Harold Hall v. City of Los Angeles

I. Background

Some might call Hall an unlucky fellow. In October 1984, shortly after he turned 18, Hall witnessed a drive-by shooting (“the 54th Street shooting”). Ten people suffered gunshot wounds, five of whom died. Hall ended up with a broken nose in the ensuing melee.

The police persuaded Hall, who had no gang affiliation, to testify in the 54th Street murder case. The State needed Hall to identify one of the triggermen, “Ace Capone,” an infamous member of the Bloods gang. Hall’s cooperation with the police put him in such serious danger that the police protected his home every night for many months. Nevertheless, Hall followed through and testified at the preliminary hearing. Midway through his testimony, an attorney revealed Hall’s home address. Hall abruptly left the stand, highly agitated and nervous. He had to be persuaded to finish testifying.

Following the preliminary hearing, the police continued to worry about Hall’s safety. Wayne Dufort, a detective on the 54th Street case, wanted to keep Hall safe both for Hall’s own sake and to ensure his eyewitness testimony at trial. Dufort urged Hall to move a number of times, to no avail. Dufort always was worried about…

Opinion by Judge D.W. NELSON; Dissent by Judge IKUTA.

OPINION

Harold C. Hall appeals the district court’s order granting summary judgment to the City of Los Angeles and individual defendants Mark Arneson and Kenneth Crocker (collectively, “Appellees”) in this action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 . We conclude that the district court properly granted summary judgment to Appellees on Hall’s fabrication-of-evidence claim, and we affirm on that basis. We reverse, how ever, the district court’s denial of Hall’s motion to amend his complaint and remand to the district court with instructions to allow Hall to plead an explicit Fifth Amendment violation. The exceptional circumstances in this case persuade us that a remand is necessary to avoid manifest injustice.

I. Background

Some might call Hall an unlucky fellow. In October 1984, shortly after he turned 18, Hall witnessed a drive-by shooting (“the 54th Street shooting”). Ten people suffered gunshot wounds, five of whom died. Hall ended up with a broken nose in the ensuing melee.

The police persuaded Hall, who had no gang affiliation, to testify in the 54th Street murder case. The State needed Hall to identify one of the…

dissenting:

Not content with our task, prescribed by Article III, of deciding the controversies raised by the parties, the majority has decided to ask and answer its own legal questions instead. At oral argument, the majority sua sponte raised the possibility that instead of addressing Harold Hall’s sole argument on appeal that the district court had erred in rejecting his Fourteenth Amendment claim, we could revive and address an unrelated and unappealed procedural issue: whether, over five years earlier, the district court had erred in denying Hall’s motion to amend his complaint to add a new Fifth Amendment claim.

*1074 Today, the majority takes itself up on that offer. It begins by creating a novel legal argument for Hall and then, having concluded that its own argument has merit, it proceeds to resolve the case on those grounds. Maj. Op. at III.B. In doing so, the majority disregards the most basic principles of judicial restraint, erroneously overturns a district court decision that we have no jurisdiction to review, and gives Hall relief that he never asked us to give. While the majority claims that these imprudent steps are necessary to “safeguard the fairness, integrity…