Ralon v. Kaiser Permanente Hospital
- Joseph Spero
- 3:23-cv-03344
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 5
In Ralon v. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Judge Spero denied permission to file a third amended complaint.
The ruling affected Domitila Pelaez Ralon’s request to add Dr. Rana Tabrizi, Dr. Odele, and Dr. Le as defendants and to add allegations and a medical record. The court denied that request; the opinion does not state that it resolved the underlying Title VI claims against Kaiser.
What happened
In Domitila Pelaez Ralon v. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., et al., the plaintiff asked to file a third amended complaint adding three doctors to her race-discrimination lawsuit against Kaiser under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The proposed complaint concerned breast-treatment events and later test results. The court said the plaintiff waited nearly three months after receiving the test results and gave no explanation for not naming one doctor earlier.
Judge Joseph C. Spero denied the motion because the plaintiff was not diligent and because the proposed claims against individual doctors would be futile under the court’s understanding of Title VI.
The detailed version
- Ralon v. Kaiser Permanente Hospital · No. 3:23-cv-03344
- Joseph Spero
- Dec. 2, 2024
Background
The operative complaint was Plaintiff Domitila Pelaez Ralon’s second amended complaint. It asserted claims against Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race or national origin in programs receiving federal financial assistance.
Ralon alleged that a Kaiser doctor, Rana Tabrizi, removed only part of a breast tumor on March 27, 2023, and later expelled Ralon from a surgery waiting area on May 3, 2023. The second amended complaint included documents concerning a lumpectomy on March 27, 2023, and an excision on May 3, 2023.
Ralon sought permission to file a third amended complaint. The proposed amendment would add Dr. Tabrizi and two other doctors, Dr. Odele and Dr. Le, as defendants. The proposed claims against the doctors concerned race discrimination under Title VI and allegations about a mammogram and breast ultrasound performed or interpreted on July 18, 2024. Ralon also sought to add a medical record from February 1, 2020.
Legal standards
Because Ralon had already amended the complaint once as a matter of course, she needed either the opposing parties’ consent or the court’s permission to amend again under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a). Although courts generally give permission to amend freely, the court considered bad faith, undue delay, prejudice to the opposing party, futility of the amendment, and prior opportunities to amend.
An amendment is futile if it could not survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The court also explained that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16(b)(4) requires good cause to modify a case schedule, with the focus primarily on the diligence of the party seeking the change.
Court’s analysis and ruling
The court found that Ralon had not been diligent. Fact discovery was scheduled to close on December 31, 2024, with a deadline for dispositive motions about one month later. The court said Ralon waited nearly three months after receiving the test results underlying the proposed claims against Dr. Odele and Dr. Le before seeking permission to amend. As to Dr. Tabrizi, Ralon gave no explanation for failing to name her in the second amended complaint even though the proposed claim was based on events from 2023 that were already included in that complaint.
The court also said that allowing another amendment would require vacating the dispositive-motion deadlines and likely extending the pleading stage so Kaiser could respond. It found Ralon’s unexplained delay unreasonable.
Independently, the court held that it would deny permission as futile even if Ralon had been diligent. The court cited decisions from federal district courts in the Ninth Circuit holding that Title VI liability is limited to entities receiving federal funding and does not extend to individual defendants. Because the court found no authority suggesting that the three doctors were proper Title VI defendants, it concluded that justice did not require allowing the amendment.
The court therefore denied Ralon’s motion for leave to file a third amended complaint. This order addressed the proposed amendment; it did not decide whether Ralon’s underlying discrimination allegations against Kaiser were valid.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.