Filed 11/28/05 Wu v. County of Orange CA4/3

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS

California Rules of Court, rule 977(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 977(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 977.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION THREE

FEILONG WU et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. COUNTY OF ORANGE et al., Defendants and Respondents.

G033915 (Super. Ct. No. 779098) O P I N I O N

Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court of Orange County, Richard O. Frazee, Judge. Affirmed.

Lakeshore Law Center and Jeffrey Wilens for Plaintiffs and Appellants.

Franscell, Strickland, Roberts & Lawrence, David D. Lawrence and Jorje Chica for Defendants and Respondents.

* * *

In 1996, two-year-old Cecil Turner (C.T.) was found murdered in a ravine close to the apartment where he lived with his mother, Edith Wu, his stepfather, Feilong Wu, and his sister, Brittany. During the investigation, the Wus were detained and questioned, their home was searched pursuant to a warrant, and some of their personal papers were seized. Media statements identified them as suspects. The Wus were never arrested or charged, and the case remains unsolved.

The Wus filed a complaint against the County and four officers of the Sheriff's Department: Ron Wilderson, Mark Simon, Roger Neumeister, and David Guest. The complaint alleged causes of action for violations of the Wus' Fourth Amendment rights, defamation, and conversion. The defendants brought a total of ten motions for summary adjudication; the trial court granted nine of them. Then, finding there was nothing left of the plaintiffs' case, the trial court dismissed the complaint.

On appeal, the Wus challenge the rulings on five of the summary adjudication motions brought by the four individual defendants, claiming there are triable issues of fact regarding probable cause to issue the search warrant and the officers' entitlement to qualified immunity under federal law and judicial immunity under Government Code section 821.6. The Wus also contend even if the summary adjudication motions were correctly granted, the trial court erroneously dismissed the complaint because one of their theories of liability, unlawful detention, was not resolved by any of the summary adjudication motions. We affirm.

FACTS

The Wus' sixth amended complaint contains the following allegations: During the early morning hours of August 12, 1996, C.T. disappeared from the Wus' apartment while Edith was sleeping and Feilong was jogging. Edith discovered his absence and called 911. An extensive search of the area revealed nothing. C.T.'s body was found in the afternoon of August 13, in a nearby ravine; the cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation.

At 7:00 a.m. on August 13, a witness gave a statement to a sheriff's deputy stating she had seen a young man carrying a child into a store near the Wus' apartment at about 10 a.m. the previous day. She remembered the incident because the man acted rudely. When she saw the newspaper accounts of C.T.'s disappearance and his photograph on the morning of August 13, she realized C.T. was the child she had seen in the store. Another witness contacted sheriff's deputies at the scene shortly after C.T.'s body was found on August 13. She told them she had seen â€