Paredes v. City of San Jose

Background

Anthony Luis Paredes alleged that San Jose police officers used excessive force when a police dog bit and held his neck during his arrest on February 7, 2022. According to the Second Amended Complaint, officers found Paredes hiding in a plastic yard-waste bin, opened the bin, and Officer Michael Jeffrey ordered the police dog to bite him. The dog remained attached to Paredes’s neck for about 60 seconds. Paredes alleged that he was not resisting and suffered multiple neck injuries.

Paredes asserted five claims: excessive force against three officers; failure to intervene against three officers; and three claims against the City of San Jose under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal civil-rights statute. The City claims alleged an unconstitutional custom or practice, ratification of the officers’ conduct, and inadequate training. The defendants’ partial motion to dismiss challenged only the claims against the City, not the claims against the individual officers.

Legal Standard

The court applied Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which asks whether the complaint contains enough factual matter to state a legally plausible claim. At this stage, the court generally accepts well-pleaded factual allegations as true but does not accept conclusory statements or unreasonable inferences.

For municipal liability under § 1983, a plaintiff must plausibly allege that a constitutional violation resulted from a city policy or custom. A policy or custom may include a written policy, an established practice, inadequate training, or—under limited circumstances—a final policymaker’s approval of a subordinate’s conduct.

Claim 3: Unconstitutional Customs and Practices

The court granted the motion to dismiss this claim with leave to amend. Paredes alleged that the City maintained various customs and practices involving excessive force, but the court found many of those allegations to be formulaic conclusions unsupported by specific facts.

Paredes also relied on six alleged canine deployments involving Officer Jeffrey. The court held that repeated conduct by one officer over approximately one year did not plausibly establish a widespread and persistent municipal custom. The court also found that references to two other lawsuits did not adequately identify a City policy or practice that caused Paredes’s injuries. The allegation that the acting police chief found the use of force “within policy” likewise did not make the claim plausible because Paredes did not identify the challenged policy.

Claim 4: Ratification

The court denied the motion to dismiss the ratification claim. Ratification requires a final policymaker to know about a subordinate’s constitutional violation and make a conscious, affirmative choice to approve both the conduct and its basis. Merely failing to overrule the conduct is not enough.

Paredes alleged that Dave Tindall, the acting police chief, ratified the officers’ conduct by finding it “objectively reasonable” and “within policy.” The defendants argued that the City Charter did not make the police chief a final policymaker. The court took judicial notice of the City Charter and the San Jose Police Department Duty Manual. Although the Charter placed department heads under the City Manager’s supervision, the Duty Manual stated that the police chief was the department’s final authority on policy, operations, and discipline. The court held that Paredes plausibly alleged that authority had been delegated to Tindall and therefore plausibly alleged ratification.

Claim 5: Inadequate Training

The court granted the motion to dismiss this claim with leave to amend. A failure-to-train claim requires facts showing that the City’s training deficiency reflected deliberate indifference to constitutional rights. The court concluded that Paredes’s factual allegations concerned only Officer Jeffrey and therefore did not plausibly show a citywide training policy or deliberate indifference.

The court also found that Paredes’s general allegations about inadequate supervision, training, and discipline did not identify what the training was, how it was deficient, or how the deficiency caused his injuries. His reference to another lawsuit involving a different San Jose police officer did not cure the problem, particularly because that other case appeared to involve affirmative training to use a “bite and hold” policy, while Paredes alleged a failure to provide adequate training.

Order

The court ordered that the defendants’ motion to dismiss the City claim concerning unconstitutional customs and practices was granted with leave to amend. The motion to dismiss the City claim concerning ratification was denied. The motion to dismiss the City claim concerning failure to train was granted with leave to amend.

The court permitted Paredes to file a Third Amended Complaint by July 28, 2023, limited to the scope allowed by the order. If he did not amend, the defendants were required to respond to any surviving claims in the Second Amended Complaint by August 11, 2023. The opinion does not rule on the merits of Paredes’s claims against the individual officers.