Court Opinion

ID: 9393138
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-05-09 16:00:40.20915+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:51.296543
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                           FILED
                    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                        MAY 9 2023
                                                                      MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                       U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
                           FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

MORAYON SIMMONS,                                No.    21-56272

                Plaintiff-Appellant,            D.C. No.
                                                2:20-cv-10779-RGK-E
 v.

CITY OF LOS ANGELES, a municipal                MEMORANDUM*
entity; LOS ANGELES POLICE
DEPARTMENT, a municipal entity;
JONATHAN KINCAID,

                Defendants-Appellees,

and

COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES; DOES, 1
through 100, inclusive,

                Defendants.

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Central District of California
                   R. Gary Klausner, District Judge, Presiding

                       Argued and Submitted April 14, 2023
                              Pasadena, California

Before: W. FLETCHER, BERZON, and LEE, Circuit Judges.

      *
             This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
      After spending nearly three years in custody, Morayon Simmons was

acquitted by a jury of attempted murder and other related crimes. He subsequently

filed this § 1983 suit against the Los Angeles Police Department (“LAPD”), the

City of Los Angeles, the County of Los Angeles, and LAPD officer Jonathan

Kincaid, based on Kincaid’s alleged failure to disclose exculpatory evidence in

violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963). LAPD was the only defendant

timely served. Simmons appeals the district court’s grant of summary judgment in

favor of LAPD and its denial of leave to serve Kincaid well after the 90-day period

for service had passed, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m); 28 U.S.C. § 1448. Reviewing the

district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, Blankenhorn v. City of

Orange, 485 F.3d 463, 470 (9th Cir. 2007), and the district court’s decision

regarding an extension of time for service for abuse of discretion, Efaw v.

Williams, 473 F.3d 1038, 1040 (9th Cir. 2007), we affirm.

      1. A local government entity cannot be held liable under § 1983 “unless

action pursuant to official municipal policy of some nature caused a constitutional

tort.” Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 691 (1978). To establish a

Monell claim, a plaintiff must demonstrate that he has suffered a constitutional

injury, Scott v. Henrich, 39 F.3d 912, 916 (9th Cir. 1994), and that “the local

government had a deliberate policy, custom, or practice that was the moving force

behind the constitutional violation,” Vanegas v. City of Pasadena, 46 F.4th 1159,

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1167 (9th Cir. 2022) (citation omitted). Simmons asserted two Monell claims

against LAPD: first, for its alleged failure to implement adequate policies,

customs, and practices, and second, for its alleged failure to train officers regarding

their Brady obligations.

      We assume for purposes of this memorandum disposition that Brady applies

to the pre-trial period, but see Tatum v. Moody, 768 F.3d 806, 816 (9th Cir. 2014),

and applies although Simmons was acquitted rather than convicted, see Smith v.

Almada, 640 F.3d 931, 940–41 (9th Cir. 2011) (Gould, J., concurring); id. at 941

(Gwin, J., specially concurring). So assuming, Simmons’s claims fail as an initial

matter because he has not raised a triable issue of fact to support his underlying

Brady claim. 1

      Simmons asserts that Kincaid suppressed evidence obtained from two

witnesses that could have impeached the alleged victims’ testimony. The arrest

report in the underlying criminal proceeding states that the alleged victims told

LAPD officers that the confrontation with Simmons began after Simmons’s

girlfriend accused them of stealing her wallet, which they denied to her. According

to reports by Simmons’s private investigator, the witnesses told the private

1
 In his reply brief and at oral argument, Simmons argued that he also brought a
malicious prosecution claim under § 1983. However, the complaint did not so
allege. The complaint did allege a stand-alone state-law malicious prosecution
claim, which the parties stipulated to dismiss in district court.

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investigator that they saw the alleged victims steal the wallet and that they spoke

with Kincaid, who told one of the witnesses “not to mention to anyone” that

Kincaid had spoken with him.

      The witnesses’ statements may have been impeaching of aspects of the

alleged victims’ testimony. But Simmons points to nothing in the record

demonstrating that this impeachment evidence was “material” for Brady purposes. 2

See Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 280 (1999). The record does not

demonstrate the extent to which the wallet theft undermined the credibility of any

testimony the victims may have given about the shooting at issue in the criminal

proceedings, nor how the wallet theft would have provided a defense to the

shooting.

      Moreover, Simmons learned of one witness just six days after he was

arrested and of the other three months later; one of the witnesses testified at trial

for Simmons. Simmons thus has not demonstrated that prejudice ensued as a result

of Kincaid’s alleged pre-trial suppression of evidence even though Simmons had

obtained the evidence. See Strickler, 527 U.S. at 281–82.

      Even if Simmons had established a viable underlying Brady violation, his

2
 The bulk of the criminal trial record is not in the record in this case—neither the
victims’ testimony at the preliminary hearing where the trial court determined that
probable cause supported the charges against Simmons, nor the victims’ testimony
at trial.

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Monell claims still fail. “When, as here, a plaintiff pursues liability based on a

failure to act,” he must establish that “the municipality exhibited deliberate

indifference to the violation of her federally protected rights” by pointing “to a

pattern of prior, similar violations of federally protected rights, of which the

relevant policymakers had actual or constructive notice.” Park v. City & Cnty. of

Honolulu, 952 F.3d 1136, 1141–42 (9th Cir. 2020). Alternatively, “in a narrow

range of circumstances,” Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 409

(1997), “it may happen that in light of the duties assigned to specific officers or

employees 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 of the city can reasonably be said to have been deliberately

indifferent to the need.” City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 390 (1989).

      Simmons points to no evidence that any LAPD officer other than Kincaid

has previously committed a Brady violation, nor to any evidence that Kincaid

himself has committed a Brady violation outside of this matter. Nor are the

“unconstitutional consequences” of LAPD’s Brady policy “so patently obvious”

that LAPD “could be liable under § 1983 without proof of a pre-existing pattern of

violations.” Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51, 63–64 (2011). It is undisputed that

LAPD officers are provided general training on their Brady obligations. And the

Tennison Memorandum clarifies officers’ obligations affirmatively to bring

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exculpatory material to the attention of prosecutors. Whether or not the LAPD

training included specific guidance about what constitutes exculpatory evidence,

any defect in “the nuance of the allegedly necessary training” is in no way similar

to the Supreme Court’s hypothetical example of the extreme circumstances that

might constitute “deliberate indifference” in the absence of any pattern of

unconstitutional behavior. See id. at 63–64, 67 (suggesting that a city that

“deploys . . . armed officers into the public to capture fleeing felons without

training the officers in the constitutional limitation on the use of deadly force”

might be held responsible for the failure to train its law enforcement officers). The

district court did not err when it granted summary judgment in favor of LAPD.

      2. Simmons also appeals the district court’s denial of his ex parte application

requesting an extension of time to serve Kincaid, filed seven months after the

deadline to serve defendants. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(m), if a

defendant is not timely served, “the court—on motion or on its own after notice to

the plaintiff—must dismiss the action without prejudice against that defendant or

order that service be made within a specified time.” But “if the plaintiff shows

good cause for the failure, the court must extend the time for service for an

appropriate period.” Id. Even if good cause is not established, “the district court

may extend time for service upon a showing of excusable neglect.” Lemoge v.

United States, 587 F.3d 1188, 1198 (9th Cir. 2009); see Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(b).

                                           6
      Simmons has not established either good cause or excusable neglect for his

failure to timely serve Kincaid. Although one of Simmons’s counsel declared that

he had been suffering from “very concerning” health issues during the service

period, according to the documentation in the record, that lawyer did timely serve

the LAPD and became severely ill very shortly before the end of the 90-day

service period; he was practicing for at least some of the time during the seven

months between the onset of his illness and the filing of the application; and there

were two attorneys of record in this case, not one. Simmons’s counsel offer no

persuasive explanation to excuse both lawyers’ failure to comply with the time

requirement of Rule 4(m) and their subsequent failure for seven months to request

an extension of the service period. See Dela Rosa v. Scottsdale Mem’l Health Sys.,

Inc., 136 F.3d 1241, 1244 (9th Cir. 1998). Given these circumstances, the district

court did not abuse its discretion in denying the application.

      AFFIRMED.

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