Baidan v. Shull
- Virginia Demarchi
- 5:24-cv-03171
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 5
In Baidan v. Shull, Judge Demarchi denied Baidan’s request for permission to seek reconsideration of dismissal of his unlawful-arrest claim.
Orest Baidan and Jacob Shull; the order concerns Baidan’s unlawful-arrest claim, while the opinion notes that a separate excessive-force claim was reasserted in a second amended complaint.
What happened
In Baidan v. Shull, Orest Baidan sought permission to ask the court to reconsider its dismissal of his claim that Jacob Shull unlawfully arrested him. The court had dismissed that claim after finding that Baidan’s amended complaint did not allege enough facts to support it.
Baidan argued that he could not properly oppose the dismissal because the Mountain View Police Department had not produced Shull’s body-camera video. He also pointed to information from another recording and argued that the court had ruled on an incomplete record. The court said Baidan either knew the facts earlier or did not explain why he could not have raised them sooner.
Judge Demarchi denied Baidan’s motion for permission to file a reconsideration motion. The court did not change its earlier dismissal of the unlawful-arrest claim. The opinion notes that Baidan had filed a second amended complaint reasserting a separate excessive-force claim.
The detailed version
- Baidan v. Shull · No. 5:24-cv-03171
- Virginia Demarchi
- June 20, 2025
Background
Orest Baidan sued Jacob Shull, an officer of the Mountain View Police Department, alleging that Shull violated the Fourth Amendment when he arrested Baidan for misdemeanor spousal battery on May 26, 2022. Baidan’s original complaint asserted claims for excessive force and unlawful arrest.
Shull moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) to dismiss only the unlawful-arrest claim. Rule 12(b)(6) allows dismissal when a complaint does not allege facts that, if accepted as true, would support legal relief. The court granted that motion and allowed Baidan to amend. Baidan then filed an amended complaint asserting only unlawful arrest. The court dismissed that claim without leave to amend. In the same earlier order, however, the court allowed Baidan to file a second amended complaint reasserting his excessive-force claim because he was representing himself and had expressed an intention to pursue it. Baidan later filed that second amended complaint.
Motion for Reconsideration
Baidan asked for permission to file a motion for reconsideration of the order dismissing his unlawful-arrest claim. Under Civil Local Rule 7-9(b), a party must first obtain leave, or permission, to file such a motion. The party must show one of specified grounds: a material difference in facts or law that could not reasonably have been known earlier, new material facts or a change in the law after the earlier order, or the court’s failure to consider material facts or decisive legal arguments previously presented.
Baidan argued that the police department had refused to provide Shull’s body-camera footage before the court ruled on the motion to dismiss. He also referred to alleged discrepancies in another recording, identified as DV-14, and argued that the missing footage left an incomplete and one-sided record.
Court’s Analysis
The court rejected these arguments. It explained that, at the motion-to-dismiss stage, Baidan did not have to prove his allegations. He did have to plead facts that plausibly supported an unlawful-arrest claim. The court had already accepted the amended complaint’s non-conclusory factual allegations as true and viewed them favorably to Baidan, but concluded that the allegations still failed to state a claim.
The court found no basis for reconsideration based on the unavailable body-camera footage. Baidan did not explain why he needed the footage to state his claim or why he had not included the facts he believed the footage showed in his amended complaint or opposition to the dismissal motion.
The court also found that Baidan had not shown reasonable diligence concerning the DV-14 recording. Baidan appeared to have had access to it before the earlier ruling, and he did not explain why the alleged discrepancies could not have been discovered sooner. The court further stated that several facts Baidan identified were within his personal knowledge, including the length of his own questioning and what he told officers during the encounter.
Disposition
The court concluded that Baidan had not shown that any ground under Civil Local Rule 7-9(b) applied. It denied his motion for leave to file a motion for reconsideration. This order did not rule on the separate excessive-force claim reasserted in Baidan’s second amended complaint.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.