Plaintiffs in Buffin v. San Francisco have filed their amended complaint in an attempt to survive complete dismissal; the amended version, however, appears to suffer from the same fundamental legal flaws.
The fundamental flaw in the Plaintiffs’ lawsuit, according to Judge Gonzalez Rogers, has been that the legal theory on which they are proceeding is “entirely ambiguous and unformed.” In her written order, she further described the Plaintiffs legal theory as “impermissibly vague and facially insufficient.” The Judge granted in January the City and County of San Francisco’s motion that basically said the complaint filed by the Plaintiffs was so unclear that they could not even respond to it. As such, the Plaintiffs lawyers were given 30 days to file a new complaint or otherwise the case would be dismissed.
On February 25, 2016, a new complaint was filed in the case by the Plaintiffs. Upon review of the new complaint, the legal theory the Plaintiffs are advancing does not appear to have overcome the issues raised by Judge Gonzalez Rogers. The Plaintiffs continue to use the same exact language in their claim for relief and have done little to clarify any of the issues raised by Judge Gonzalez Rogers: “Defendant City and County of San Francisco violates Plaintiffs’ fundamental rights by keeping them in jail solely because they cannot afford to pay money bail.”
In addition, as the City of San Francisco and State of California have consistently pointed out, there are several available and immediate avenues to have a bail that has been set by the schedule expeditiously reviewed. The Plaintiffs admit as much, but then counter that the available due process is somehow “functionally non-existent.”
The City of San Francisco is now expected to soon file new motions to requesting dismissal of the Plaintiffs case.
Image courtesy of telegraph.co.uk
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