Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Michael Floyd sued 24 Hour Fitness after an encounter at a Northern California gym led employees to contact police and affected his membership. He asserted negligent training, false arrest, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, contract, and California Unfair Competition Law claims.
The district court dismissed some claims and granted the gym summary judgment on the others. Floyd also challenged evidentiary rulings and the denial of appointed counsel.
The Court’s Holding
The Ninth Circuit affirmed in a nonprecedential memorandum. The allegations did not plausibly connect a deficient training program to a cognizable injury or show that gym personnel exercised the control necessary for false arrest liability. On the summary-judgment record, the remaining tort and contract theories lacked evidence of actionable false statements, extreme conduct, breach, or legally caused damages.
The panel also upheld admission of Floyd’s membership profile as a business record because the custodian authenticated it as contemporaneously maintained in the ordinary course. The civil case did not present the exceptional circumstances required for appointment of counsel.
Key Takeaways
- A business that calls police is not automatically liable for false arrest; direction or control over the detention matters.
- Negligent-training claims require a supported causal link, not merely dissatisfaction with an employee response.
- Routine membership records may be admitted through a knowledgeable custodian under the business-records exception.
- Nonprecedential memoranda can be informative but generally are not citable under Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
Why It Matters
California consumer-facing businesses should document incident responses and preserve ordinary-course membership records. Those records can become central evidence when a customer later reframes a safety or access dispute as tort, contract, and unfair-competition claims.