explaining that when a movant seeks to amend his or her complaint after the pretrial scheduling order deadline expires, Rule 16’s good cause standard applies, rather than the more generous Rule 15 amendment standard
How later courts described this case
- explaining that when a movant seeks to amend his or her complaint after the pretrial scheduling order deadline expires, Rule 16’s good cause standard applies, rather than the more generous Rule 15 amendment standard
- explaining that good cause standard is not met when the moving party does not act with diligence
- absolute immunity did not apply to, inter alia, defendant social workers’ “allegedly false statements and omissions made in defendants’ court reports” during juvenile dependency proceedings
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
MAY 4 2020
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
CYNTHIA RIVERA-MARTINEZ; No. 19-15008
ARTURO MARTINEZ,
D.C. No. 1:16-cv-00062-SEH
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v. MEMORANDUM*
KERN COUNTY; KERN COUNTY
DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN
SERVICES; STEPHANIE MEEK, Social
Worker; individually,
Defendants-Appellees,
and
PHILIP HYDEN, M.D.,
Defendant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of California
Sam E. Haddon, District Judge, Presiding
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
Submitted April 16, 2020**
Pasadena, California
Before: SCHROEDER and COLLINS, Circuit Judges, and BAYLSON,*** District
Judge.
Plaintiff-Appellants Cynthia Rivera-Martinez and Arturo Martinez appeal
the district court’s dismissal of their 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action. Plaintiffs alleged
that Defendant-Appellees Kern County, Kern County Department of Human
Services, and Social Worker Stephanie Meek violated their constitutional rights
when they temporarily took custody of Appellants’ five-week-old son while
investigating whether permanent custody was appropriate. In particular, Plaintiffs
alleged that Meek falsely omitted information from her “Social Study –
Detentional” report, which Meek filed with the superior court in connection with
its review of the county’s temporary custody of Plaintiffs’ son. The district court
dismissed the action, holding that as a matter of law Meek was entitled to absolute
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
***
The Honorable Michael M. Baylson, United States District Judge for
the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, sitting by designation.
2
immunity or, alternatively, qualified immunity.1 We affirm the district court
judgment, but only on the ground of qualified immunity.
The district court erred in applying absolute immunity to all of the conduct
alleged in Plaintiffs’ operative complaint. We have followed the Supreme Court in
distinguishing between the quasi-prosecutorial task of filing charging documents
(which is entitled to absolute immunity) and the separate but related task of
providing factual evidence in support of the allegations made (which is not). See,
e.g., Kalina v. Fletcher, 522 U.S. 118, 129–30 (1997) (prosecutor’s attestation to
underlying facts in support of arrest warrant involved performing “an act that any
competent witness might have performed”); Hardwick v. Cty. of Orange, 844 F.3d
1112, 1116 (9th Cir. 2017) (absolute immunity did not apply to, inter alia,
defendant social workers’ “allegedly false statements and omissions made in
defendants’ court reports” during juvenile dependency proceedings). Under
Hardwick, at least some of the claims against Meek were not subject to absolute
immunity.
1
The district court’s order is not entirely clear as to the basis on which the
claims against the county and its agency were dismissed. Plaintiffs, however, do
not contend on appeal that their claims against those defendants can survive if their
claims against Meeks fail, and we deem any such argument to have been waived.
Loomis v. Cornish, 836 F.3d 991, 998 n.3 (9th Cir. 2016).
3
We nonetheless affirm the district court’s alternative conclusion that Meek
was entitled to qualified immunity. Construing the evidence in the light most
favorable to Plaintiffs, we conclude that Meek did not violate Plaintiffs’ clearly
established rights. See District of Colombia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589 (2018).
“[A] defendant cannot be said to have violated a clearly established right unless the
right’s contours were sufficiently definite that any reasonable official in the
defendant’s shoes would have understood that he was violating it.” Plumhoff v.
Rickard, 572 U.S. 765, 778–79 (2014). Plaintiffs have the burden to show that
“the right allegedly violated was clearly established at the time of the alleged
misconduct.” Martinez v. City of Clovis, 943 F.3d 1260, 1275 (9th Cir. 2019)
(citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Here, Plaintiffs’ theory is not
“that Meek fabricated evidence,” but rather that she failed to present obviously
relevant evidence to the court and otherwise “fail[ed] to seek the evidence that
would have revealed the truth of what happened to [Plaintiffs’] baby.” Even
granting that Meek’s investigation was deficient and that she failed to present
additional evidence that might have supported a different conclusion in the
dependency proceedings, we cannot say that the nature of the deficiencies were
such that it would have been apparent to every reasonable official in Meek’s shoes
4
that she was thereby violating Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. See Plumhoff, 572
U.S. 765, 778–79. Meek was therefore entitled to qualified immunity.
The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying, for failure to show
good cause, Plaintiffs’ motion to file a second amended complaint. After the
pretrial scheduling order deadline to amend a complaint expires, a complaint “may
be modified only for good cause and with the judge’s consent.” Fed. R. Civ. P.
16(b)(4); see also In re W. States Wholesale Nat. Gas Antitrust Litig., 715 F.3d
716, 737 (9th Cir. 2013) (explaining that when a movant seeks to amend his or her
complaint after the pretrial scheduling order deadline expires, Rule 16’s good
cause standard applies, rather than the more generous Rule 15 amendment
standard). Plaintiffs’ proposed second amended complaint alleges, for the first
time, constitutional violations against the Delano Police Department and Officer
Gay. Although Plaintiffs did not know of Officer Gay’s personal involvement
prior to the expiration of the deadline to amend the complaint, Plaintiffs knew of
the Delano Police Department’s involvement prior to filing their initial complaint,
and knew well before the deadline to file an amended complaint expired that the
Delano police acted without a warrant. Plaintiffs did not file an initial action
against the Delano Police Department and did not amend their complaint prior to
the deadline expiring, and they make no good cause showing for failing to do so.
5
See Johnson v. Mammoth Recreations, Inc., 975 F.2d 604, 609 (9th Cir. 1992)
(explaining that good cause standard is not met when the moving party does not act
with diligence).
AFFIRMED.
6