Grimm v. City of Portland, No. 18-35673 (9th Cir. 2020)
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Plaintiff filed suit against the City of Portland, alleging that Portland's pre-towing notice was inadequate under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
The Ninth Circuit held that the district court erred in applying Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), rather than Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306 (1950), to analyze plaintiff's adequacy of notice claim. The panel first reiterated a settled principle: Due process requires that individualized notice be given before an illegally parked car is towed unless the state has a "strong justification" for not doing so. In this case, the district court did not consider the differences between Mullane and Mathews, but relied on a non-precedential memorandum disposition instead. The panel held that no reason appears why Mullane should not govern the adequacy of pre-towing notice, because it governs the adequacy of notice in other contexts. Therefore, the panel remanded for the district court to apply Mullane's "reasonably calculated" standard and for further proceedings.
Court Description: Civil Rights. The panel reversed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the City of Portland in an action alleging that the City’s pre-towing notice was inadequate under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The panel first reiterated a settled principle: Due process requires that individualized notice be given before an illegally parked car is towed unless the state has a “strong justification” for not doing so. Clement v. City of Glendale, 518 F.3d 1090, 1094 (9th Cir. 2008). The panel held that the district court erred by relying on a 2017 unpublished disposition, Sackman v. City of Los Angeles, 677 F. App’x 365, 366 (9th Cir. 2017), which affirmed the application of the balancing test set forth in Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976), to a towing notice case. The panel held that Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306 (1950), rather than Mathews, sets forth the appropriate standard for analyzing the adequacy of a pre-towing notice claim. Under Mullane, the government is required to provide notice reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections. GRIMM V. CITY OF PORTLAND 3 Because the district court applied an incorrect legal standard in determining whether the pre-towing notice was sufficient, and the record was not fully developed, the panel remanded this case to the district court. On remand, the panel instructed the district court to consider, among other questions: (1) Is putting citations on a car that do not explicitly warn that the car will be towed reasonably calculated to give notice of a tow to the owner?; (2) Did the red tow slip placed on plaintiff’s car shortly before the tow provide adequate notice?; and (3) Was Portland required under Jones v. Flowers, 547 U.S. 220 (2006) to provide supplemental notice if it had reason to suspect that the notice provided by leaving citations and the tow slip on Grimm’s windshield was ineffective?
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