt with Nora by text

message, and within a couple of weeks, they began a sexual

relationship, which lasted about a year. Lizarraga told neither

his supervisors nor the prosecutors involved in the case about

the affair.

After Yousefian was arrested, the case was turned over to

Detective Petros Kmbikyan, whom Deputy District Attorney

Singer asked to conduct a follow-up investigation. Lizarraga

had no more involvement in the case until after charges were

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6 YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE

filed. He did not discuss the case with Singer, and did not

sign the criminal complaint. His only further involvement

was as described infra.

Kmbikyan’s investigation, conducted in October 2007,

approximately two months after the arrest, included a reenactment of the assault with Moradian and his wife, but

centered mainly on the drugs. Kmbikyan conducted a

voluntaryinterview with Yousefian. Yousefian requested that

he be allowed to record the interview, but Kmbikyan assured

him it would be taped. Apparently, no recording was made,

because of “some sort of malfunction or the volume being

turned off.” Kmbikyan told Yousefian that his fingerprints

had been found on the plastic bags containing the drugs Nora

had handed over (this was not true), but Yousefian

maintained that she had planted them. Kmbikyan suggested

in his report that Yousefian’s agitation might be a symptom

of narcotic use but failed to document Yousefian’s offer to

take a polygraph or hair follicle drug test. Additionally,

Kmbikyan received a fax from Nora containing the negative

results of a series of drug tests Yousefian had taken; she

asked him to verify their validity. Kmbikyan did not inform

Singer that he had received this probative evidence until after

the preliminary hearing.

At the end of October 2007, Yousefian was charged with

four felony counts: assault, elder abuse, and two counts of

drug possession. At his arraignment, in December of that

year, Yousefian was released on his own recognizance; the

court required that he stay away from the victims of the

assault, and not possess weapons or drugs. At the preliminary

hearing, which was held in June and August, 2008, both

Lizarraga and Kmbikyan testified (along with Moradian and

Nora). Lizarraga’s testimony was in all respects consistent

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YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE 7

with the documentation in his police report of evidence

gathered at the scene. The defense called Kmbikyan, who

testified that Yousefian had played for him voicemail

messages left by Nora, threatening retribution if Yousefian

called the police (as he did after the altercation with

Moradian). The magistrate held him to answer on the assault

and elder abuse charges, but dismissed the drug possession

charges for lack of probable cause, concluding that Nora had

fabricated evidence.

In February 2010, in preparation for trial, another

prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Worchell, met

consecutively with Lizarraga and Nora, who bumped into

each other in the hallway (at this point, they were no longer

having an affair). Text message records reveal that after the

encounter, Lizarraga told Nora that they should lie in order to

conceal their relationship. He also assured her that a minor

inconsistency in her parents’ stories about the assault was

“not . . . too big a deal.” When Yousefian’s defense counsel

obtained these cell phone records, in May of that year, he

informed the prosecutor (who informed Kmbikyan) of them.

Lizarraga then admitted the affair. Worchell decided to

continue with the case, concluding that “[t]here was no need

to dismiss any charges here as a result of that relationship.

That, I can tell you for certain.”

At trial, Lizarraga was questioned about, and

acknowledged, his relationship with Nora, which he

characterized as “friends with benefits.” On July 8, 2010, the

jury acquitted Yousefian of the two remaining charges –

assault and elder abuse.

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8 YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE

The police department conducted an internal affairs

investigation of Lizarraga.3Initially, it was conducted by

Sergeant Glassick, who was apparently a friend and mentor

of Lizarraga’s. The investigation was completed by another

Sergeant, however, after Lizarraga revealed that, some

months earlier, he had disclosed his affair to Glassick, who

said “he didn’t think it was that big a deal and [that Lizarraga]

didn’t have anything to worry about but [that] as a courtesy

to the District Attorney before [he took] the stand for the trial,

[he] ha[d] to tell him about it.” Lizarraga also told

investigators that he had previously given his cell phone

number to women he met on duty, and that he had developed

relationships with some, but never before with a suspect,

witness, or victim. Sergeant Alpuerto, one of Lizarraga’s

supervisors, stated that he did not believe Lizarraga’s actions

had violated any policy because the officer “knew of other

officers who ‘met people on jobs and started relationships or

friendships that way’ and ‘didn’t see anyone getting

disciplined for that.’” At the conclusion of the investigation,

in August 2010, Lizarraga was terminated for conduct

inconsistent with the proper administration of the department

and unbecoming an officer. The termination letter stated that

although the affair

had no bearing on the grounds for Mr.

Yousefian’s arrest, it nonetheless clouded the

issues at the trial and impacted the

prosecution by requiring the Deputy District

Attorney to respond to collateral issues on the

3 Some of the records related to this investigation were filed under seal.

However, the parties’ public briefs quoted from these records without

objection; we rely on that now-public material in describing the facts of

this case.

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YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE 9

eve of trial. . . . You made a series of poor

decisions that colored the objectivity of the

arrest, the investigation, and the subsequent

court proceedings.

II.

The absence of probable cause is a necessary element of

§ 1983 false arrest and malicious prosecution claims. Barry

v. Fowler, 902 F.2d 770, 772–73 (9th Cir. 1990); Awabdy v.

City of Adelanto, 368 F.3d 1062, 1066 (9th Cir. 2004).

Here, there was indisputably probable cause to arrest and

prosecute Yousefian for assault and elder abuse. A police

officer who finds an elderly and infirm man bleeding

profusely from a head wound admittedly inflicted by a

younger man without significant injuries will have probable

cause to believe that the latter has committed assault. Further,

the victims and his wife both told the officers at the scene that

Yousefian had attacked him without provocation. Because

Lizarraga’s romantic relationship with Nora began after all of

the evidence relating to the altercation had been collected

and documented in official reports (by Lizarraga and the

other responding officers), his later misconduct does nothing

to undermine the existence of probable cause.4

4 As noted supra, Lizarraga’s subsequent testimony was limited to

recounting what was in his previously filed police reports.

Yousefian’s claims regarding Kmbikyan’s alleged misconduct relate

not to the assault and elder abuse charges, but rather to the failure to

disclose to the prosecutor evidence related to the drug charges.

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10 YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE

Yousefian argues that a jury could conclude that probable

cause was lacking because he himself called the police to the

scene and told them that he struck his father-in-law in selfdefense. However, probable cause requires only that those

“facts and circumstances within the officer’s knowledge are

sufficient to warrant a prudent person to believe ‘that the

suspect has committed . . . an offense.’” Barry, 902 F.2d at

773 (quoting Michigan v. DeFillippo, 443 U.S. 31, 37

(1979)). Certainly, an officer may not ignore exculpatory

evidence that would “negate a finding of probable cause.”

Broam v. Bogan, 320 F.3d 1023, 1032 (9th Cir. 2003).

Lizarraga did not ignore Yousefian’s protestations, however;

he documented them in his report, but simply believed

Moradian and his wife’s version of the incident to be more

credible. The mere existence of some evidence that could

suggest self-defense does not negate probable cause.

Yousefian’s claim of self-defense apparentlycreated doubt in

the minds of the jurors, but probable cause can well exist (and

often does) even though ultimately, a jury is not persuaded

that there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. See Borunda v.

Richmond, 885 F.2d 1384, 1389 (9th Cir. 1988). Here,

notwithstanding the self-defense claim, a jury could not

reasonably have concluded that the facts known to Lizarraga

were insufficient to establish probable cause and thus –

contrary to the magistrate’s determination – that probable

cause was lacking.

5

5 At oral argument and in the briefs, Yousefian’s counsel cited

Hernandez v. City of Napa, 781 F. Supp. 2d 975 (N.D. Cal. 2011), which

found a triable question of fact as to whether there was probable cause to

arrest a woman who called the police to her own home during a domestic

dispute. However, that case is neither controlling precedent nor

persuasive.

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YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE 11

Because no reasonable jury could conclude that there was

no probable cause for the arrest or for prosecution on the

assault and elder abuse charges, we need not decide whether

the magistrate’s probable cause determination at the

preliminary hearing would collaterally estop relitigation of

the issue, or whether the prosecutor exercised independent

judgment in filing the charges. See Awabdy, 368 F.3d at

1067–68. Summary judgment as to the individual defendants

on the assault and elder abuse claims is affirmed.

As for the drug charges, no arrest occurred. Yousefian

urges only a claim of malicious prosecution. For such a claim

to be cognizable under § 1983, in addition to showing that the

defendants prosecuted him with malice and without probable

cause, a plaintiff must demonstrate a Fourth Amendment

seizure (or the violation of another such “explicit textual

source of constitutional protection”). See Albright v. Oliver,

510 U.S. 266, 271–75 (1994); Freeman v. City of Santa Ana,

68 F.3d 1180, 1189 (9th Cir. 1995).

The only seizure Yousefian could arguably have suffered

as a result of his prosecution on the simple drug possession

charges was being subjected to own-recognizance (OR)

release conditions6between the time of his arraignment and

the time of his preliminary hearing. Those conditions would,

6 According to statute, these release conditions require defendants to

appear for all hearings and to request permission before leaving the state.

Cal. Penal Code § 1318(a). Our case law does not make clear whether

California’s OR release conditions, as applied to a defendant facing felony

charges, constitute a Fourth Amendment seizure. In Karam v. City of

Burbank, 352 F.3d 1188, 1193–94 (9th Cir. 2003), we held that the same

conditions, as applied to a defendant facing only misdemeanor charges,

did not, but left open the question as it applies to a defendant facing felony

charges. We need not, and do not, resolve that question here.

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12 YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE

however, have applied to him in any event, because during

that period, he was subjected to those same conditions in

connection with his OR release on the assault and elder abuse

charges. In some cases, the inclusion of charges unsupported

by probable cause in addition to charges that are supported

might result in more restrictive conditions of release or

increased bond. Here, however, the same release conditions

– the minimum conditions required by statute – were imposed

on both sets of charges. Moreover, the same conditions

remained in place after the drug charges were dismissed.

Even assuming that subjecting Yousefian to the OR release

conditions constituted a seizure, he would have been

subjected to that seizure regardless of the filing of the drug

possession charges. The OR release conditions were properly

imposed as a result of the assault and elder abuse charges, and

would have restrained Yousefian’s liberty (assuming it was

restrained) in exactly the same manner and to precisely the

same degree, regardless of the filing of the drug possession

charges. Thus, the drug prosecution was not the cause of

Yousefian’s suffering any restraint he would not otherwise

have suffered. See Harper v. City of L.A., 533 F.3d 1010,

1026 (9th Cir. 2008). In sum, Yousefian suffered no civil

rights injury as a result of the OR release conditions in

connection with the drug possession charges, and thus

summary judgment as to the individual defendants on the

drug possession claim is affirmed.

III.

As the district court correctlynoted, municipalities cannot

be held liable when the individual police officer has inflicted

no constitutional injury. See City of L.A. v. Heller, 475 U.S.

796, 799 (1986) (per curiam); Jackson v. City of Bremerton,

268 F.3d 646, 653–54 (9th Cir. 2001). Because Yousefian’s

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YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE 13

§ 1983 claims against Lizarraga and Kmbikyan fail, his

municipal liability claim also necessarily fails.

* * *

The behavior of Officer Lizarraga was certainly

reprehensible – as the City of Glendale recognized in firing

him. Although it did not do so here, such conduct by police

officers puts in jeopardy the integrity of legitimate

prosecutions and jeopardizes defendants’ right to a fair trial.

This is not the first case we have had in recent months in

which a police officer in Los Angeles County has engaged in

similar conduct with a woman involved in a case which the

officer was assigned to investigate. See Hernandez v.

Kennedy, No. 12-55023, 2014 WL6956890 (9th Cir. Dec. 10,

2014) (unpublished). Fortunately, because Lizarraga’s

improper conduct in no way affected the question whether

there was probable cause to arrest and prosecute Yousefian

for assault and elder abuse, the false arrest and malicious

prosecution claims regarding those charges fail. Yousefian’s

malicious prosecution claim with respect to Kmbikyan’s

actions with respect to the drug charges also fails, because

Yousefian suffered no injury that he would not otherwise

have suffered as a result of the filing of these charges, and

thus incurred no constitutional injury on account of them.

Because no constitutional violation occurred, there can be no

Monell liability on the part of the City of Glendale. Still, we

would urge municipalities and other employers of law

enforcement officers to ensure that conduct like Lizarraga’s

is neither permitted in the course of officers’ official duties

nor condoned thereafter. In doing so, we intimate no criticism

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14 YOUSEFIAN V. CITY OF GLENDALE

of the City of Glendale, which took the appropriate action

after Lizarraga’s conduct came to light.

AFFIRMED.

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