Court Opinion

ID: 9746063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 13:55:08.665558+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:26:21.117485
License: Public Domain

HAERLE, J.
I respectfully dissent. I believe the majority (1) mischaracterizes the trial court’s ruling regarding the issue of good cause and, in the process, fails to address that court’s explicit (and correct) ruling that petitioner did not show good cause for his request No. 10, (2) incorrectly posits a de novo standard of review and errs by holding, alternatively, that the court either failed to exercise or abused its discretion, (3) misapplies the admittedly applicable relevancy test, and (4) in the process effectively announces a statewide amendment to Evidence Code sections 1043 and 1045 (sections 1043 and 1045).
I will discuss these points in the order just noted.
I.
The majority’s opinion rests very substantially on the premise that the trial court in fact found “good cause” for the grant of petitioner’s “Request Number 10” (Request 10). Because I believe the record belies this, a brief summary of that record is appropriate.
First of all, it is noteworthy that counsel for the real party in interest, the Oakland Police Department (OPD), objected on “good cause” grounds to both the motion in its entirety and as to Request 10 specifically. In his reply to the OPD’s opposition, petitioner argued, first of all, the merits of his “Request Number 9” (Request 9) and then (albeit only on constitutional “right to fair trial” grounds) regarding Request 10. Only a short paragraph at the end of a four-plus-page reply brief argued anything at all regarding good cause—and then only in the most conclusory terms. Nothing regarding “good cause” for Request 10 specifically was proffered.
Oral argument before the trial court focused only on two of the 10 paragraphs in petitioner’s motion, Requests 9 and 10.1 Request 9 called for “[djisclosure of all police report numbers associated with discoverable *408records of complaints, or investigations, or records of discipline imposed as a result of investigation.” After extended oral argument regarding it, the court ruled in favor of petitioner on the basis that, since its previous practice was to provide the personnel file number as and when discovery of the file itself was ordered, there “is as much good cause to provide the associated police report number.”
The argument then turned to Request 10, the paragraph involved here. As soon as it took up that request, the court posed a quasi-jurisdictional question, asking whether there would not necessarily have to be a “finding of materiality ... by another judge in another jurisdiction” if it turned out that the officer had previously been employed in that other jurisdiction. It also expressed concern about sparing “the officer from having to reveal embarrassing information out of his personnel file absent a showing of good cause.” It summed up its concern by noting that if petitioner’s position was correct, any defense counsel could get information about an officer previously terminated in San Francisco and then “be able to embarrass that officer on the stand with it, without even going to the judge in San Francisco.”
After further discussion of this point, the trial court moved to another apparent concern, asking: “Isn’t the information as to whether a peace officer has been employed as a peace officer by a different agency easily available to you outside of Pitchess? I mean out of the Pitchess motion?” Petitioner’s counsel and the court discussed that point for several minutes after which the court asked to hear from OPD’s counsel, who had thus far been silent regarding Request 10. She argued that Penal Code section 832.7 “expressly provides that employment history is one of the categories of information that is confidential.” In response, the trial court brought up the “good cause” issue, asking: “Is |>z'c: isn’t] there just as much good cause to get the employment history since there’s this provision that they may receive discovery in certain instances within five years?”
OPD’s counsel responded in the negative, arguing that section 1043 “addresses the records that are maintained by the employing agency. It doesn’t establish any type of entitlement to records from prior employment . . . .” She also urged that any discovery of prior employment history would, at the minimum, have to be based on “a showing that the information that has been disclosed is insufficient ... or will be insufficient . . . .”
Oral argument concluded with petitioner’s counsel urging that she was not seeking “all employment history” but just for “the ability to go ahead and make another Pitchess. We’re not asking for anything further than that. And I don’t think it’s burdensome.”
*409The matter was then deemed submitted and the court rendered its ruling denying Request 10. The premise for its ruling was that “facts of whether an officer has been employed as a peace officer within the last five years could lead to other sensitive information.” But, it recognized, “often sensitive information is disclosed pursuant to a Pitchess motion” and, therefore, in order to sustain a finding of materiality, there is “the requirement of a specific factual scenario under the law. . . . [T]here is, I think, the danger, which certainly wouldn’t apply in all cases or even the majority of cases, that disclosure of the employment could lead to other sensitive information outside the good cause showing for the materiality. [^0 Therefore, I’m going to sustain the City Attorney’s objection to Request 10 and I henceforth will not be supplying that information unless a specific factual scenario is supplied to me relating to information about such prior employment.” (Italics added.)
The majority states: “The trial court found that petitioner had made a showing of materiality that was sufficient to permit discovery of prior complaints of excessive force or violence, as well as potential evidence suggestive of fabrication of facts by the arresting officers.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 389.) Nothing in the record before us supports this assertion. Indeed, neither the words nor concepts of “good cause” or “materiality” were uttered by either the court or either counsel until the hearing got to the specific issue of Request 9. Thus, nothing in the record suggests the trial court ever made a ruling that petitioner’s motion, even considered as a whole, was supported by “good cause.”2
But even if there had been such a general ruling, it would not be sufficient. The concept of “good cause” in this context means a showing specific to the challenged request. One of our sister courts has recently summarized that law: “The California Supreme Court has clarified the meaning of the ‘good cause’ requirement in Evidence Code sections 1043 and 1045. A showing of ‘good cause’ requires defendant to demonstrate the relevance of the requested information by providing a ‘specific factual scenario’ which establishes a ‘plausible factual foundation’ for the allegations of officer misconduct committed in connection with defendant. [Citations.] ... [*1] ... [ID Further, our Supreme Court has indicated that a *410showing of good cause must be based on a discovery request which is tailored to the specific officer misconduct that is alleged. Thus, ‘when a defendant asserts that his confession was coerced, a discovery request that seeks all excessive force complaints against the arresting officer is overly broad . . . [instead] “only complaints by persons who alleged coercive techniques in questioning [are] relevant.” ’ [Citations.] The trial court will properly deny such an overbroad discovery request. [Citation.] ft[| In other words, only documentation of past officer misconduct which is similar to the misconduct alleged by defendant in the pending litigation is relevant and therefore subject to discovery.” (California Highway Patrol v. Superior Court (2000) 84 Cal.App.4th 1010, 1020-1021 [101 Cal.Rptr.2d 379] (CHP), italics added and omitted; see also City of San Jose v. Superior Court (1998) 67 Cal.App.4th 1135, 1145-1150 [79 Cal.Rptr.2d 624] (City of San Jose).)
After this statement of the applicable law, the CHP court concluded that the petitioner’s Pitchess motion—considered generally—satisfied this standard: “His initial Pitchess motion provided a specific factual scenario (the CHP officers used excessive force in arresting the defendant) established by a plausible factual foundation (an independent witness to the arrest would testify that the officers had used excessive force). Thus, with regard to complaints of excessive force, defendant met the Evidence Code section 1043 good cause standard and the trial court was authorized to conduct an in camera review of the officers’ personnel records with respect to such complaints.” (CHP, supra, 84 Cal.App.4th at p. 1022.) But, after so ruling, the court nonetheless granted a writ directing vacation of the trial court’s order because that order required release of documents regarding different issues than those as to which “good cause” had been shown. (Id., pp. 1022-1023; see also City of San Jose, supra, 67 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1046-1050.)
The CHP principle is directly applicable here. A generalized showing of some sort of “good cause” which may justify a trial court conducting an in camera review of a specific officer’s personnel file, is not enough to support an order for production of records unrelated to the good cause alleged and shown. Put another way, the “good cause” alleged must have some specific relationship to what is being asked for by way of records.
Such was manifestly not the case here. No effort to show good cause regarding Request 10 was made in petitioner’s moving papers. By contrast, a very brief declaration of.petitioner’s counsel attempted to justify, with at least a certain degree of specificity, requests for records pertaining to “acts involving illegal search and seizure,” “prior acts of fabrication and/or misstatement of facts” and, as to one officer, “acts demonstrating bias on the *411basis of sexual orientation or race.” But nowhere in the four pages of that declaration was a single word said about the materiality of prior employment, or even that the declarant “was informed and believed” that there had even been any such prior employment within the necessary five-year period. Indeed, as far as can be determined from the record before us, both of the pertinent officers could well have been employed by OPD for 10 years or more. It was, obviously, because of these perceived failures that OPD objected to the trial court that no good cause had been shown in support of Request 10.
The trial court apparently understood the law to be as the CHP court has defined it: it first found good cause had been made as to Request 9, but only as to it. And its questions to counsel during the course of argument on Request 10 clearly assumed that it was dubious as to whether good cause could be established for that request on the record before it. Thus, at one point it suggested that there was a “legislative intent, at least from what I’ve read in the cases, to spare the officer from having to reveal embarrassing information out of his personnel file absent a showing of good cause.” (Italics added.) And at a later point, after OPD’s counsel argued that Penal Code section 832.7 made employment history information confidential, the court inquired whether that would still apply “if I’ve made the finding of good cause . . . .” It then posed this question to the deputy city attorney: “Is [sic: isn’t] there just as much good cause to get the employment history since there’s this provision that they may receive discovery in certain instances within five years?”
When it announced its ruling a few pages later, the court clearly did not make a finding of good cause as to Request 10; quite to the contrary. Its only reference to the term was in its expressed concern regarding “the danger . . . that disclosure of the employment could lead to other sensitive information outside of the good cause showing for the materiality.” To drive the point home, the explicit premise for the trial court’s ruling was its finding that the moving defendant had failed to provide a “specific factual scenario” to justify Request 10. And, of course, the phrase “specific factual scenario” derives from cases specifically defining, via that precise phrase, what a showing of “good cause” requires. (See, e.g., City of Santa Cruz v. Municipal Court (1989) 49 Cal.3d 74, 85-86 [260 Cal.Rptr. 520, 776 P.2d 222]; CHP, supra, 84 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1020-1021; City of San Jose, supra, 61 Cal.App.4th at p. 1046.)
In sum, the trial court made no finding of good cause supporting Request 10. To the contrary, it expressly held that no such showing regarding that request had been offered much less effected by petitioner. Thus, its ruling *412that “henceforth”3 it would not be granting requests such as Request 10 unless and until such a “specific factual scenario” (i.e., good cause) was shown.
II.
I submit that the foregoing summary of the record demonstrates that, contrary to the majority’s premise, the trial court did not rule as a matter of law that sections 1043 and 1045 do not permit the disclosure of prior employment history and did properly exercise its discretion in declining to grant Request 10.
The trial court made clear that it was principally concerned with whether (1) referring a defendant to police personnel files located in another county might well create jurisdictional or logistical problems or both, (2) the information sought in Request 10 could be obtained by other, less intrusive means, and (3) disclosure of prior employment history might inevitably lead to the disclosure of “other sensitive information.”
The standard of review of denials of Pitchess motions is abuse of discretion. (See, e.g., People v. Breaux (1991) 1 Cal.4th 281, 311-312 [3 Cal.Rptr.2d 81, 821 P.2d 585]; People v. Memro (1995) 11 Cal.4th 786, 832 [12 Cal.4th 783d, 47 Cal.Rptr.2d 219, 905 P.2d 1305] (Memro); People v. Samayoa (1997) 15 Cal.4th 795, 827 [64 Cal.Rptr.2d 400, 938 P.2d 2]; CHP, supra, 84 Cal.App.4th at p. 1019.) The majority attempts to avoid this standard by stating that the trial court either (1) ruled as a matter of law that the material requested under paragraph 10 was not discoverable, or (2) failed to exercise its discretion, or (3) abused its discretion. I believe that a simple reading of the trial court’s one-page, three-paragraph ruling demonstrates that none of these three alternative holdings are correct.
By using the deliberate and meaningful phrase “specific factual scenario,” the trial court was clearly telling the parties that, in the exercise of its discretion, it would not in this case or “henceforth” be supplying employment history information of the sort sought in Request 10 unless and until *413specific good cause therefor was shown.4 That, it seems to me, is a ruling clearly reviewable under an abuse of discretion standard. Given the abbreviated declaration submitted by petitioner’s counsel and the fact that that declaration said nothing at all about possible prior police department employment by either officer, I fail to see any abuse of discretion here.
III.
The majority concedes that any information produced responsive to a Pitchess motion must be “relevant” to the issues in the case at hand. (See maj. opn., ante, at pp. 394, 396; see also § 1045, subd. (b)). But I believe the majority is wrong that prior employment information is ipso facto “relevant.”
In its first interpretation of the 1978 statutes essentially codifying the Pitchess rule, our Supreme Court, in an opinion authored by then Chief Justice Bird, ruled that a request by a criminal defendant “for the identities of all complainants of excessive force was overly broad. Since appellant sought the information to bolster his claim of involuntariness in the interrogation setting, only complaints by persons who alleged coercive techniques in questioning were relevant.” (People v. Memro (1985) 38 Cal.3d 658, 685 [214 Cal.Rptr. 832, 700 P.2d 446].) To the same effect is People v. Jackson (1996) 13 Cal.4th 1164, 1220 [56 Cal.Rptr.2d 49, 920 P.2d 1254] (Jackson). There, the court held that, when a defendant alleged a coerced confession, only “complaints by persons who alleged coercive techniques in questioning [are] relevant” in a Pitchess motion.
This principle has been made very specific in several recent court of appeal cases. Thus, in CHP the court cited both Jackson and Memro as the *414source of the rule that “[0]nly documentation of past officer misconduct which is similar to the misconduct alleged by defendant in the pending litigation is relevant and therefore subject to discovery.” (CHP, supra, 84 Cal.App.4th at p. 1021; see also People v. Gill (1997) 60 Cal.App.4th 743, 749-750 [70 Cal.Rptr.2d 369], and Mooc, supra, 26 Cal.4th at pp. 1226-1229.) Because Request 10 does not seek information regarding past misconduct by the two officers “which is similar to the misconduct alleged by” petitioner, it does not seek relevant information under sections 1043 and 1045.
IV.
My fourth and final problem with the majority’s decision is a practical one: it will inevitably enlarge the breadth of motions filed statewide under sections 1043 and 1045. Thus, if Request 10 is acceptable under those sections, why not the following hypothetical Request 11: “In addition to the names of any police department or agency by which either of the subject officers was previously employed within the past five years, please supply any and all information in your files regarding (a) the positions each held in any such department or agency and (b) the dates he or she held each such position.”
The “five-year rule” implicated here derives, of course, from section 1045, subdivision (b)(1), which provides that material “consisting of complaints concerning conduct occurring more than five years before the event or transaction which is the subject of the litigation” is, as a matter of law, irrelevant and thus not subject to disclosure. (§ 1045, subd. (b)(1).) I concede that neither that section nor any other statute addresses the issue of what a defendant should do when an officer who is the subject of a motion under those sections has been—or even may have been—employed for less than five years by the subject police department. In such a circumstance, by definition that department could not produce any otherwise relevant complaints concerning him or her covering a full five years. But if this omission is significant (and I’m not inclined to believe it is), correcting it is a matter for the Legislature, not the judiciary.
The majority apparently disagrees, because its ruling effectively grafts onto sections 1043 and 1045 an amendment providing: “If an officer who is the subject of a motion under these sections has not been employed by the pertinent department for a full five years, that department shall search its personnel files and reveal to the movant any previous employment by that officer with another police department or agency.” Further, and as discussed in part I above, its holding means that this may be done without any showing *415of good cause specifically relating to such prior employment records. If this de facto amendment is allowed to stand, it will impact not just OPD but also each and every police and sheriff’s department in the state. I hope it will not be allowed to stand.
For all of these reasons, I would deny the petition.
The petition of real party in interest for review by the Supreme Court was denied October 16, 2002. Kennard, J., Baxter, J., and Chin, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

The parties either stipulated to the outcome regarding some or all of the other eight paragraphs or the court denied their requests in rulings which no one protested at the time or has since. Nary a word was said regarding “good cause” in the course of this.

I concede that OPD seems to assume the same thing the majority assumes, i.e., that somewhere, sometime, the trial court had made some sort of generalized finding of “good cause” as to petitioner’s motion. In both of its opposition briefs in this court, OPD’s counsel states that, at the hearing of May 31, 2001, the trial court “ordered the City to produce certain information contained in the personnel records of [the two officers] of the [OPD], including the names, addresses and telephone numbers of complainants and witnesses to the particular incidents underlying a citizen complaints found relevant after in camera review.” I am, frankly, surprised by these statements. In the first place, OPD objected on “good cause” grounds to petitioner’s motion as a whole in a pleading dated two days before the May 31 hearing. Second, try as I can, I find no such ruling in the record before us. As noted above, every request prior to Requests 9 and 10 was either agreed upon between counsel or denied.

The meaning of “henceforth” became clear at oral argument in this matter. Both counsel agreed that, before approximately 1999, requests such as Request 10 were not included in Pitchess motions in Alameda County. Counsel for petitioner candidly stated that she had been the author of that request circa 1999 and that, up until the ruling in this case in 2001, such requests had been granted by, first, one criminal court judge and then by the judge handling the instant matter. Neither counsel was aware of any other county where similar requests had been regularly posed, much less granted. Indeed, before us counsel for OPD stated that he had previously appeared on Pitchess motions in San Francisco Superior Court, and had never there encountered anything similar to Request 10.

Although the trial court did not do so, another basis upon which it could have exercised its discretion to deny Request 10 is that, as phrased, it is effectively an interrogatory. Sections 1043 and 1045 are specifically addressed to the production of “records”; indeed, the two statutes use that term 10 and six times respectively. In its most recent decision interpreting and applying sections 1043 and 1045, our Supreme Court repeatedly used the words “documents” and “records” to describe what it is that the police department custodian of records must bring to the trial court and the trial court then examine in camera. (See People v. Mooc (2001) 26 Cal.4th 1216, 1228-1230 [27 Cal.4th 101a, 114 Cal.Rptr.2d 482, 36 P.3d 21] (Mooc). Implicitly acknowledging this requirement, most of the paragraphs of defendant’s request specifically ask for “statements,” “records,” and the like. By way of contrast, Request 10 asks for “[disclosure of subject officer’(s) employment at other police departments or agencies within five years . . . .” The Mooc court recently reiterated that anything resembling the proverbial “fishing expedition” is simply not appropriate in a motion brought under sections 1043 and 1045; “[T]he information sought must be requested with sufficient specificity to preclude the possibility of a defendant simply casting about for any helpful information.” (Mooc, supra, 26 Cal.4th at p. 1226.) Unsupported as it was by even an information and belief declaration that either of the named officers worked elsewhere as a peace officer within the preceding five years, Request 10 is thus a classic example of “simply casting about for any helpful information.”