In 2017, plaintiff was an Uber driver. Plaintiff had immigrated to the United States from Asia.
On October 2, 2017, plaintiff picked up a passenger who appeared to be of Korean descent and who used the name “Maverick.” After plaintiff refused to use the passenger’s preferred route to his destination, the passenger started hitting the back of plaintiff’s head with his fist and, when plaintiff turned his head, landed a blow near plaintiff’s right eye and broke plaintiff’s sunglasses. When plaintiff called 911, the passenger hopped out of the car and fled on foot.
B. Investigation and nonprosecution of passenger
Two Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers responded to plaintiff’s 911 call. The officers interviewed plaintiff about the incident, documented plaintiff’s injuries, and obtained from plaintiff the destination address the passenger had provided for his Uber ride.
In January 2018, the LAPD detective assigned to the incident, Fernando Pantoja (Pantoja), asked plaintiff to come down to the police station to see if plaintiff could identify his assailant. Plaintiff elected not to show up as agreed, but later showed up on another date. Although Pantoja put a photograph of the person whose name plaintiff provided from the Uber records into a six- or eight-person photospread, plaintiff said his assailant was not in the photospread. Plaintiff spoke with Pantoja afterwards, and from that conversation came to the conclusion that “obviously no charges will ever be filed.”
The City Attorney did not prosecute anyone for the assault.
C. Nonpresentation of a claim to the City
On May 9, 2019, plaintiff wrote a letter to the Los Angeles City Attorney, Michael Feuer (Feuer), complaining about the City’s failure to prosecute the person whose information he had provided from the Uber records and expressing plaintiff’s intent to sue the City.
Plaintiff did not present a claim to the City through its established claims presentation procedure before filing his lawsuit.
II. Procedural Background
A. Pleadings
On December 19, 2019, plaintiff sued the City, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, the LAPD, as well as Feuer and Pantoja in their individual capacities (collectively, defendants).
The complaint alleges that the investigation was defective for several reasons. Pantoja did not use the proper procedures to obtain information from Uber about the passenger. Pantoja was also wrong to ask plaintiff to identify his assailant from a photospread because the information eventually obtained from Uber was, in plaintiff’s view, sufficient by itself to file charges. And even if a photospread was an appropriate investigative technique, the photospread was either (1) misleading, because the passenger’s photo was not in the photospread, or (2) unfair, because the passenger’s photo was in the photospread but the photos were all too old and did not fill all six or eight slots with persons of Korean descent.
The complaint alleges 12 separate claims, but they fall into two broad categories.
The first category consists of the nine claims that are based on defendants’ failure to properly investigate and to file charges. Plaintiff alleges that these failures were due to “willful sabotage” (first claim), “favoritism” (third claim), “corruption and/or bribery” (fourth claim), a “conspiracy” (fifth claim), “collusion” (sixth claim), “fraud” (seventh
