Reyes v. City of New York
- Ho
- 1:23-cv-01145
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Reyes v. City of New York, Judge Ho denied Reyes’s proposed amendment because it was not short and plain, but allowed one more chance to amend.
Dequan Reyes’s case was affected: the court denied his proposed Third Amended Complaint but allowed him to submit a proposed Fourth Amended Complaint by August 9, 2024, warning that failure to do so would result in dismissal with prejudice.
What happened
In Reyes v. City of New York, the defendants challenged Dequan Reyes’s Second Amended Complaint under a rule requiring a complaint to give a short and plain statement of the claims. The court had already found that complaint deficient and allowed Reyes to submit a proposed Third Amended Complaint.
The court ruled that the proposed Third Amended Complaint still did not meet that requirement. Although it was shorter than the earlier complaint, it was 58 pages long and contained too much detail to clearly state Reyes’s claims. The court therefore denied Reyes’s motion to file it because amendment would not fix the same problem.
Judge Dale E. Ho nevertheless allowed Reyes, who was representing himself, to file a proposed Fourth Amended Complaint by August 9, 2024. The court said it should briefly describe the relevant events and identify which defendants were involved. The court warned that if Reyes did not file it by that date, the case would be dismissed with prejudice.
The detailed version
- Reyes v. City of New York · No. 1:23-cv-01145
- Ho
- June 17, 2024
Background
Defendants moved to dismiss Reyes’s Second Amended Complaint, arguing that it failed to satisfy Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 8 requires a complaint seeking relief to include a short and plain statement showing that the plaintiff is entitled to relief. Reyes submitted a letter that the court treated as a request for permission to amend again if the motion were granted.
In an order issued June 14, 2024, the court held that the Second Amended Complaint did not comply with Rule 8 and allowed Reyes to submit a proposed Third Amended Complaint. The court construed a document titled “Amended Complaint” as that proposed pleading.
Court’s Analysis
The court stated that Reyes was proceeding without a lawyer, so it would read his submissions liberally and interpret them to present the strongest arguments they reasonably suggested. Even with that approach, the court found that the proposed Third Amended Complaint did not provide a short and plain statement of Reyes’s claims. The proposed complaint was 58 pages long, although some pages were blank or crossed out, and still included so much detail that the claims were difficult to identify clearly.
The court concluded that the proposed amendment retained the same problems as the Second Amended Complaint. It therefore found the amendment futile, meaning that the proposed pleading would not correct the identified deficiency.
Ruling
The court denied Reyes’s motion to file the proposed Third Amended Complaint. It allowed Reyes to file a proposed Fourth Amended Complaint by August 9, 2024, because of his status as a self-represented litigant. The court directed that the new complaint should, as much as possible, briefly describe the incidents forming the basis for the claims and identify the defendants involved in each incident. It also explained that Reyes did not need to submit documentary evidence at that stage and could submit supporting evidence later if the complaint survived another motion to dismiss.
The court stated that if Reyes did not file a proposed Fourth Amended Complaint by August 9, 2024, it would dismiss the case with prejudice. The clerk was directed to mail Reyes a copy of the order.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.