Adams v. 796-798 Ninth Successor LLC
- Vyskocil
- 1:25-cv-00912
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Adams v. 796-798 Ninth Successor LLC, Judge Vyskocil denied a pre-motion conference request, granted leave to amend, and denied defendants’ motion to dismiss as moot.
Joshua Adams may file a second amended complaint. 796-798 Ninth Successor LLC and The Soiree Tea Co LLC must address that amended pleading through any new motion to dismiss rather than the motion the court denied as moot.
What happened
In Adams v. 796-798 Ninth Successor LLC, Joshua Adams asked to amend the complaint for a second time. The defendants opposed, arguing that the proposed changes would not fix standing problems raised in their pending motion to dismiss.
The court allowed the amendment because there was no undue delay or bad faith, and the defendants would face little prejudice at this early stage. Rather than decide whether the proposed changes would be futile, the court decided that issue could be addressed in a later motion to dismiss.
Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil denied the request for a pre-motion conference, granted Adams leave to file a second amended complaint, and denied the defendants’ pending motion to dismiss as moot. Adams was ordered to file the amended complaint by August 18, 2025.
The detailed version
- Adams v. 796-798 Ninth Successor LLC · No. 1:25-cv-00912
- Vyskocil
- Aug. 4, 2025
Background
Joshua Adams asked for a pre-motion conference concerning an anticipated request to file a second amended complaint. The defendants opposed the request, arguing that amendment would be futile because their pending motion to dismiss challenged Adams’s standing, meaning his legal ability to bring the claims.
Court’s reasoning
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15 generally directs courts to freely allow amendments when justice requires. The court found no undue delay or bad faith by Adams, and it found that allowing amendment at this early stage would cause only minimal prejudice to the defendants. The court also emphasized conserving judicial resources and avoiding multiple rounds of briefing about complaints that might no longer be operative.
Because the proposed amendment required the court’s permission, the court chose to grant leave to amend and deny the pending motion to dismiss as moot. The court declined to decide at this stage whether the proposed amendments would be futile, explaining that those arguments were better considered in a later motion to dismiss.
Order
The court denied Adams’s request for a pre-motion conference, granted Adams leave to amend, and denied the defendants’ pending motion to dismiss as moot. Adams was ordered to file the second amended complaint by August 18,
- If the defendants wished to move to dismiss that complaint, they were directed to do so by September 2,
- The court warned that it might be reluctant to allow another amendment if a later motion successfully challenged the second amended complaint. The Clerk was asked to terminate docket entries 25, 30, 33, and
- Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil signed the order.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.