Stuckey v. Risenhoover
- Yvonne Rogers
- 4:19-cv-03780
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Stuckey v. Risenhoover, Judge Rogers denied a sur-reply request and ordered clarification about voluntarily dismissing Dr. Bostanjian.
Andre Kenneth Stuckey, Dr. Maria Bostanjian, and the served defendants whose motion for summary judgment remained pending. The order directly denied Stuckey’s request to file a sur-reply and required him to clarify whether he wanted to voluntarily dismiss Bostanjian.
What happened
Andre Kenneth Stuckey v. Sue Risenhoover involved unsuccessful service on Defendant Dr. Maria Bostanjian. Stuckey had previously said he wanted to remove Bostanjian from the case, but the court directed him to clarify whether he still wanted to do so.
The court denied Stuckey’s request to file a sur-reply because the local rules generally do not allow one and he had not shown that it was necessary or appropriate. The court gave him 28 days to file a motion stating whether he wanted to voluntarily dismiss Bostanjian; otherwise, it would assume he wanted to continue pursuing his claims against her.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers also stated that the served defendants’ pending request for summary judgment would be decided in a separate written order. This order did not decide that request or the underlying claims.
The detailed version
- Stuckey v. Risenhoover · No. 4:19-cv-03780
- Yvonne Rogers
- Sept. 15, 2021
Background
This order addressed service issues involving Defendant Dr. Maria Bostanjian and Plaintiff Andre Kenneth Stuckey’s request for permission to file a sur-reply, meaning an additional filing responding to a reply brief. Service on Bostanjian had not been completed. The court had previously directed Stuckey to provide Bostanjian’s current address and warned that claims against her could be dismissed without prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(m) if he did not provide the information within the required period.
Stuckey provided an address for California Correctional Health Care Services, and the Clerk mailed service-waiver materials there. After Clerk’s staff found another address identifying Bostanjian as a staff psychiatrist at North Kern State Prison, the Clerk mailed another set of service-waiver materials there. The waiver still had not been returned, and Bostanjian had not been served. In an earlier filing, Stuckey had stated that he wanted to delete Bostanjian from the case.
Rulings
The court denied Stuckey’s motion for leave to file a sur-reply. It explained that the local rules do not permit a response to a reply and that Stuckey had not shown that a sur-reply was necessary or appropriate.
Because service issues involving Bostanjian might still exist, the court ordered Stuckey to file, within 28 days, a motion clarifying whether he still wanted to voluntarily dismiss Bostanjian. The court specified the case number and the required motion label. If Stuckey did not file that motion by the deadline, the court would assume that he wanted to continue pursuing his claims against Bostanjian.
The court stated that it would decide the served defendants’ pending motion for summary judgment in a separate written order. This order terminated Docket No. 55, which was the request for leave to file a sur-reply.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.