Donald Wige v. City of Los Angeles

The State of California charged the plaintiff in this case, Donald Wige, with attempted murder. A jury eventually acquitted Wige, but not before he spent ten months in jail awaiting trial. In this action, brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 , Wige sues several police officers and their employer, the City of Los Angeles, for false arrest, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution.

The question before us is whether Wige’s action is barred by the doctrine of issue preclusion. At Wige’s preliminary hearing in state court, the magistrate judge found probable cause to believe Wige had committed attempted murder. If that finding is entitled to preclusive effect, Wige’s § 1983 claims are barred because each claim requires him to prove that defendants lacked probable cause to arrest and prosecute him for that offense. See Awabdy v. City of Adelanto, 368 F.3d 1062, 1066 (9th Cir.2004); Cabrera v. City of Huntington Park, 159 F.3d 374, 380 (9th Cir.1998) (per curiam).

We begin then with the events at Wige’s preliminary hearing. No one disputed that the victim of the charged offense, Carlos Torres, had been shot and struck in the leg by an assailant firing from a moving car. The…