Bearden v. Alameda County
- Kandis Westmore
- 3:19-cv-04264
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 1
In Bearden v. Alameda County, Judge Westmore terminated the motion to dismiss after Bearden timely amended his complaint and discharged an order to show cause.
Jerome Bearden and Alameda County; the pending motion to dismiss was terminated, and the December 10, 2019 order to show cause was discharged.
What happened
In Bearden v. Alameda County, Alameda County moved to dismiss Jerome Bearden’s initial complaint.
Bearden then filed an amended complaint within the time allowed for amending a pleading after a motion to dismiss. The amended complaint replaced the initial complaint as the operative complaint.
Judge Kandis A. Westmore terminated the pending motion to dismiss and discharged the December 10, 2019 order to show cause. The order did not decide the claims’ merits.
The detailed version
- Bearden v. Alameda County · No. 3:19-cv-04264
- Kandis Westmore
- Dec. 13, 2019
Background
Alameda County filed a motion to dismiss Jerome Bearden’s initial complaint on November 20, 2019. Bearden filed an amended complaint on December 13, 2019.
Reasoning
The court explained that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a)(1)(B) allows a party to amend its pleading once as a matter of course within 21 days after being served with a motion under Rule 12(b). The deadline is extended by three days when service is by mail. The court determined that Bearden’s amended complaint was timely. Because the amended complaint became the operative complaint, the pending motion to dismiss no longer addressed the operative pleading.
Ruling
Judge Kandis A. Westmore terminated the motion to dismiss. In light of the amended complaint, the court also discharged its December 10, 2019 order to show cause. The order did not rule on the merits of the claims or on the sufficiency of the amended complaint.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.