The City Attorney’s Office is seeking dismissal of all claims against the city in a lawsuit filed by a billionaire chip-equipment supplier and his wife stemming from the 2023 death of their mentally disabled 18-year-old daughter, who was allegedly allowed to discharge herself — without their knowledge — from the second of two Orange County rehabilitation facilities.
Ali Salehpour and Suzanne Salehpour also are suing Rising Roads Recovery Services LLC and Saddleback Recovery, among other entities and individuals. The county medical examiner ruled that the couple’s 18-year-old daughter, Amelia Salehpour, died of an accidental overdose, but her parents contend she was a homicide victim.
The Salehpours allege their daughter was negligently allowed to check herself out of Saddleback, a subcontractor of Rising Roads, and that due to Los Angeles Police Department negligence, she was later found dead in the garage of a Van Nuys home, where her parents believed she was being groomed for sex work.
But the City Attorney’s Office maintains in court papers filed Tuesday with Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Valerie Salkin that the city has immunity in the case and had no duty to Amelia Salehpour.
“There is no right to police services, a governmental investigation or a particular type of police investigation,” lawyers for the City Attorney’s Office state in their court papers.
Because the city has immunity from the parents’ claims, their thrice-amended lawsuit “fails as a matter of law,” according to the City Attorney’s Office’s court papers.
A “special relationship” exists in the law between the police and an individual creating a duty to avoid being negligent only exists in the law when officers made specific promises to undertake a particular action and failed to do so, where the police did something to increase an individual’s peril or where the officers lulled the person into a false sense of security, according to the City Attorney’s Office’s court papers.
In addition, allegations of an unlawful police response, a failure to investigate at all, a failure to classify a death in a certain manner, a failure to identify a crime and a failure to conduct any administrative investigations and/or impose discipline are not claims that can be adjudicated in a California court, lawyers for the city further contend in their pleadings.
According to the couple’s lawsuit, from July 22-26, 2023, Amelia Salehpour was taken from Rising Roads, a Costa Mesa licensed treatment facility, to Saddleback Recover. Within 72 hours, she was beaten, raped and killed more than 60 miles away at a Los Angeles residence known as a hub for narcotics sales and both human- and gun trafficking and where she had been taken by a gang member after discharging herself from Saddleback, the suit states.
The home was frequented by gang members, sexual deviants, drug users and drug and assault weapon dealers, the suit alleges.
Days before Amelia Salehpour’s arrival at the home, the LAPD went to a distress call there and found and rescued a young woman being held hostage inside, yet despite those circumstances and the allegedly overwhelming evidence suggesting foul play and human trafficking of the plaintiffs’ daughter, the LAPD and medical examiners determined that she died of an accidental drug overdose, the suit states.
Although Amelia Salehpour was an adult at the time, she had an eighth-grade education level, according to the suit, which further states that a private autopsy revealed that Amelia Salehpour suffered sexual assault and blunt trauma to the head and other extremities.
