Lonnie Patterson v. City of Yuba City, 884 F.3d 838

On May 20, 2010, Yuba City police arrived at Lonnie Patterson’s home after a report of a woman brandishing a firearm; Patterson opened the door holding a handgun and an officer testified he was pointed at her, while Patterson denied pointing it. The officers shot and killed Patterson’s fiancée and arrested Patterson for assault.
Patterson was charged with two felonies; at the preliminary hearing the magistrate found probable cause to hold Patterson to answer on a reduced (misdemeanor) assault charge but did not certify the more serious assault-on-an-officer charge; Patterson was later acquitted at trial.
Four days before the preliminary hearing Patterson filed this federal suit against the City of Yuba City alleging, among other claims, false arrest under § 1983; the city asserted probable cause and res judicata as defenses.
The district court granted summary judgment for the City, holding Patterson’s false arrest claim was barred by collateral estoppel because the magistrate’s preliminary-hearing finding of probable cause precluded relitigation of that issue.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit recognized a split in California Courts of Appeal about whether a preliminary-hearing probable-cause finding has preclusive effect in a later civil false-arrest suit and therefore certified the dispositive question to the California Supreme Court and stayed the federal case.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether a magistrate’s finding of probable cause at a preliminary hearing precludes a later false-arrest claim via issue preclusion	Patterson: a preliminary hearing does not permit conclusive resolution of arrest legality and defendants rarely test probable cause at that hearing, so it should not preclude a civil claim	Yuba City: the preliminary-hearing finding of sufficiency to hold for trial is equivalent to probable cause and thus can be given preclusive effect	The Ninth Circuit certified the question to the California Supreme Court and stayed proceedings; it did not decide the merits
Whether California issue-preclusion requirements (identical issue, actually litigated, necessarily decided, same parties/privity) are satisfied by a preliminary-hearing probable-cause finding	Patterson: preliminary hearings lack the scope and incentives for full litigation, so the requirements aren’t met	Yuba City: magistrate findings satisfy the preclusion elements absent evidence introduced after arrest	The Ninth Circuit found no controlling California precedent and noted a circuit split in the Courts of Appeal, so it deferred to the California Supreme Court

McCutchen v. City of Montclair, [citation="73 Cal. App. 4th 1138"] (Cal. Ct. App. 1999) (held a preliminary-hearing finding to hold for trial may, in some situations, preclude relitigation of probable cause)
Schmidlin v. City of Palo Alto, [citation="157 Cal. App. 4th 728"] (Cal. Ct. App. 2007) (rejected equivalence of preliminary-hearing sufficiency and probable cause and questioned preclusive effect given limited magistrate factfinding)
Haupt v. Dillard, [citation="17 F.3d 285"] (9th Cir. 1994) (federal decision applying Nevada law concluding preliminary-hearing issue identical to arrest probable cause)
DKN Holdings LLC v. Faerber, [citation="352 P.3d 378"] (Cal. 2015) (statement of California issue-preclusion elements relied upon by the Ninth Circuit)