Shiflett v. City of San Leandro

Background

The plaintiff sued the City of San Leandro and police officers Anthony Pantoja and Ismael Navarro. The plaintiff alleged excessive force and other civil-rights violations arising from Officer Navarro’s alleged use of a taser and Officer Pantoja’s alleged striking of the plaintiff with a baton.

The City terminated Officer Pantoja’s employment. It produced part of his termination file but withheld six documents: (1) his attorney’s letter appealing the termination; (2) the Alameda County District Attorney’s final report concerning a separate August 5, 2020 shooting involving Officer Pantoja; (3) the City’s notice-of-discipline letter and Officer Pantoja’s acknowledgment; (4) an Oakland Police Department investigative report; (5) the City’s notice of intent to impose discipline; and (6) an administrative-investigation report by the OIR group.

Relevance

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26, discovery may cover nonprivileged information relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. The court found the relevance standard especially broad in civil-rights excessive-force cases. It concluded that the withheld documents were relevant to the excessive-force claim, the municipal-liability claim, and potentially witness credibility. The defendants identified no burden associated with producing the documents, and the court rejected requiring the plaintiff to subpoena the documents from other agencies as unnecessarily inefficient.

Official-information privilege

The official-information privilege is a qualified protection for government information. A party asserting it must first make a substantial threshold showing, supported by a declaration or affidavit from a responsible official with personal knowledge. The required showing includes identifying the government or privacy interests threatened by disclosure and explaining why a protective order would not adequately address the risk.

The court found that the City had not met this threshold. A declaration from Emily Hung, the City’s Human Resources Director, stated that there might be procedural rules involved in an administrative appeal or employment case, but the court found that statement insufficient. The City also did not address most of the factors used to balance the government’s interests against the need for disclosure. The court concluded that most of those factors favored disclosure, particularly because discovery in civil-rights cases against police departments is generally weighted moderately toward disclosure.

Deliberative-process privilege

The deliberative-process privilege protects confidential, predecisional government communications that contain opinions, recommendations, or advice about government policies or decisions. The court explained that purely factual material generally is not protected and that the privilege is qualified, meaning it can be overcome when the need for accurate fact-finding outweighs the government’s interest in withholding the material.

The court was not persuaded that the privilege applied. The withheld documents appeared to concern Officer Pantoja’s termination rather than the development of municipal policy. The City’s unsupported statement that the privilege might apply to some records did not establish the privilege. The court also noted that courts generally do not apply the privilege to internal-affairs documents and investigations in civil-rights cases involving police departments.

Disposition

The court granted the plaintiff’s discovery request and ordered the City to produce the withheld documents pursuant to the protective order.