Jonathon Castro v. County of Los Angeles

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

JONATHAN MICHAEL CASTRO, No. 12-56829 Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. v. 2:10-05425-DSF

COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES; LOS

ANGELES SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT; ORDER AND

CHRISTOPHER SOLOMON; DAVID OPINION

VALENTINE, Sergeant, aka Valentine, Defendants-Appellants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Dale S. Fischer, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted December 11, 2014—Pasadena, California

Filed August 11, 2015

Before: Ronald Lee Gilman,* Susan P. Graber, and Consuelo M. Callahan, Circuit Judges.

Order;

* The Honorable Ronald Lee Gilman, Senior United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation. Opinion by Judge Gilman; Concurrence by Judge Callahan; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge Graber

SUMMARY**

Civil Rights

The panel withdrew its prior opinion, concurrence, and partial concurrence and partial dissent, filed May 1, 2015, and published at 785 F.3d 336, and replaced it with an amended opinion, concurrence and…

Opinion by Judge GILMAN; Concurrence by Judge CALLAHAN; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge GRABER.

ORDER

The opinion, concurrence, and partial concurrence and partial dissent filed May 1, 2015, and published at 785 F.3d 336 , are withdrawn and are replaced by the opinion, concurrence, and partial concurrence and partial dissent filed concurrently with this order. As the court’s opinion is withdrawn, Appellants’ petition for panel rehearing and petition for rehearing en banc is moot. Further petitions for panel rehearing and for rehearing en banc may be filed.

OPINION

In October 2009, Jonathan Castro was arrested for being drunk in public. He was housed in a “sobering cell” at the Los Angeles Sheriffs West Hollywood Station where, a few hours after his arrest, he was savagely attacked by another intoxicated arrestee who had been placed in the cell with him. The officer on duty at the jail failed to respond to Castro’s pounding on the cell door despite evidence that the officer was well within range to hear the pounding. Castro suffered serious harm, *661 including a broken jaw and traumatic brain injury.

This lawsuit was filed by Castro in the United States…

concurring:

I agree with the majority that the judgment of the district court against the individual defendants should be affirmed and the judgment against the County reversed. I write separately to explain that I do not think that Castro has shown that the design of the West Hollywood Station constitutes a policy for purposes of liability under Monell v. Department of Social Services of New York, 436 U.S. 658 , 98 S.Ct. 2018 , 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978).

I do not deny that pursuant to Pembaur v. City of Cincinnati, 475 U.S. 469, 483 , 106 S.Ct. 1292 , 89 L.Ed.2d 452 (1986), the *677 design of a jail in some circumstances, might be held to constitute a deliberate choice or policy. However, I disagree with the suggestion that the fact that the jail was constructed is sufficient in itself to “meet the definition of a formal municipal policy.” Maj. at 671. Rather, I agree with the Sixth Circuit’s approach in Molton v. City of Cleveland, 889 F.2d 240 , 246 (6th Cir.1988), that “Pembaur [ ] require[s] proof of a deliberate and discernible city policy to maintain ... inadequately designed and equipped jails; not mere speculation that such matters are ‘inherently matters of city policy.’…

concurring in part and dissenting in part:

I join the majority opinion, with the exception of Part II.D.2. I respectfully dissent from the holding that there was insufficient evidence from which the jury could have concluded that the entity Defendants were deliberately indifferent to the risk that Plaintiff would be harmed by a fellow inmate. I also write separately because the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Kingsley v. Hendrickson, — U.S. -, 135 S.Ct. 2466 , 192 L.Ed.2d 416 (2015), calls into question our precedent on the appropriate state-of-mind inquiry in failure-to-protect claims brought by pretrial detainees.

A. • The entity Defendants had actual knowledge of state regulations governing their conduct and were deliberately indifferent.

In Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 841 , 114 S.Ct. 1970 , 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994), the Supreme Court acknowledged that “considerable conceptual difficulty would attend any search for the subjective state of mind of a governmental entity, as *678 distinct from that of a governmental official.” 1 This case squarely presents that considerable conceptual difficulty.

We previously have acknowledged that certain types of evidence could show…