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Wrongful Death Suit Against Pasadena, Officers Is Reinstated
Ninth Circuit, for Second Time, Reverses Dismissal-With-Prejudice by Judge Percy Anderson of Lawsuit Brought by Man Who Was Not Biological Son of Decedent Nor Adopted by Him; Opinion Says Order Not Supported by Adequate Analysis
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has, for the second time, ordered reinstatement of a wrongful death action brought by a man against the City of Pasadena and eight members of its police department over the fatal beating of a person who was not a blood relative and had not adopted him but whom he regarded as a father figure.
Reginald Thomas Jr., 36, died in Huntington Memorial Hospital Sept. 30, 2016, after a struggle with six officers who came to an apartment where the man, who suffered from mental illness and was high on drugs, was holding a fire extinguisher, was armed with a knife, and was behaving erratically. The city settled with his girlfriend and children for $1.5 million, but a claim by Shane Love, who says he was reared by Thomas, was rejected.
Dismissal of Love’s lawsuit with prejudice was reversed Wednesday in a memorandum opinion signed by Circuit Judge John B. Owens, Senior Circuit Judge J. Clifford Wallace, and District Court Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater of the Northern District of Texas, sitting by designation. The judges cited an inadequate analysis by District Court Judge Percy Anderson of the Central District of California in ordering dismissal.
Anderson’s Order
Anderson said in his Nov. 27, 2023 order:
“[N]ot all types of parent-child relationships are entitled to substantive due process protection. Namely, neither the Supreme Court nor the Ninth Circuit has found that a relationship lacking a legal or biological connection - like that of Plaintiff and Thomas—is sufficient to support a substantive due process claim for loss of a parent-child relationship. Instead, for a plaintiff to state a viable claim for loss of a parent-child relationship under the Fourteenth Amendment, the relationship must be custodial, as well as either biological or legal.”
He added:
“[E]ven if Thomas was Plaintiff’s ‘presumed parent’ under California Family Code § 7611(d), he nonetheless lacks any biological or legal connection to Thomas and therefore has no protected liberty interest in their relationship. Accordingly, Plaintiff has failed to, and cannot, state a claim for violation of his substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.”
April 4 Decision
Tuesday’s decision cites the Ninth Circuit’s April 4 opinion by Judge Morgan Christen in Regino v. Staley. She wrote that “[t]o assess whether there has been a violation of a fundamental right, we begin with”—in the words of the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1997 opinion in Washington v. Glucksberg—“a ‘careful description’ of the asserted fundamental liberty interest.”
The judges said that there must next be an assessment as to whether, as the Ninth Circuit put it in the 2021 case of Khachatryan v. Blinken, an interest that is “objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition, and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if [it was] sacrificed.”
They wrote:
“Here, as in Regino, and without its guidance, the district court did not undertake such an analysis. Accordingly, we vacate and remand for the district court to apply the Glucksberg analysis consistent with Regino.”
Previous Reversal
The Ninth Circuit, on July 11, 2023, reversed a previous dismissal of the case by Anderson without leave to amend. That dismissal was based on issue preclusion.
A nearly identical suit had been brought on behalf of Love, then a minor, and designated, “S.L.” That action was dismissed with prejudice on June 17, 2019 by then-Judge James Otero of the Central District of California (now a mediator/arbitrator).
Otero observed that the complaint “does not allege a custodial, biological, or legal relationship between Plaintiff S.L. and Decedent,” remarking:
“Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court precedent simply do not permit standing under Plaintiff S.L.’s circumstances.”
Reversal of Anderson’s dismissal came in an opinion by then-Judge J. Clifford Wallace (now a senior judge). He said that ordinarily, a second suit on the same claim would be barred but noted that the refiling was in state court and declared that “the Defendants waived issue preclusion by removing the refiled case to federal court.”
That published opinion was concurred in by Fitzwater. Owens concurred in the result but maintained that there was no issue preclusion because what was decided by Otero was that Love lacked standing while the defendants in the case before Anderson “attempted to preclude litigation on whether Love ‘had a due process right in the companionship...of the decedent,’ which was never litigated nor decided in the prior proceeding.”
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office’s Justice System Integrity Division determined in 2018 that the officers “used reasonable force in subduing Thomas” and no charges were brought against them.
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