Sommers v. City of Santa Clara

Background

On March 9, 2017, Officer Colin Stewart shot and killed 24-year-old Jesus Geney Montes. The opinion states that Geney Montes was unarmed and experiencing a mental health breakdown. Before the shooting, Amanda Sommers called Santa Clara police several times because of her son’s conduct, including reports that he might be suicidal, had a knife, had a gun, and had stabbed himself. Officers responded to the residence but did not force entry. After the final call, officers found Geney Montes near an overpass. During a roughly ten-minute standoff, he did not brandish a weapon. He then moved toward the railroad tracks. Stewart pursued him, attempted to use a taser, and fired four rounds after the parties disputed what Geney Montes did immediately before the shooting. No gun was found on Geney Montes.

Amanda Sommers and Richard Sommers sued Stewart and the City. The claims included Fourth Amendment excessive force under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Fourteenth Amendment claims, municipal liability under Monell, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and California claims for assault and battery, wrongful death, negligence, and negligent or intentional infliction of emotional distress. The defendants moved for summary judgment on all claims and asserted qualified immunity for Stewart. Summary judgment is granted when the evidence shows no genuine dispute over a fact that could affect the outcome and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

Fourth Amendment claim against Stewart

The court denied summary judgment on the excessive-force claim against Stewart. It held that factual disputes prevented deciding whether Stewart’s use of deadly force was objectively reasonable. In particular, a reasonable jury could find that an officer would not have believed Geney Montes had a gun in his swimsuit pocket, and the parties disputed whether Geney Montes made a threatening movement before Stewart fired.

The court also denied summary judgment based on qualified immunity. Qualified immunity generally protects government officials from damages unless they violated a constitutional right that was clearly established at the time. The court found it inappropriate to resolve the clearly established-law question while the factual dispute about the justification for the shooting remained unresolved. The court stated that existing Ninth Circuit precedent clearly established that officers could not shoot an unarmed person who did not make a furtive movement, and could not shoot and kill a person without warning and objective provocation under the circumstances described in the cited precedent.

Fourth Amendment claim against the City

The court granted summary judgment to the City on the Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim. The court found that Amanda Sommers had not presented sufficient evidence of a City policy, custom, practice, failure to investigate or discipline officers, or inadequate use-of-force training that would support municipal liability under Monell.

Fourteenth Amendment claims

The court granted summary judgment to Stewart on Geney Montes’s Fourteenth Amendment excessive-force claim because counsel conceded at the hearing that this claim could not properly be brought as a substantive due-process claim.

The court denied summary judgment on Amanda Sommers’s Fourteenth Amendment familial-association claim against Stewart. Viewing the evidence favorably to Sommers, the court found factual disputes about whether Stewart used force that shocked the conscience. The court noted that a jury could find that Stewart helped create the escalation, that Geney Montes was unarmed, that he did not make a threatening movement, and that Stewart had nearly ten minutes to consider his actions before firing.

The court denied summary judgment on Sommers’s Fourteenth Amendment claim against the City. The claim included theories that the City lacked adequate policies for responding to people experiencing mental health crises and failed to train officers to respond appropriately. The court found triable factual issues about whether officers’ failure to investigate the report that Geney Montes had stabbed himself or obtain medical assistance deprived him of a constitutional safety interest, whether the City’s alleged lack of more specific policies showed deliberate indifference, and whether the alleged policy failures caused the injury. The court also denied summary judgment on the failure-to-train theory because it found a factual issue about whether the alleged failure to provide officers with specific tools for recurring mental health situations made a constitutional violation highly predictable.

Americans with Disabilities Act claim

The court denied summary judgment on the ADA claim against the City. It found evidence from which a jury could conclude that Geney Montes had a qualifying mental disability, that reasonable accommodations might have included referring him or his family to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center or using less confrontational tactics, and that the City knew of his mental health condition. The court found a factual dispute about whether the City failed to act despite knowing that harm was substantially likely, which could support intentional discrimination for purposes of monetary damages.

The court granted summary judgment to Stewart on the ADA claim. Title II of the ADA does not allow suit against Stewart as an individual because he was not a public entity.

California claims

The court denied summary judgment on the assault and battery, wrongful-death/negligence, and intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claims to the extent they concerned the use of deadly force. The court found a factual dispute about whether Stewart’s use of force was reasonable and concluded that the cited California discretionary-immunity provision did not resolve those claims at summary judgment.

The court also denied summary judgment on the negligence theory concerning the officers’ failure to force entry into Geney Montes’s bedroom, including the alleged failure to investigate the report that he had stabbed himself and failure to involve mental health professionals. The defendants had not addressed a statutory provision that could affect their immunity argument and therefore had not shown the absence of a triable factual issue.

Finally, the court denied summary judgment on Richard Sommers’s negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim. The opinion states that it was undisputed that he lived in the same house as Geney Montes and was the only father figure Geney Montes knew.

Other rulings and disposition

The court granted the defendants’ request for judicial notice of a Santa Clara County civil grand jury report. It sustained Amanda Sommers’s objection to four exhibits submitted with the defendants’ reply brief and overruled her objection concerning new arguments.

Overall, the court granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Specifically, it denied summary judgment on Stewart’s Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim; granted summary judgment on the City’s Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim; granted summary judgment on Geney Montes’s Fourteenth Amendment claim against Stewart; denied summary judgment on the Fourteenth Amendment familial-association claim against Stewart and the Fourteenth Amendment claim against the City; granted summary judgment on the ADA claim against Stewart; denied summary judgment on the ADA claim against the City; and denied summary judgment on the assault and battery, wrongful-death/negligence, and negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress claims.