Gonzalez v. Ahern

Background

Daniel Gonzalez and other current and former inmates at Santa Rita Jail brought conditions-of-confinement claims against Alameda County, Wellpath Management, Inc., and Aramark Correctional Services, LLC. The operative complaint identified alleged inadequate or unsanitary food, inadequate sanitation, inadequate medical care, enforced idleness, and First Amendment retaliation. After an earlier class-certification motion was denied without prejudice, the plaintiffs filed a second motion seeking certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2), which concerns classes seeking uniform injunctive or declaratory relief.

The court construed the motion as seeking certification of a class of all male inmates because the plaintiffs did not have a female class representative. The court also noted that the proposed subclasses were defined by past injuries rather than exposure to common policies or practices, and that the motion lacked clearly presented evidence from named plaintiffs, proposed class representatives, or class members. The plaintiffs also filed late evidence, motions to seal, and separately filed evidentiary objections.

Class-Certification Standards

To certify a class, plaintiffs must satisfy Rule 23(a)’s requirements of numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequate representation, as well as Rule 23(b)’s applicable requirements. For a Rule 23(b)(2) class, the defendant must have acted or refused to act on grounds generally applicable to the class, so that one injunction or declaration would provide relief to the class as a whole.

The court found numerosity satisfied because the proposed class included all male inmates and the jail population was reported as 2,086 on December 5, 2022. The court focused on commonality, which requires evidence that the claims can be resolved through common answers about common policies or practices rather than individualized proof.

Food and Medical-Care Subclasses

The plaintiffs argued that the jail’s for-profit structure created financially driven policies that led Wellpath and Aramark to minimize medical and food services. For medical care, they described delayed or inadequate treatment through several inmates’ testimony and cited a grand jury finding that 20 percent of grievances concerned medical care. The court held that this evidence showed varied individual problems, not a coherent jail-wide policy or practice. The plaintiffs did not challenge Wellpath’s written medical-care policies or provide expert or other evidence showing that Wellpath failed to follow them.

For food, the plaintiffs relied in part on testimony that inmates received too few carrots and described instances of spoiled food, dirty trays, mold, vermin, and foreign objects. Aramark submitted evidence that it addressed carrot supply shortages by providing multiple bags sufficient to meet the menu amount and that the menu measurements were based on volume rather than weight. The court held that the individual accounts did not establish a systemic food shortage or a common policy causing the alleged constitutional violations.

The court therefore concluded that the plaintiffs had not provided the significant proof needed to show that the medical-care and food claims could be established through generalized, class-wide evidence. The motion was denied as to both subclasses.

Sanitation Subclass

The plaintiffs identified two alleged jail-wide policies or practices: requiring inmates to maintain cell and common-area sanitation without consistently providing adequate cleaning supplies or addressing sanitation problems involving inmates who could not maintain their own areas, and failing to provide toilets in common areas while leaving access to cell-area toilets during pod time to individual deputies. The plaintiffs offered declarations, deposition testimony, and grand jury findings concerning inadequate cleaning supplies, filthy cells and showers, feces, inconsistent cleaning, and inmates using showers as toilets.

The court rejected the County defendants’ argument that the sanitation claim was barred by claim or issue preclusion because they had not pleaded that affirmative defense or raised it in their earlier motions to dismiss. On the evidence presented, the court found that the alleged sanitation policies and practices affected class members in the same way and satisfied Rule 23(a)’s commonality requirement. It also found that James Mallett’s sanitation claims were typical and that no conflict appeared to prevent him from adequately representing the class.

The court concluded that the sanitation allegations, if true, showed policies and practices that could create a substantial risk to inmates’ health and safety and could be addressed through class-wide relief. Certification of the inadequate-sanitation subclass was granted, but only conditionally.

Class Counsel and Other Procedural Rulings

The court did not find that the ethical concerns raised about Ms. Huang prevented her from representing the class. However, it expressed serious concerns about a single practitioner’s ability to litigate an action involving thousands of detainees and conditioned Ms. Huang’s appointment as class counsel on her obtaining qualified co-counsel.

The court struck the plaintiffs’ two administrative motions to seal because they did not comply with the local sealing rule and sought broad sealing of more than 300 pages without sufficiently explaining or citing the materials. The court also struck the plaintiffs’ separately filed evidentiary objections because the local rule required such objections to be included in the opposition brief.

Disposition

The court denied in part and conditionally granted in part the plaintiffs’ second motion for class certification. It denied certification of the inadequate-medical-care and inadequate-food subclasses. It granted certification of the inadequate-sanitation subclass on the condition that Ms. Huang obtain qualified co-counsel. The court also struck the administrative motions to seal and the separately filed evidentiary objections. The existing pretrial schedule otherwise remained in effect, and the court set a status conference for June 29, 2023.