Opinion ID: 3065051
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Dismissal of Former Controller Westly as a

Text: Defendant in his Individual Capacity Finally, Plaintiffs challenge the district court’s April 1, 2008 ruling dismissing former Controller Westly as a defendant in his individual capacity. This argument is also unavailing. As the district court observed, the first amended complaint names each defendant in his or her “individual and official” capacity. “Individual” capacity, however, can refer to two distinct doctrines. First, a complaint can name a state official in an “individual” capacity as a fictional surrogate for the State, such that the Eleventh Amendment does not apply even though recovery ultimately still comes from the State’s coffers. See Malone v. Bowdoin, 369 U.S. 643, 647 (1962) (noting that “the action of a federal officer affecting property claimed by a plaintiff can be made the basis of a suit for specific relief against the officer as an individual only if the officer’s action is not within the officer’s statutory powers or, if within those powers, only if the powers, or their exercise in the particular case, are constitutionally void” (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted))6; Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 159-60 (1908) (holding that a state official who acts unconstitutionally is “stripped of his official or representative character and is subjected in his person to the consequences of his individual conduct” (emphasis added)).7 6 The Taylor I court, 402 F.3d at 934, referred to this as the “Lee-Malone exception to sovereign immunity,” recognizing the role that United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196 (1882), also played in the development of the rule. 7 The scope of the Ex parte Young exception has since been limited to claims for prospective equitable relief and state funds “ancillary” to such relief; the Eleventh Amendment bars retroactive compensation to plaintiffs from state funds. Edelman, 415 U.S. at 663-69. SUEVER v. CONNELL 11855 Second, a plaintiff may pursue a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim against a state official seeking to impose personal liability on that official, such that the money comes from the official’s own resources. To succeed on the merits of such a claim, a plaintiff must show only that “the official, acting under color of state law, caused the deprivation of a federal right.” Hafer v. Melo, 502 U.S. 21, 25 (1991). In that instance, the Eleventh Amendment is not implicated, because the claim is truly against the individual, not the State. Id. at 30. Nor does liability in such cases turn on whether the state official acted within his or her authority or outside of it; the only issue is whether the conduct was undertaken under color of state law. Id. at 28. Applying these principles, the district court correctly concluded that “even though there are ‘individual’ claims against present office holders for prospective injunctive relief (under Ex parte Young) and for an injunction requiring that plaintiffs’ own property be returned to them (under Lee-Malone), no claim for damages against individual defendants ha[s] been adequately pleaded.” In support of this determination, the court grounded its reasoning in part in its earlier November 2003 order, which dismissed the first amended complaint without leave to amend for failure to fairly state a claim against any named defendant in the sense contemplated by Hafer: For those plaintiffs who have alleged that they are entitled to money damages, they have failed to plead: (1) a constitutional violation; (2) caused by specific behavior of an individual defendant; (3) entitling them to money damages from that individual. Instead, the complaint sets forth a description of plaintiffs’ grievances followed by broad and sweeping allegations of misfeasance in the Controller’s office lasting for more than a decade. Plaintiffs do not present a link between any particular harm they suffered and the actions of any individual defendant. Nor do they make any effort to differentiate between 11856 SUEVER v. CONNELL the four individual defendants named in this action. By pleading in such a scattered fashion, plaintiffs have put themselves in a position where their com- plaint cannot fairly be read as one for money dam- ages against any individual defendant, but rather a complaint alleging that the customs and practices of the Controller’s Office have caused them harm. Although we disagree with the court’s additional determination that the § 1983 allegations in the first amended complaint actually indicate that the State is the “real, substantial party in interest,” thereby triggering Eleventh Amendment immunity, we nonetheless affirm the court’s conclusion that the allegations are insufficient to put Westly on notice of specific, individual actions for which he is personally liable to Plaintiffs. [9] On appeal, Plaintiffs offer no persuasive arguments to the contrary. They merely make the bald assertion that the following allegations in the first amended complaint “squarely satisfy the requirements of Hafer”: 60. Starting in 1990, then Controller Gray Davis, with defendants Chivaro, DeLeon, and others, made a series of unpublished, internal policy decisions. When Defendant Connell took office in 1995, she continued and/or failed to correct the policies of Controller Davis that continues to the present day; likewise, when Defendant Westly took office in 2003, he continued and/or failed to correct the same policies. 61. As discussed in greater detail below, Defen- dants’ actions in taking possession of Plaintiffs’ private property that falls completely outside the statutes, and sometimes raiding private bank safety deposit boxes, without notice to Plaintiffs and Class, and the selling the property without notice to or the consent of the Plaintiff violates the express proviSUEVER v. CONNELL 11857 sions of the UPL, and the California Constitution, Article I, §§ 7, 15, and the United States Constitution, including the Contract Clause of Article I, Section 10, and the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, the latter of which states that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” These policy decisions and actions directly caused the injury described herein that was inflicted on the various Plaintiffs in this case. Paragraph 60, however, says nothing about what the “internal policy decisions” were, or about how they purportedly harmed Plaintiffs. Rather, it again merely challenges the policies and customs continued by Westly in his official position with the State. Nor is paragraph 61 helpful to Plaintiffs. It likewise challenges only the policies and practices of the Controller’s Office, and it fails to differentiate at all among the four named defendants. Moreover, when read in conjunction with the individual Plaintiffs’ allegations, see supra section I.B., paragraph 61 fails to tie any particular harm that any particular plaintiff allegedly suffered to any discrete action taken by Westly. The district court therefore properly dismissed Westly as a defendant in his individual capacity.