Shiheiber v. Hernandez

Background

Ibrahim Nimer Shiheiber, proceeding without a lawyer, sued Officer Brett Hernandez and the City of San Francisco over a January 24, 2019 encounter with San Francisco police officers. Shiheiber alleged that Hernandez unlawfully detained and searched him and used excessive force, violating the Fourth Amendment. He also alleged that, when he later tried to file a citizen complaint, City personnel sent him from station to station and denied him information. He claimed this suggested a City custom or practice of discouraging complaints against police and supported municipal liability for the alleged excessive force.

The City previously moved to dismiss the municipal-liability claim. In an earlier order, the court dismissed that claim but allowed Shiheiber to amend. The court had found that the original allegations were based largely on his own experience and isolated comments, and that the complaint-related allegations did not plausibly show that the City’s conduct caused the alleged excessive force because Shiheiber ultimately filed the complaint.

The amended allegations and the parties’ positions

In his Second Amended Complaint, Shiheiber alleged that Hernandez acted under a longstanding and widespread City practice of excessive force. He cited several lawsuits involving alleged police misconduct and settlements, allegations that officers faced few consequences, a 2016 Department of Justice assessment of the San Francisco Police Department, and the City’s handling of police complaints. He argued that these allegations showed the City accepted excessive force and allowed officers to remain in uniform after misconduct allegations or settlements.

The City argued that the new allegations remained conclusory and that the few cited lawsuits showed, at most, isolated incidents by individual officers rather than a municipal policy or custom. The City also argued that the cited settlements did not show that a City practice caused Hernandez to use excessive force against Shiheiber, and that the Department of Justice assessment did not establish a widespread practice at the relevant time.

Legal standard

The court considered the motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim for relief. At this stage, the court accepts well-pleaded factual allegations as true and views them favorably to the plaintiff, but it does not have to accept legal conclusions or unsupported assertions. The complaint must contain enough factual material to make liability a plausible inference, rather than merely reciting the elements of a claim.

Under Section 1983, a local government may be liable for a constitutional violation carried out under a formal policy, a longstanding practice or custom, an act by an official with final policymaking authority, or an unconstitutional decision ratified by such an official. For the practice-or-custom theory asserted here, the alleged conduct must be persistent and widespread enough to amount to a permanent and settled city policy. The policy, practice, or custom must also be a “moving force”—a cause—behind the constitutional violation.

Court’s analysis

The court concluded that the handful of cases Shiheiber cited did not support a plausible inference of a permanent and settled City policy of using excessive force. The court noted that Shiheiber alleged few specific facts about the other incidents and did not provide enough information to determine whether those incidents were similar to the events involving him.

The court also concluded that Shiheiber had not plausibly alleged that the City’s practice of settling lawsuits involving alleged excessive force was a moving force behind Hernandez’s alleged use of force. As a result, the court held that the municipal-liability claim failed as a matter of law.

Disposition

Because Shiheiber had already been given an opportunity to amend and had not cured the defect, the court concluded that further amendment would be futile. It granted the City’s renewed motion to dismiss and dismissed the municipal-liability claim against the City of San Francisco with prejudice. The City was the only claim against that defendant, and the Clerk was instructed to terminate the City as a defendant in the case. The opinion does not state a disposition of the claims against Officer Hernandez.