The California File,
Sacramento to Los Angeles

The California matters in the practice file are civil rights claims against city and county law enforcement agencies, and the file divides between two lanes of the same size. One is use of force. The other is police practices, the wider question of whether what an agency and its officers did matched what generally accepted police practice required of them. Failure to render aid, police misconduct and search and seizure claims fill out the rest. The published rows on this page sit in Sacramento and Los Angeles, and the case history page carries the rest of the published record.

A claim of either kind turns on a short list of documents:

• Body-worn and dash camera footage, and any surveillance video that caught the encounter
• Dispatch records and radio traffic, which fix what the officers had been told before contact, and when
• The use of force report, the incident and supplemental reports written after it, and any internal affairs investigation that followed
• What the officers said and what civilian witnesses said, in statements first and in deposition transcripts once discovery produces them
• Training and discipline records for every officer involved
• The agency's own written policy, as it read on the date of the encounter

Graham v. Connor governs the force lane and fixes the vantage point: what the officer knew at the instant force was used, with nothing that discovery produced afterward read back into that instant. The practices lane is measured first against the agency's own written policy, then against the national body of standards behind generally accepted police practice.

A medical, scientific or technical question inside a California record is not answered by a police practices expert. The report says which discipline the question belongs to, then leaves it to a qualified expert there, on the record. Legal conclusions remain counsel's; the expert addresses police practices, on the totality of the facts and circumstances.

Most of the California file sits in federal court, where the claims are pleaded under Section 1983 against officers and the city or county agencies that employ them. A smaller part sits in the state courts, including the superior court in Sacramento County. Where the claim runs under Section 1983, the constitutional question belongs to counsel and the court; what the expert supplies is the police practices measure underneath it: the officer's knowledge as it then stood, the instruction policy and training had given that officer, and what generally accepted practice called for. The forum changes the procedure a report answers to. It does not change what the video shows or what the policy said.

A California criminal matter would ask something else of records much like these: not the force question a civil claim turns on, but how the encounter was policed before any charge existed, meaning the basis recorded for the stop or the arrest, the way a search was run, how an interview was conducted and documented, and whether the reports agree with the video. That work feeds a suppression hearing or the defense at trial, and criminal defense casework sets it out in full. Whether an opinion is received in either forum is that court's decision under its own rules of evidence, in federal court under Fed. R. Evid. 702, and preparing for that decision is retaining counsel's part of the work.

Professor Gilbertson's testimony has not been excluded at trial in any state or federal court. Admissibility in any particular matter remains retaining counsel's responsibility. The courts where testimony has been admitted are listed on the Library page on how many matters and where.

Retaining from California runs on the same terms as every engagement. It opens with a conflict check, and counsel hears about a conflict immediately. A first inquiry holds the case type and posture, the jurisdiction and case number, the governing deadlines, what the record contains so far, and the parties for the conflict check. Nothing privileged travels with a first inquiry, and privileged material is never exchanged by email.

After retention the record travels on physical media, a computer flash drive or an external hard drive by mail or courier; online sharing services are not used. Depositions are taken by Zoom or a similar platform, so a California deposition does not wait on a travel calendar. Expert reports require sixty days of advance notice, and a bullet-point outline of the report is approved with retaining counsel before writing begins.

The practice is based in Naples, Florida, and trial testimony is offered in California on the published travel terms. The fee schedule and the travel terms are set out in full on the For Counsel page, and the Library note on what to send with a first inquiry covers the first step item by item.