Gates v. Kassam

Background

The defendants moved to dismiss Tyrious Gates’s third amended complaint. The moving defendants were Athas Capital Group, Inc.; RAMA Capital Partners, LLC; The RAMA Fund, LLC; Alim Kassam; Brian O’Shaughnessy; Alex Urmersbach; FCI Lender Services, Inc.; California TD Specialists; Timothy Griffith; Michael Griffith; Jeffrey Griffith; and Wendy Y. Medina.

The court had previously granted motions to dismiss Gates’s second amended complaint. It gave Gates one final opportunity to amend by clearly explaining how each defendant violated his rights and by providing specific supporting facts. Gates did not file the amended complaint by the deadline, so the court ordered him to explain why the case should not be dismissed for failure to prosecute. He then filed a response and the third amended complaint.

The opinion also discusses Peter Bao and Cameo Real Estate, whom Gates named in the third amended complaint. The court stated that Bao had not appeared, that the docket did not show he had been served, and that Gates’s response did not address why Bao should not be dismissed for late service.

Legal standard

The court applied Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not state enough facts to make liability a reasonable inference. The court also noted that complaints filed without a lawyer may receive a liberal reading, but a court cannot supply essential parts of a claim that the plaintiff did not plead. A court may deny further amendment when the pleading could not be fixed by adding other facts.

Court’s analysis

The court concluded that the third amended complaint did not correct the deficiencies identified in its earlier order. The added section titled “New Facts” was repeated for each claim, but the court found that those facts did not mention Brian O’Shaughnessy, Alex Urmersbach, Timothy Griffith, Michael Griffith, Jeffrey Griffith, or California TD Specialists. The allegations also did not plausibly connect Medina to the alleged wrongful conduct; the court found that the statement that Medina “attempts to blame Plaintiff for her litigious history” was insufficient.

The court further found that the amended complaint did not address the legal problems previously identified. It said that many of the supposed new facts simply repeated earlier arguments that the court had rejected. The court previously determined that Gates’s loan rate was not usurious under California law and that, because his mortgage default was not caused by a fraudulent assignment, he could not void the assignment and challenge the foreclosure on that basis. The court also previously rejected Gates’s position concerning a so-called “robo-signer” theory and found the dissolution of Athas Capital Group irrelevant to his claims.

Disposition

The court held that the fundamental pleading problems remained fatal to Gates’s claims and that allowing another amendment would be futile. Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. granted Defendants’ motions to dismiss, dismissed the third amended complaint without leave to amend, directed the clerk to enter judgment in favor of the defendants, and ordered the case closed.