Cedars-Sinai Medical Center v. Superior Court

Opinion

ASHBY, Acting P. J.

Petitioners, defendants in a malicious prosecution action, seek review of an order of the respondent court denying their motion for summary judgment. We grant the petition.

Facts

Early in 1982, there were a number of arson fires at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Cedars). At one point, the investigation into the cause of the fires focused on real party Marcus Henderson. During the course of the investigation, police investigators asked several Cedars employees to listen to a tape of a telephoned bomb threat. Five individuals, including petitioners Sharon Huff and Rodrigo Rojas, independently identified the voice as Henderson’s. Henderson was arrested for arson, and Huff and Rojas, among others, testified at his preliminary hearing, identifying Henderson as the individual whose voice they had heard on the tape. Although the charges were later dismissed for lack of evidence, Henderson spent over three months in jail.

Henderson thereafter sued Cedars, Huff and Rojas, and others, for malicious prosecution and other causes of action.

1

In his cause of action for malicious prosecution, Henderson alleges that the defendants “acted without probable cause in instigating and initiating the prosecution of plaintiff in that they did not honestly, reasonably, and in good faith, believe plaintiff to be guilty of the crime charged because they knew plaintiff was not the individual on the tape played for them. . . . Said defendants, nevertheless, maliciously misidentified plaintiff as the individual on said tape for the purpose of annoying and wronging him.”

[417]

In their declarations submitted in support of their motions for summary judgment, Huff and Rojas stated that in February 1983, they were summoned to the security office at Cedars, introduced to investigators and asked to listen to the tape. Neither was told that others had identified the voice as Henderson’s; both declared they “genuinely believed that it sounded like Marcus Henderson’s voice on the tape.”

Both Huff and Rojas stated they had not sought out the authorities or initiated any criminal action against Henderson; after listening to the tape, they took no further steps regarding the matter, and “[everything else was left to the authorities.”