On September 12, 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Butler v. National Community Renaissance of California, upheld a district court’s dismissal of certain defendants named in amended complaints, affirming the necessity of naming those known and unknown defendants in Plaintiff’s original complaint.
In April 2009, Plaintiff Zina Butler filed an action in federal district court, naming a single defendant, National Community Renaissance Corporation (“National”), for an alleged warrantless search of Plaintiff’s apartment on April 18, 2007. The single page complaint asserted that the apartment manager provided a Section 8 investigator, a City employee and Sherriff deputies keys to Plaintiff’s apartment and conducted a search in violation of her Fourth Amendment rights. Shortly after, Plaintiff filed a first amended complaint, with the only change being the addition of defendant, the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles (“HACoLA”) in the caption. In May 2009, the court (on its own accord) dismissed the first amended complaint with leave to amend as “it [was] unclear whom Plaintiff intend[ed] to sue.”
In June 2009, Plaintiff filed a second amended complaint, identifying National and HACoLA in the caption as defendants, but separately identifying several other individuals and entities allegedly involved in the incident occurring in April of 2007 in the complaint’s statement of facts. The Court, once again, dismissed the second amended complaint with leave to amend for the same reasons it dismissed Plaintiff’s first amended complaint.
On August 12, 2009, Plaintiff filed a third amended complaint, identifying National, HACoLa, the City of Palmdale, Oscar Barraza, and Mr. Derrico, as defendants in the caption. In the statement of facts, Plaintiff outlined in greater detail the role each of these individuals and entities played in the April 2007 incident and asserted new facts relating to her complaint lodged with the City of Palmdale prior to the initiation of the lawsuit. In September 2009, the City of Palmdale/Mr. Barraza and National filed Motions to Dismiss Plaintiff’s third amended complaint. The district court denied National’s motion but granted the City of Palmdale’s and Mr. Barraza’s motion and dismissed Plaintiff’s third amended complaint as to these Defendants with leave to amend. The court concluded that Plaintiff’s claims “against [the City of] Palmdale and Barraza were untimely and did not relate back to any of [Plaintiff’s] prior pleadings.”
On March 15, 2010, Plaintiff filed a fourth amended complaint. This complaint once again named defendants, National, HACoLA, the City of Palmdale, Barraza and Mr. Derrico. The core of the factual allegations were again, the warrantless search of Plaintiff’s apartment on April 18, 2007, and additional details concerning the relationship between these defendants and Plaintiff. The City of Palmdale, Barraza, HACoLA and D’Errico filed motions to dismiss. As to HACoLA and D’Errico, the court found that the original complaint did not sufficiently identify these defendants, that Plaintiff knew of their existence, status, and roles at the time she filed her original complaint, and as such, under California Law and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c)(1), Plaintiff’s claims did not relate back because she failed to name any fictitious defendants in her original complaint. As it related to the City of Palmdale and Barraza, the court noted that it had previously found Plaintiff’s claims untimely and did not relate back to her initial complaint when it dismissed these defendants in Plaintiff’s third amended complaint, and that the fourth amended complaint was based on the same allegations as the third. Plaintiff was not “plainly ignorant” of the identities of these defendants at the time of filing her original complaint, did not name fictitious defendants, and went so far as to file a complaint with this entity prior to the filing of her federal court action thereby warranting dismissal of these defendants as well.
Lastly, as to these defendants, the court analyzed and found that Plaintiff was not entitled to equitable tolling under California law, therefore, the matter could proceed only against National. Plaintiff appealed.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s rejection of Plaintiff’s identification of defendants argument on the basis that the body of Plaintiff’s original complaint did not plainly indicate that she intended any party other than National to be a defendant. Had Plaintiff intended to name the additional defendants initially, the Court indicated that she could have and was required to do so with far more specificity.
In reviewing the district court’s application of relation back laws, the Court considered both federal and state authority in order to employ the one affording a more permissive relation back standard. Under California law, Plaintiff’s knowledge of all defendants at the time of filing of her original complaint barred application of this doctrine under California Code of Civil Procedure ยง474 (under this statute, in order for Plaintiff to apply this doctrine, she must have been “genuinely ignorant” of the defendants’ identities at the time of the filing of the complaint.) Under Federal Rule 15(c)(1), Plaintiff was required to and failed to establish that any of the defendants eventually dismissed, knew or should have known that her lawsuit would have been brought against them but for her mistake in not naming them; these entities and individuals were not sufficiently alerted to Plaintiff’s intent to sue them in her original complaint as required under 15(c)(1). The Court therefore found that the district court appropriately applied and rejected any application of the relation back doctrine.
Lastly, the district court’s analysis as to equitable tolling was confirmed as Plaintiff was not entitled to tolling of the applicable statute of limitations.
This case provides some good reminders regarding the necessity of proper identification and naming of both those known and unknown defendants in the initial filing of a complaint. Courts are not sympathetic to plaintiffs (and alike defendants filing cross-complaints) who fail to adequately plead information known at the time of asserting claims against others, and failing to do so may result in a party’s inability to bring culpable parties into an action.
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