Rubalcava v. City Of San Jose

Background

Lionel Rubalcava and the City of San Jose asked the court to resolve a dispute over Rubalcava’s proposed deposition of the City under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6). That rule allows a party to question an organization through one or more witnesses designated to testify about specified matters. Rubalcava wanted the City to designate a witness concerning San Jose Police Department Policy L 4600, which addressed eyewitness identifications, including the policy’s meaning, its application to officers and investigative activities, and changes since 2002.

Rubalcava’s action includes federal constitutional and state-law claims arising from his conviction in 2003 for attempting to murder Raymond Rodriguez. He alleges, among other things, that San Jose police officers used improperly suggestive techniques to persuade eyewitnesses to identify him as the shooter and concealed the circumstances of those identifications.

The City objected that the proposed topic sought expert opinions, was vague and overbroad, and would impose an undue burden because the policy dated back more than 20 years. Rubalcava said he sought factual testimony about what the written policy meant, not an opinion about whether particular officers complied with it.

Court’s analysis

The court agreed that testimony about what the eyewitness-identification policy was in 2002 was a factual inquiry, not expert testimony. The court noted that testimony from individual officers suggested that parts of the written policy could have more than one interpretation, might not have reflected the department’s actual policy, or might have left matters to officers’ discretion. The City therefore could not rely solely on producing the written policy if Rubalcava sought to learn what the official policy was.

The court limited the deposition. Rubalcava disavowed any effort to ask whether particular conduct complied with the policy or how the policy applied to the officers’ conduct at issue. The court held that the portion of the deposition notice referring to the policy’s “application to SJPD officers and their investigative activities” did not describe the subject with the required reasonable particularity. To the extent Rubalcava intended that language to require testimony about particular conduct, he could not pursue that inquiry.

The court rejected the City’s burden objection as presented. Rubalcava sought testimony about the official policy, not about what individual officers or command staff understood or how they applied the procedures. The City represented at the hearing that information about the historical policy might no longer be reasonably available. The court directed the City first to prepare a witness to testify about the policy as it existed in 2002, to the extent reasonably available. If that information was unavailable, the City had to prepare a witness to testify about the current policy and how it had changed since the relevant investigation period, to the extent reasonably available.

Disposition

The court ruled that Rubalcava may take the City’s Rule 30(b)(6) deposition regarding the San Jose Police Department’s identification policy, including the meaning of Policy L 4600 during the period relevant to the investigation of Rodriguez’s shooting. The deposition was subject to the stated limits. The court did not decide whether any resulting testimony could later be admitted at trial. Judge VIRGINIA K. DEMARCHI also noted that fact discovery was scheduled to close on March 10, 2023, and directed the parties to confer promptly about scheduling; if necessary, they were to request a schedule modification.