Koch v. City of Spokane et al, No. 2:2023cv00164 - Document 64 (E.D. Wash. 2024)
Court Description: ORDER GRANTING 55 DEFENDANTS' MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT. All deadlines, pretrial conference and trial are VACATED. This file is closed. Signed by Judge Thomas O. Rice. (Service of Notice on parties not registered as users of the Court CM/ECF system accomplished via USPS mail.) (REM, Case Administrator)
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Koch v. City of Spokane et al Doc. 64 1 FI LED I N THE U.S. DI STRI CT COURT EASTERN DI STRI CT OF WASHI NGTON 2 May 07, 2024 3 SEAN F. MCAVOY, CLERK 4 5 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON 6 7 MARK A. KOCH, NO. 2:23-CV-0164-TOR 8 9 10 Plaintiff, ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT v. 11 CITY OF SPOKANE, a municipality, and SPOKANE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, a municipality, 12 Defendants. 13 BEFORE THE COURT is Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment 14 (ECF No. 55). The matter was submitted for consideration without oral argument. 15 The Court has reviewed the record and files herein and is fully informed. For the 16 reasons discussed below, Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment (ECF No. 17 55) is GRANTED. 18 BACKGROUND 19 The background facts of this action were summarized in the Court’s 20 previous Orders denying on Plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment and ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT ~ 1 Dockets.Justia.com 1 Plaintiff’s motion for reconsideration. See ECF Nos. 53; 58. 2 DISCUSSION 3 Defendants move for summary judgment on Plaintiff’s remaining Fourth 4 Amendment, due process, equal protection and negligence claims. ECF No. 56 at 5 2. Defendants assert that Plaintiff lacks standing as to his remaining constitutional 6 claims. Id. at 4-6. The Court agrees that Plaintiff has not satisfied the injury-in- 7 fact prong required to confer Article III standing and therefore it must dismiss this 8 action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. 9 I. 10 Standing Standing is a jurisdictional requirement that grows out of the separation of 11 powers principles implicit in the Constitution. See U.S. CONST. art. III, § 2 12 (limiting the federal judicial power to “Cases” or “Controversies”); see also I.N.S. 13 v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 946 (1983) (“‘[S]eparation of powers was not simply an 14 abstract generalization in the minds of the Framers: it was woven into the 15 documents that they drafted in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.’”) (quoting 16 Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 124 (1976)). Lack of Article III standing requires 17 dismissal for want of subject-matter jurisdiction. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(h)(3) (“If the 18 court determines at any time that it lacks subject-matter jurisdiction, the court must 19 dismiss the action.”). 20 To establish standing, the party invoking federal jurisdiction “must allege [1] ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT ~ 2 1 personal injury [2] fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct 2 and [3] likely to be redressed by the requested relief.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 3 737, 751 (1984); see Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 103-4 4 (1998) (“This triad . . . constitutes the core of Article III’s case-or-controversy 5 requirement, and the party invoking federal jurisdiction bears the burden of 6 establishing its existence.”). 7 Here, Defendants allege that Plaintiff cannot meet the first prong of the test: 8 the injury-in-fact requirement. An “‘injury-in-fact’ [is] an invasion of a legally 9 protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or 10 imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.” Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 11 555, 560 (1992) (internal quotations and citations removed). An injury is 12 particularized when it “affect[s] the plaintiff in a personal and individual way.” 13 Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330, 339 (2016) (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 14 n.1). For an injury to be “concrete,” it “must be ‘de facto’; that is, it must exist.” 15 Id. at 340. Similarly, for an injury to be actual or imminent, it must either actually 16 exist or certainly recur. See Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 409 17 (2013) (“[W]e have repeatedly reiterated that ‘threatened injury must be certainly 18 impending to constitute injury in fact,’ and that ‘allegations of possible future 19 injury’ are not sufficient.”) (quoting Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 157 20 (1990)) (emphasis in original); see also, e.g., City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT ~ 3 1 U.S. 95, 106 n.7 (1983) (Plaintiff lacked standing to obtain an injunction against 2 the enforcement of a police chokehold policy because he could not “credibly allege 3 that he faced a realistic threat from the future application of the City’s policy.”). 4 Here, Plaintiff submits that two injuries-in-fact are at play: (1) that he was 5 ticketed and forced to challenge that citation in court, see ECF No. 43-4 at 1, and 6 (2) that he faces a credible threat of future prosecution for violations of the 7 Airport’s no-parking rule and therefore “must prosecute this case to fruition to 8 prevent such reoccurrences,” ECF No. 59 at 4. 9 To the extent that Plaintiff argues that the initial ticket and process of 10 contesting that ticket harmed him in some way, he has not satisfied the injury-in- 11 fact or redressability prongs of standing. As the alleged injury relates to the 12 issuance of the ticket itself, the injury is not concrete because Plaintiff prevailed in 13 contesting that ticket before filing this lawsuit. Even if the ticket could be 14 characterized as an injury-in-fact, a favorable decision from this Court would not 15 redress the injury because the citation was already dismissed by the municipal 16 court and this Court lacks jurisdiction to adjudicate parking infractions issued by 17 Airport police. Additionally, the fact that Plaintiff incurred some costs or 18 experienced certain inconvenience in the process of challenging the ticket is not 19 sufficient to confer standing. See also Fair Housing Council of San Fernando 20 Valley v. Roommate.com, LLC, 666 F.3d 1216, 1219 (9th Cir. 2012) (“[S]tanding ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT ~ 4 1 must be established independent of the lawsuit filed by the plaintiff.”) (internal 2 quotations and citations omitted). 3 Finally, Plaintiff argues that “[i]t is sufficient that [he] intends to engage in a 4 course of conduct arguably affected with a constitutional interest and that there is a 5 credible threat that the challenged provision will be invoked against [him].” ECF 6 No. 59 at 4 (quoting LSO, Ltd. v. Stroh, 205 F.3d 1146, 1154-55 (9th Cir. 2000)). 7 As discussed in this Court’s Order denying Plaintiff’s motion for reconsideration, 8 ECF No. 58 at 5-6, there is no constitutional right to park in a designated no- 9 parking zone for an unspecified period of time.1 Moreover, Plaintiff has not 10 established beyond mere speculation that he faces a risk of future prosecution. To 11 the extent he relies on evidence of his past citation, he has not established that he 12 faces any continuing, present, adverse effects from that ticket. See LSO, 205 F.3d 13 at 1155 (“[E]vidence of past prosecution is not sufficient to gain standing ‘if 14 unaccompanied by any continuing, present, adverse effects.’”) (internal quotations 15 16 17 1 For the first time in this case, Plaintiff identifies a regulation that 18 purportedly gives him the right to park for up to three minutes in a no-parking 19 zone. However, as Defendant points out, this regulation only applies to drivers on 20 public highways. ECF No. 61 at 4-5 (citing WAC 308-330-439). ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT ~ 5 1 and citations omitted). In other words, Plaintiff has not shown the injury is actual 2 or imminent. Accordingly, Plaintiff lacks standing. 3 II. 4 Dismissal Having dismissed Plaintiff’s federal constitutional claims for lack of 5 standing, the Court may not adjudicate Plaintiff’s state law negligence claim. Scott 6 v. Pasadena Unified Sch. Dist., 306 F.3d 646, 664 (9th Cir. 2002) (holding that 7 dismissal of a federal constitutional claim for want of subject-matter jurisdiction 8 requires the court to dismiss remaining state law claims). As such, the Court 9 dismisses the remaining state law claim and grants summary judgment in favor of 10 Defendants. 11 ACCORDINGLY, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED: 12 13 1. Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment (ECF No. 55) is GRANTED. The case is DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE. 14 2. All deadlines, pretrial conference and trial are VACATED. 15 The District Court Executive is directed to enter this Order and Judgment in 16 17 favor of Defendants, furnish copies to the parties, and CLOSE the file. DATED May 7, 2024. 18 19 THOMAS O. RICE United States District Judge 20 ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT ~ 6
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