Robertson v. Doe
- Beth Freeman
- 5:20-cv-02523
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Robertson v. Doe, Judge Freeman granted leave to amend the complaint, replacing Doe defendants with five named defendants while postponing initial review.
Reginald Robertson and the defendants in his case: the four terminated Doe or ASCO-Technician defendants and the five defendants added to the amended complaint.
What happened
In Robertson v. Doe, Reginald Robertson, a state prisoner, filed a civil-rights lawsuit under a federal law allowing claims against state officials. He asked to amend his complaint to identify defendants previously listed as Doe defendants.
The court allowed the amendment under the federal rule permitting one amendment without permission. The amended complaint now replaces the original complaint and is the operative complaint in the case.
Judge Freeman directed the clerk to remove the Doe defendants and ASCO-Technician and add D. Bussell, J. Alvarez, M. Ella, G. Harris, and C. Wong. The court said it would review the amended complaint separately and terminated the motions seeking amendment.
The detailed version
- Robertson v. Doe · No. 5:20-cv-02523
- Beth Freeman
- Sept. 3, 2020
Background
Reginald Robertson, identified as a state prisoner at the Santa Rita Jail, filed a lawsuit without a lawyer under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against personnel at the jail. He moved for permission to file an amended complaint and supplied names for defendants who had originally been identified only as Doe defendants. His request to proceed without paying the filing fee was to be addressed in a separate order.
Ruling
The court granted leave to file the amended complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a)(1), which allows a plaintiff to amend once without obtaining the court's permission. The amended complaint filed at Docket No. 11 supersedes the original complaint and is now the operative complaint. Claims and defendants omitted from the amended complaint are no longer part of the case.
The clerk was directed to terminate defendants identified as “1 Doe,” “2 Doe,” “3 Doe,” and “ASCO-Technician,” and to add D. Bussell, J. Alvarez, M. Ella, G. Harris, and C. Wong as defendants. The court stated that it would conduct an initial review of the amended complaint in a separate order. The order terminated Docket Nos. 10 and 11. The opinion did not decide the merits of Robertson's claims.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.