Court Opinion

ID: 9408152
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-11 18:01:23.95595+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:41.879014
License: Public Domain

Case: 23-40004        Document: 00516816244             Page: 1      Date Filed: 07/11/2023

             United States Court of Appeals
                  for the Fifth Circuit                                        United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                        Fifth Circuit

                                     ____________                                      FILED
                                                                                     July 11, 2023
                                      No. 23-40004                               Lyle W. Cayce
                                    Summary Calendar                                  Clerk
                                    ____________

   Adan DeLeon,

                                                                    Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                            versus

   Nueces County,

                                               Defendant—Appellee.
                     ______________________________

                     Appeal from the United States District Court
                         for the Southern District of Texas
                               USDC No. 2:21-CV-143
                     ______________________________

   Before Clement, Southwick, and Engelhardt, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam: *
         Adan DeLeon sued Officer Bobby Joe Benavides and Nueces County,
   Texas under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court dismissed the County,
   finding that DeLeon failed to adequately plead any Monell v. Department of
   Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), claim for use of excessive force, for
   failure to train, or for failure to intervene. We AFFIRM.

         _____________________
         *
             This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 23-40004        Document: 00516816244              Page: 2      Date Filed: 07/11/2023

                                         No. 23-40004

                                               I
           Adan DeLeon is an inmate at the Nueces County jail. 1 Several
   summers ago, DeLeon was moved from one cell to another. He did not
   appreciate the move, and so requested to “speak to rank” about it. Officer
   Benavides, known amongst inmates as “the Punisher,” then pulled DeLeon
   from his cell and mercilessly beat him. DeLeon was left with a fractured eye
   socket, nose, and ribs, and several cracked disks in his neck.
           DeLeon sued. Against Benavides, he claimed violations of his Fourth
   Amendment right to be free from excessive force. 2 Against the County, he
   claimed a sanctioned policy of employing excessive force and declining to
   intervene, and a failure to train or supervise its personnel in the proper use of
   force. To demonstrate his claimed pattern or policy, DeLeon pointed to a
   1997 incident in which an inmate was beaten by County officers and later
   died. He also identified six other County officials (their roles unspecified)
   who were subject to multiple internal investigations, many involving
   excessive force, between 1992 and 2009.
           The district court eventually dismissed all claims against the County.
   The court explained that DeLeon’s municipal liability claims required that

           _____________________
           1
              Because this comes to us from a granted motion to dismiss, DeLeon’s alleged
   facts are taken as true.
           2
             DeLeon is a prisoner, however, so this is better construed as a violation of his
   Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. See Whitley v.
   Albers, 475 U.S. 312, 327 (1986) (“We think the Eighth Amendment . . . serves as the
   primary source of substantive protection to convicted prisoners in cases . . . where the
   deliberate use of force is challenged as excessive and unjustified.”). But this distinction
   does not matter for our purposes.

                                               2
Case: 23-40004         Document: 00516816244              Page: 3       Date Filed: 07/11/2023

                                          No. 23-40004

   he plead “at least a pattern of similar incidents.” He did not, said the court,
   and so dismissal was warranted. DeLeon now appeals. 3
                                                II
           The court reviews a district court’s dismissal for failure to state a
   claim de novo. Thurman v. Med. Transp. Mgmt., Inc., 982 F.3d 953, 955 (5th
   Cir. 2020). The court “accepts all well-pleaded facts as true, viewing them
   in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Id. (quotations and citation
   omitted). To survive a motion to dismiss, the complaint “must contain
   sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is
   plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quotations
   and citation omitted). 4
           The County isn’t liable under § 1983 for “an injury inflicted solely by
   its employees or agents.” Monell, 436 U.S. at 694. It instead faces liability
   only “when execution of [its] policy or custom . . . inflicts the injury[.]” Id.
   To succeed on such a claim, DeLeon must identify “(1) an official policy (2)
   promulgated by the municipal policymaker (3) [that] was the moving force
   behind the violation of a constitutional right.” Peterson v. City of Fort Worth,
           _____________________
           3
            At the time of this appeal, proceedings below had not yet ended. The district court
   has now entered a default judgment against Benavides and closed the case. Either way, we
   had jurisdiction at the time of appeal because the district court entered a “nonfinal
   judgment[] certified as final” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b). See Briargrove
   Shopping Ctr. Joint Venture v. Pilgrim Enters., Inc., 170 F.3d 536, 538 (5th Cir. 1999).
           4
              DeLeon suggests that against municipalities, mere “generic or boilerplate
   assertions for grounds of municipal liability” are enough. That is not so. As we’ve said time
   and again, “our precedents make clear that the Twombly standard”—not any lower-than-
   normal standard—“applies to municipal liability claims.” Ratliff v. Aransas Cnty., 948 F.3d
   281, 284–85 (5th Cir. 2020) (discussing Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007));
   see also Doe ex rel. Magee v. Covington Cnty. Sch. Dist. ex rel. Keys, 675 F.3d 849, 866 n.10
   (5th Cir. 2012) (en banc) (rejecting any claim that applying the Twombly standard in a
   Monell context violated Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence & Coordination
   Unit, 507 U.S. 163 (1993), DeLeon’s key case).

                                                3
Case: 23-40004      Document: 00516816244          Page: 4   Date Filed: 07/11/2023

                                    No. 23-40004

   588 F.3d 838, 847 (5th Cir. 2009). While policies like that often take the form
   of “written policy statements, ordinances, or regulations,” they may also
   take the form of “widespread practice[s] that [are] so common and well-
   settled as to constitute [customs] that fairly represent[] municipal policy.”
   Id. (quotations and citation omitted). Since DeLeon points only to custom,
   he must plead a pattern of conduct “so long or so frequent[] that the course
   of conduct warrants the attribution to the governing body of knowledge that
   the objectionable conduct is the expected, accepted practice of [County]
   employees.” Id. at 850 (quotations and citation omitted). Any such pattern
   “requires similarity and specificity; prior indications cannot simply be for
   any and all bad or unwise acts, but rather must point to the specific violation
   in question.” Id. (quotations and citation omitted) (alteration adopted).
          First, DeLeon’s failure-to-train contention is a “notoriously difficult
   theory on which to base a Monell claim[.]” Allen v. Hays, 63 F.4th 307,
   withdrawn and superseded on denial of panel reh’g, 65 F.4th 736, 749 (5th Cir.
   2023). To succeed, DeLeon must plead facts showing it plausible that the
   County was “aware of an impending rights violation but was deliberately
   indifferent to it.” Id. at 750. Those facts must demonstrate that “in light of
   the duties assigned to specific officers . . . , the need for more or different
   training is so obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to result in the violation
   of constitutional rights, that the policymakers can reasonably be said to have
   been deliberately indifferent to the need.” Id. (quotations and citation
   omitted) (alteration adopted).
          The district court dismissed because DeLeon failed to plead “any
   similar or specific instances of failure to train or supervise,” failed to
   “identify training procedures,” and did not “demonstrate a causal
   connection between the alleged failure to supervise or train” and any
   violation of his rights. We generally agree. DeLeon mentions only two other
   failures to train: Ramiro Arismendez, who faced excessive force allegations

                                         4
Case: 23-40004      Document: 00516816244           Page: 5    Date Filed: 07/11/2023

                                     No. 23-40004

   in 2000 but did not receive “any additional training[;]” and the officers
   involved in the 1997 incident. As to Arismendez, DeLeon provides no
   details—we are unable to determine whether any failure to train him
   constitutes the “specific violation” at issue here. And as to the 1997 officers,
   a single incident over twenty years prior does not constitute a “pattern.”
   DeLeon’s facts thus fail to “clear this high bar,” id., and so dismissal was
   appropriate.
          DeLeon’s other claims fare no better. As to his alleged County policy
   of sanctioning excessive force, he again provides details regarding only the
   single 1997 incident. That does not support a pattern. And as before, the lack
   of detail regarding the six identified officials and their alleged transgressions
   makes it impossible for us to determine whether they committed—and the
   County condoned—the specific violation at issue here. The same is true with
   DeLeon’s failure to intervene claim. DeLeon asserted his claim only in
   passing. But he provides no examples of when the County had a chance to
   intervene but did not. That too fails to allege a pattern of misconduct.
   Dismissal of both claims was warranted.
                                          III
          The district court is AFFIRMED.

                                          5