Cammas v. City of Berkeley

Background

Arnaud Cammas represented himself and proceeded without paying the filing fee. He sued the City of Berkeley and city officials over a February 4, 2022 incident at the Downtown Berkeley YMCA, where he lived. He alleged that YMCA executive director Lance Goree threatened him, placed him in a chokehold that caused him to lose consciousness, and later destroyed video evidence. Cammas also alleged that responding Berkeley police officers treated him as the aggressor, arrested him, cancelled an ambulance, misrepresented his condition to emergency medical personnel and jail staff, and falsely reported that he had not been choked.

Cammas’s original complaint was dismissed with permission to amend specific deficiencies. The court had found that he had not plausibly pleaded municipal liability under the rule commonly called Monell, had conceded the City’s arguments concerning his Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act claims, and had otherwise pleaded claims barred by the statute of limitations. The permitted amendment was limited to addressing those deficiencies.

In his amended complaint, Cammas alleged a decade-long “shadow enforcement system” involving the Berkeley Police Department, the Downtown Berkeley Association, and the YMCA. He added new claims and defendants without requesting permission to do so. The amended complaint included federal civil-rights claims, discrimination claims, a First Amendment retaliation claim, conspiracy claims, and several California-law claims.

Issues and analysis

The court addressed three issues: whether Cammas exceeded the permitted scope of amendment, whether the claims were barred by statutes of limitations, and whether the claims were plausibly pleaded.

The court held that Cammas exceeded the scope of the permission to amend by adding new defendants and claims without first seeking leave. Technically, the new defendants were not parties to the case. The court nevertheless considered whether allowing the new claims and defendants would be futile because the statute of limitations barred them or because the court lacked supplemental jurisdiction over some state-law claims.

For most federal claims, the court applied two-year limitations periods. It concluded that the incident-based claims accrued on February 4, 2022, because Cammas alleged that he knew then that he had been choked, arrested, treated as the aggressor, and subjected to a false report. The court also concluded that the malicious-prosecution and fabrication-of-evidence claims were untimely even using later possible accrual dates tied to the prosecutor’s decision not to file charges. The false-arrest and false-imprisonment claims accrued no later than the end of the detention or the beginning of legal process.

The court rejected Cammas’s disability-tolling argument. Although it accepted the amended complaint’s medical allegations as true, it concluded that Cammas’s own allegations showed that he had enough legal capacity to sue: he filed and pursued a state-court case concerning the same incident, retained counsel, made public-records requests, issued subpoenas, and pursued complaints. The court distinguished the ability to understand and pursue legal rights from the later discovery of evidence supporting a more complex legal theory.

The court also rejected equitable tolling and equitable estoppel. The earlier lawsuit named the YMCA rather than the defendants in this case and therefore did not provide the City notice of these claims. The court said that records requests, internal-affairs complaints, and discovery efforts were not alternative legal remedies that could support equitable tolling. It further held that the alleged concealment involved the alleged wrongdoing itself, records disputes, or conduct by the YMCA, rather than affirmative conduct by the defendants that prevented timely filing.

California Government Code section 945.3 did not toll the claims because no criminal accusatory pleading was filed against Cammas. The prosecutor’s review and later decision not to prosecute did not create charges pending in court. The court also rejected the continuing-violation theory because the claims concerned individualized acts in 2022 and their aftermath, and later records denials or an internal-affairs decision did not revive those time-barred claims.

The Monell, 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3), and 42 U.S.C. § 1986 claims were untimely as well. The court said that the Monell and section 1985 claims accrued no later than mid-2023 under the delayed-accrual approach because Cammas alleged that he suspected the City’s alleged program and was investigating it by then. The court added that the Monell claim would also fail on the pleadings because the allegations did not identify a municipal policy, custom, training deficiency, or similar pattern that plausibly caused the officers’ conduct. The section 1986 claim was derivative of the section 1985 claim and had a one-year limitations period.

The new California-law claims—including claims under the Bane Act and Ralph Act, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and fraud—were also untimely. The court concluded that they accrued in February 2022 or, at the latest, December 2022, and that no tolling rule extended the deadlines. It did not reach the parties’ disputes about certain governmental immunities because the claims were untimely.

First Amendment retaliation claim

The court identified one theory that was potentially timely: Cammas’s allegation that Berkeley police refused to accept his police report on June 25, 2024, in retaliation for protected activity. The court held that the amended complaint did not plausibly plead retaliation because it did not identify who refused the report, what protected activity motivated the refusal, or facts beyond the sequence of events showing retaliatory intent.

Disposition

The court granted the motion to dismiss. It dismissed with prejudice and without leave to amend all claims other than the First Amendment retaliation claim based on conduct after November 28, 2023. For that retaliation theory, the court allowed Cammas to file a motion for leave to amend by September 21, 2026, accompanied by a supplement identifying the actor or actors, the protected activity, and facts supporting retaliatory motive. If he does not file the supplement by that date, the court will enter judgment and close the case.

This order resolved ECF No. 47.