Davis v. Breed
- Phyllis Hamilton
- 4:19-cv-03419
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Jimmy Lee Davis v. City of San Francisco, Judge Hamilton dismissed the amended action with prejudice after screening it as frivolous.
The ruling ended Jimmy Lee Davis’s action against the City of San Francisco and prevented him from refiling this action based on the same complaint.
What happened
Jimmy Lee Davis sued the City of San Francisco. The court reviewed his amended complaint because he had permission to proceed without paying the filing fee. The court said the complaint repeated allegations of a wide-ranging conspiracy involving Mayor Breed, a SWAT team, and others who allegedly fired on him.
The court had previously dismissed Davis’s original complaint as frivolous but allowed him to amend it. It found that the amended complaint was little changed and remained frivolous. The court also struck a later filing because Davis submitted it without the court’s permission after already amending his complaint.
The action was dismissed with prejudice because Davis had been given an opportunity to amend and had not shown that he could state a non-frivolous claim. The order was issued by Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton.
The detailed version
- Davis v. Breed · No. 4:19-cv-03419
- Phyllis Hamilton
- Dec. 13, 2019
Background
Jimmy Lee Davis brought an action against the City of San Francisco. Because the court had allowed him to proceed without paying the filing fee, it screened his complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915. That screening procedure permits dismissal of claims whose factual allegations are clearly baseless, including claims involving irrational, wholly incredible, fantastic, or delusional scenarios.
The court had dismissed Davis’s original complaint on August 13, 2019, as frivolous, while allowing him to amend. The earlier complaint alleged a wide-ranging conspiracy involving the mayor of San Francisco, her son, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a SWAT team, Magistrate Judge Beeler, and others to defraud and murder Davis.
Filings and Allegations
Davis filed a first amended complaint on August 22, 2019. He later filed another document on September 11, 2019, that purported to amend the complaint again. The court ruled that the later filing was improper because Davis had already amended his complaint and had not obtained permission to file a second amended complaint. The court therefore struck the September 11 filing, leaving the August 22 first amended complaint as the operative complaint.
The operative complaint repeated the allegations underlying the original complaint. Davis alleged that Mayor Breed, a SWAT team, and others had fired upon him from downtown San Francisco to the Bayview and Fillmore districts in an attempt to assassinate and intimidate him with lethal weapons. The court described the complaint as continuing to allege a vague, wide-ranging conspiracy and found it little changed from the original complaint.
Davis argued that the original complaint was correct and that describing it as delusional was racist and disrespectful. The court concluded that these arguments did not address the problems identified in its earlier order.
Ruling
The court held that the amended complaint was frivolous for the same reasons as the original complaint. Because Davis had had ample opportunity to amend and had not shown any likelihood that he could allege facts stating a non-frivolous claim, the court dismissed the action with prejudice. The court also struck the later filing at Docket Number 19.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.