Galbraith

MEMORANDUM *

In 1998, a jury acquitted Nelson Galbraith on murder charges. Galbraith filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1988 claim against Dr. Ozoa, the Santa Clara County Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner, and Santa Clara County (“County”). Galbraith alleged that Dr. Ozoa’s false statements about his homicide findings caused the County District Attorney’s Office, without probable cause, to arrest and prosecute Galbraith for murder. The district court granted summary judgment for Dr. .Ozoa based on the presumption of prosecutorial independence and qualified immunity, and for the County based on a finding that no evidence proved Galbraith suffered a constitutional violation as a result of any official policy or custom of the County. We now reverse and remand for trial.

We review de novo a district court’s decision to grant summary judgment. Universal Health Servs., Inc. v. Thompson, 363 F.3d 1013 , 1019 (9th Cir.2004). We hold that Galbraith provided sufficient evidence to create a genuine issue of material fact as to (1) whether Dr. Ozoa was reckless in performing the autopsy and in concluding the cause of death was homicide, see Galbraith v. County of Santa Clara, 307 F.3d 1119, 1126 (9th…

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent. “Ordinarily, the decision to file a criminal complaint is presumed to result from an independent determination on the part of the prosecutor, and thus, precludes liability for those who participated in the investigation or filed a report that resulted in the initiation of proceedings.” Awabdy v. City of Adelan *578 to, 368 F.3d 1062, 1067 (9th Cir.2004) (citation omitted). However, this presumption of prosecutorial independence can be rebutted by “a coroner’s reckless or intentional falsification of an autopsy report that plays a material role in the false arrest and prosecution of an individual .... ” Galbraith v. County of Santa Clara, 307 F.3d 1119, 1126 (9th Cir.2002).

The majority finds two pieces of evidence create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Dr. Ozoa’s misrepresentations played a material role in the prosecutor’s decision to file charges: the prosecutor’s inconsistent declarations, and Professor Gershman’s expert declaration. As the district court found, the prosecutor’s “mistaken inclusion in one paragraph that she relied [on] ‘the experiment and opinions of Dr. Mason,’ among other evidence, in concluding there was…