Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Vincent Bryant sued the City of Berkeley and police officers Madison Albrandt, Samantha Speelman, and Kevin Kleppe under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and California law, alleging that the officers violated his constitutional rights when they shot him in the face during an interaction. He was unhoused at the time of the incident. After litigation, the court granted summary judgment for the defendants on the federal claims and declined supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law claims.
Defendants then filed a bill of costs as the prevailing parties under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d)(1). Bryant — through his guardian ad litem (Bryant has been in a vegetative state from which he is not expected to recover since March 2023) — objected. After the parties briefed, defendants revised the request and asked for service-of-process, deposition, and expert costs. Bryant continued to litigate the underlying state-law claims in state court.
The Court’s Holding
Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse exercised the court’s discretion under Rule 54(d)(1) and declined to award any costs.
While Rule 54(d)(1) creates a presumption that costs go to the prevailing party, the Ninth Circuit en banc decision Association of Mexican-American Educators v. State of California and Escriba v. Foster Poultry Farms recognize five appropriate reasons for denying costs: substantial public importance, closeness and difficulty of the issues, chilling effect on similar future actions, the plaintiff’s limited financial resources, and economic disparity between the parties. All five favored Bryant.
On public importance, Northern District precedent treats police-shooting excessive-force cases as quintessential cases of substantial public importance. Garcia v. County of Napa and Lopez v. Nguyen are representative.
On chilling effect, taxing costs against a civil-rights plaintiff of modest means risks deterring future plaintiffs from testing the boundaries of constitutional rights, citing Stanley v. University of Southern California’s reminder that civil-rights litigation has driven historic legal progress. The defendants’ characterization of the costs as “modest” missed that Bryant cannot work and likely never will be able to. Their argument that Bryant’s parallel state-court litigation showed no chilling effect was speculative.
On limited financial resources, Bryant has been in a vegetative state since March 2023, was unhoused at the time of the incident, and has no realistic earning capacity. The Ninth Circuit holds that it is an abuse of discretion to award costs against a losing plaintiff without considering financial resources, citing Darensburg v. Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
On economic disparity, Berkeley is a public entity with vastly greater resources than an indigent individual plaintiff, again following Hunter v. City and County of San Francisco and Godoy v. County of Sonoma.
On closeness and difficulty, the case was rigorously litigated, required discovery rulings, and reached only summary judgment. Jefferson v. City of Fremont and Darensburg teach that summary-judgment dispositions can still involve close and difficult issues. The court therefore declined to award any costs.
Key Takeaways
- Even a defense win at summary judgment in a civil-rights case does not automatically guarantee taxation of costs in the Northern District. The five-factor framework from Escriba and Mexican-American Educators regularly leads to denial.
- Police-shooting and excessive-force cases are routinely treated as cases of substantial public importance, regardless of the merits outcome.
- The chilling-effect factor is particularly potent when the plaintiff has very limited financial resources or has suffered catastrophic post-incident injury.
- The Ninth Circuit considers it an abuse of discretion to award costs against an indigent losing plaintiff without considering financial resources. Defense counsel should anticipate this analysis when deciding whether to file a costs bill.
- An indigent plaintiff’s decision to continue litigating parallel state-law claims after losing on the federal claims does not undercut the chilling-effect analysis.
Why It Matters
For police-misconduct litigation in the Bay Area, the practical takeaway from this opinion is significant. Plaintiffs’ counsel weighing whether to take excessive-force cases on contingency frequently worry about cost exposure when summary judgment is lost. Northern District magistrate judges remain consistently willing to deny defense bills of costs in indigent civil-rights cases, particularly where there is a serious public-safety dimension and a meaningful disparity between an individual plaintiff and a city defendant.
For municipalities, the opinion signals that filing a bill of costs against a catastrophically injured indigent plaintiff is unlikely to succeed and may not be worth the litigation cost. The opinion also highlights the often-invisible role of guardians ad litem in long-running federal civil-rights litigation when a plaintiff’s health collapses mid-case.