Opinion ID: 2754539
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Bane Act Claim

Text: Ventura asserts a Bane Act claim against the Chino defendants. California’s Bane Act creates a cause of action when a defendant “interferes by threats, intimidation, or coercion, or attempts to interfere by threats, intimidation, or coercion, with the exercise or enjoyment . . . of rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or of the rights secured by the Constitution or laws of [California].” Cal. Civ. Code § 52.1(a), (b). Under California law, public entities are liable for actions of their employees within the scope of employment, Cal. Gov’t Code § 815.2(a), but public entities are immune from liability to the extent their GANT V. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES 31 employees are immune from liability, Cal. Gov’t Code § 815.2(b). An officer is not liable for “an arrest pursuant to a warrant of arrest regular upon its face if the peace officer in making the arrest acts without malice and in the reasonable belief that the person arrested is the one referred to in the warrant.” Cal. Civil Code § 43.55(a). Rivera discussed these statutory provisions, cited Lopez v. City of Oxnard, 254 Cal. Rptr. 556 (Cal. Ct. App. 1989), and relied on statutory immunity in affirming the district court’s order granting summary judgment on Rivera’s Bane Act claim. Rivera, 745 F.3d at 393. Lopez was arrested in another case of mistaken identity. The Lopez court held that the sheriff’s department that jailed Lopez was not liable for false imprisonment, despite failing to consider his “disposition sheet,”13 because jail personnel “are entitled to rely on process and orders apparently valid on their face,” 254 Cal. Rptr. at 560, and the person named in the warrant had “the same name, birth date, address and physical description” as Lopez, id. at 557. As we have noted, unlike Lopez, Ventura did not come close to matching the physical description in the subject warrant, and he argued in the district court that the Chino police encouraged him to “parrot back” that was 5'11, not 5'6 as stated on his driver’s license. He repeats the same argument on appeal. There is limited Bane Act precedent defining what constitutes “coercion” independent from that which is inherent in a wrongful arrest, but Shoyoye v. County of Los Angeles indicates that such conduct must be “intentionally coercive and wrongful, i.e., a knowing and 13 The disposition sheet seems to have been comparable to the judicial clearance form given to Gant. 254 Cal. Rptr. at 557. 32 GANT V. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES blameworthy interference with the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.” 137 Cal. Rptr. 3d 839, 850 (Cal. Ct. App. 2012). Considering the audio tape of Ventura’s arrest in the light most favorable to him, we conclude the officers’ actions raise a genuine issue of fact regarding whether the officers coerced Ventura into saying he was 5'11. First, the audio tape memorializes that the dispatcher told the officer who pulled Ventura over that the true warrant subject was 6'1. Second, the driver’s license Ventura produced when he was stopped recorded his height at 5'6. The most temporally proximate measure of Ventura’s stature, which appears on the judicial clearance form he received just six days after this arrest, shows his height as 5'7 and his weight as 320 pounds. People gain and lose weight, but they do not shrink six or seven inches in height.14 Third, one of the arresting officers told Ventura that the warrant included his Social Security number; even though, as the Chino defendants’ appellate brief concedes,“[t]he warrant contained no numeric identifiers, such as [a] Social Security number.” Given these circumstances, a trier of fact could conclude that the officers’ quick, insistent questioning was intended to coerce Ventura into stating that he was 5'11. We therefore reverse the district court’s order granting the Chino defendants’ summary judgment motion on Ventura’s Bane Act claim. 14 San Bernardino claims that the only objective measurement of Ventura’s height was made by defendants at Ventura’s deposition, when Ventura allegedly measured 5'10. This was an estimate, at best. It was made by observing Ventura’s approximate height in relation to a videographer’s background screen at his deposition, and then using a measuring tape after Ventura left the room to measure Ventura’s “approximate height based on our observation as to how tall Plaintiff Ventura was compared to the screen behind him each time he stood.” GANT V. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES 33