Gene Sigal v. County of Los Angeles ( 2021 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS SEP 7 2021
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
GENE SIGAL; L. S., a minor, by and No. 18-56085
through her Guardian Ad Litem Gene
Sigal; S. S., a minor, by and through his D.C. No. 2:17-cv-04851-RGK-AGR
Guardian Ad Litem Gene Sigal,
MEMORANDUM*
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES; LILIA
MERIN; TASHA BEARD; DORIS
LEMIEUX; PRISCILLA ASHBURN;
ANGELA LEE; and CATHY
WEINGART;
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
R. Gary Klausner, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted July 7, 2020
Pasadena, California
Before: BERZON and COLLINS, Circuit Judges, and KATZMANN,** Judge.
Gene Sigal and his minor children appeal the district court’s dismissal of
four of their six § 1983 claims against the County of Los Angeles and several of its
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as
provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Gary S. Katzmann, Judge for the United States Court of
International Trade, sitting by designation.
employees in connection with the removal of the children from Sigal’s home
during dependency proceedings in state court.1 We affirm.
I
In their third cause of action, Plaintiffs alleged that on April 18, 2015,
Defendant Angela Lee (acting with the approval of her supervisor, Defendant
Cathy Weingart) obtained a warrant for the removal of L.S and S.S. through
“fraud, misrepresentation, and the exclusion of exculpatory and/or explanatory
evidence,” thereby violating the children’s Fourth Amendment rights and Sigal’s
Fourteenth Amendment right of familial association.2 The fourth cause of action
alleged a similar claim against Lee and Weingart in connection with a second
warrant for the removal of S.S. on April 24, 2015. Reviewing de novo, Frudden v.
Pilling, 877 F.3d 821, 828 (9th Cir. 2017), we conclude that the district court
properly granted summary judgment for Lee and Weingart on these claims.
To survive summary judgment on a claim for judicial deception in obtaining
a warrant, Plaintiffs were required to show that any misrepresentations or
omissions were (1) “material to the finding of probable cause” and (2) “made
1
The complaint alleged six causes of action under § 1983, but Plaintiffs expressly
abandoned their fifth cause of action at summary judgment. The district court
dismissed the first cause of action as duplicative of the others, and Plaintiffs do not
challenge that ruling on appeal.
2
The third cause of action also asserted a claim based on the initial hospital hold
placed on L.S. on April 14, 2015, but the district court dismissed this aspect of the
claim, and Plaintiffs’ opening brief does not challenge that ruling.
2
intentionally or with reckless disregard for the truth.” Bravo v. City of Santa
Maria, 665 F.3d 1076, 1083 (9th Cir. 2011); see also Franks v. Delaware, 438
U.S. 154, 155–56 (1978). In this context, “materiality” means that, “had [the
social workers] been truthful, the warrant[s] would not have issued.” Butler v.
Elle, 281 F.3d 1014, 1026 (9th Cir. 2002). We agree with the district court that
Plaintiffs failed to present sufficient evidence of materiality.
A
The district court assumed, and neither side challenges on appeal, that
probable cause exists to remove a child when the child faces a “substantial risk of
harm.” See generally CAL. WELF. & INST. CODE § 300 (a child may be adjudged a
dependent of the court if there is a “substantial risk” of specified types of harm).
The relevant risk of harm that underlay the April 18 warrant to remove L.S. and the
April 24 warrant to remove S.S. was that each child had threatened suicide if she or
he were to remain with Sigal. There is no dispute that both children made such
threats, but Plaintiffs contend that the respective warrant applications contained
misrepresentations and omissions that, if corrected, would have undermined the
findings of probable cause. We disagree.
Many of the alleged misrepresentations and omissions do not have any real
bearing on the credibility of the children’s suicide threats, such as the asserted
misrepresentation about the number of cases that Lee had handled and the failure
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to mention that Trista, the children’s mother, had died of a drug overdose. As
such, they are not material to whether a substantial risk of suicide existed.
Plaintiffs, however, also presented evidence that the warrant applications omitted
information that could have undermined the credibility of the children’s suicide
threats. We agree with the district court that, even if the warrant applications’
omissions and misstatements were corrected, any resulting reduction in the
credibility of the children’s suicide threats would still have been outweighed by the
remaining unchallenged information in those applications. Specifically, multiple
persons who examined L.S. credited her threats and believed her to be in serious
danger, including her school principal, a member of the County’s Psychiatric
Mobile Response Team (“PMRT”), and a treating therapist. S.S.’s threats of
suicide likewise convinced his caregiver, a police officer, and members of the
PMRT. Even if the children’s credibility issues had been fully disclosed, the state
court would have had probable cause to remove them based on the suicide threats.
Liston v. County of Riverside, 120 F.3d 965, 973 (9th Cir. 1997).
B
Plaintiffs also contend that the application for the first warrant as to S.S.—
before he had made any suicide threats—failed to establish the requisite probable
cause. As noted earlier, the parties agree that probable cause would be met here by
a showing of a substantial risk of harm to the child. See supra at 3. As to S.S., the
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relevant risk of harm underlying the first warrant application was emotional harm,
because that is the gravamen of the factual assertions made as to S.S. in that
application. We conclude that, even if the asserted misrepresentations and
omissions in that application were corrected, probable cause to remove S.S. would
still have remained.
The question before the state court judge who issued the warrant was
whether probable cause existed to justify an immediate removal of S.S., i.e., a
temporary removal that would then be re-examined at a detention hearing a few
days later. Given that focus, the facts that are of greatest relevance to the removal
determination are those relating to S.S.’s emotional state at the time that the
warrant was sought. Plaintiffs did not present any evidence to suggest that the
warrant misrepresented Lee’s conversations with S.S. on April 14–15. Those
conversations indicated that S.S. was emotionally distraught about being back with
his father; that S.S. exhibited paranoid behavior; that S.S. wanted to know his
home address so that he could call the police; and that Sigal, without knowing why
S.S. wanted to know his home address, refused to give it to him. The errors and
omissions in the warrant application do not detract from the specific unchallenged
facts that were recounted in that application about Lee’s conversations with S.S.,
and we therefore conclude that, even if the warrant had been appropriately
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corrected, the warrant still adequately established probable cause for an immediate
temporary removal of S.S.
Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to
Lee and Weingart on the third and fourth causes of action.
II
Plaintiffs also appeal the district court’s earlier rulings in which it dismissed,
for failure to state a claim, the complaint’s second and sixth causes of action and
Plaintiffs’ claims that the County could be held liable for all of the alleged
misconduct under Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978).
We review the decision to grant a motion to dismiss de novo and denial of leave to
amend for abuse of discretion. Manzarek v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 519
F.3d 1025, 1030–31 (9th Cir. 2008).
A
The sixth cause of action alleged that Lee and Weingart violated Sigal’s and
L.S.’s constitutional right to have Sigal make medical decisions for L.S., see Wallis
v. Spencer, 202 F.3d 1126, 1141 (9th Cir. 2000), when Sigal was not included on
an April 16, 2015 teleconference call to discuss L.S.’s imminent discharge from
the hospital. The district court dismissed this claim because the complaint failed to
allege that, during the call, medical “decisions regarding a course of treatment
were made and implemented without Sigal’s consent.” In their opening brief,
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Plaintiffs contend that the court should have granted leave to plead such facts, but
they do not provide any additional allegations that they could have made that
would have saved their complaint. Plaintiffs have thus failed to show any abuse of
discretion in denying leave to amend.
B
Plaintiffs challenge the dismissal of the second cause of action to the extent
that it alleged that L.S.’s and S.S.’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the
actions of the various County employees in connection with an initial removal and
related dependency proceedings in 2013. We reject Plaintiffs’ contentions.
Plaintiffs assert that the district court wrongly dismissed their claim that
Defendant Tasha Beard engaged in judicial deception by allegedly making false
statements in both the detention report that supported the initial February 2013
dependency petition and in a warrant application that Beard had filed a few days
earlier. According to Plaintiffs, Beard left out both substantial information that
would have cast doubt on the credibility of Trista’s allegations against Sigal, as
well as Sigal’s denials of those claims. But as the district court rightly noted, even
if these items had been corrected, the state court would still have had sufficient
grounds for the actions it took “based on the children’s corroborating claims.”
Indeed, the complaint itself alleges that Trista had “coached” the children “to back
her sordid and utterly false stories of abuse.”
7
Plaintiffs’ similar claim against Defendant Lilia Merin for her filing of the
dependency petition was properly dismissed. As the district court explained,
Merin did not represent that she had conducted any investigation of her own, and
the complaint contains no allegation that she failed to accurately relay the
information that was supplied to her by Beard. Plaintiffs failed to plead any facts
that would support an inference that Merin recklessly disregarded the truth by
relying upon the detention report that Beard prepared and signed under penalty of
perjury. Bravo, 665 F.3d at 1083.
Plaintiffs also challenge the dismissal of their judicial deception claims
against Defendant Doris Lemieux and her supervisor, Defendant Priscilla Ashburn,
in connection with the May 26, 2013 “Jurisdiction/Disposition Report” submitted
to the state court.3 We affirm the district court’s dismissal of this claim, although
we do so on different grounds from those given by that court. Karasek v. Regents
of Univ. of Cal., 956 F.3d 1093, 1104 (9th Cir. 2020) (stating that we “may affirm
on any ground supported by the record”). Because Sigal and Trista pleaded to
amended dependency allegations in June 2013, and because those amended
allegations were the only basis for the state court’s dependency findings, any errors
in Lemieux’s jurisdictional report were not material to the court’s dependency
3
The complaint also refers to the report as being filed on “May 26, 2015,” but it is
clear from the context that the 2015 date is a typographical error.
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decision. See Butler, 281 F.3d at 1024 (“A plaintiff ‘must . . . establish that but for
the dishonesty, the challenged action would not have occurred.’” (quoting Liston,
120 F.3d at 972–75)).
C
Because Plaintiffs failed either to plead or prove that any of the individual
County employees violated Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, Plaintiffs’ Monell
claims against the county necessarily failed. City of Los Angeles v. Heller, 475
U.S. 796, 798–99 (1986). We therefore uphold the dismissal of those claims on
this alternative basis. See Karasek, 956 F.3d at 1104.
AFFIRMED.
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