Farias v. Lopez
- Beth Freeman
- 5:21-cv-04167
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Farias v. Atchley, Judge Freeman struck Farias’s filing, restored his opportunity to amend, and denied defendants’ time-extension request as moot.
Jorge Alberto Farias and the prison-staff defendants named in the order. The ruling struck Farias’s filed amended complaint, preserved specified claims for further proceedings, dismissed one claim, allowed amendment of other claims, and changed the briefing schedule.
What happened
In Farias v. Atchley, Jorge Alberto Farias, a state prisoner representing himself, sued prison staff under a civil-rights law. The court had previously found that his complaint stated claims involving excessive force, access to the courts, and disability rights, while finding other claims deficient.
The court granted defendants’ motion to strike Farias’s filing labeled a first amended complaint and ordered that filing stricken. It also vacated the earlier dismissal order and briefing schedule, dismissed the due-process claim for failure to state a claim, and gave Farias 28 days to file an amended complaint addressing specified deficiencies. The court denied defendants’ request for more time to file a dispositive motion as moot.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman identified the claims that could proceed and the claims that could be amended. The order did not decide the ultimate merits of the surviving claims; it addressed the pleadings, amendment opportunity, and case schedule.
The detailed version
- Farias v. Lopez · No. 5:21-cv-04167
- Beth Freeman
- Mar. 4, 2022
Background
Jorge Alberto Farias, a state inmate proceeding without a lawyer, brought a civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against staff at Salinas Valley State Prison. The court’s initial screening found potentially valid claims for excessive force, denial of access to the courts, and violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The court had allowed Farias either to amend the other claims or to proceed only on the claims that passed screening. After Farias did not respond by the deadline, the court ordered service of the cognizable claims and dismissed the deficient claims with prejudice for failure to state a claim.
Farias later asked for additional time to amend and to provide documents supporting his claims. The court granted leave to submit supplemental material, provided that Farias served the defendants. Farias then filed a document docketed as a first amended complaint. Defendants moved to strike it as untimely and as failing to comply with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a). The court explained that Rule 15(a) did not apply because it had authorized supplemental material, but it nevertheless granted the motion to strike in the interest of justice and gave Farias another opportunity to amend.
Rulings
The court ordered the following:
- Defendants’ motion to strike Farias’s last filing was granted. The filing docketed as the first amended complaint was stricken. - The court vacated its earlier order dismissing non-cognizable claims and vacated the related briefing schedule. - Farias’s due-process claim was dismissed for failure to state a claim. - The complaint stated cognizable claims for excessive force against Lopez, Gutierrez-Paricio, and Barrera-Negrete; denial of access to the courts against Cortina and Ear; and Americans with Disabilities Act claims against Lopez, Gutierrez-Paricio, Barrera-Negrete, Cortina, and Ear. - Farias’s Eighth Amendment claim concerning denial of his asthma inhaler, all claims against Atchley, and Eighth Amendment claims concerning events in the yard against Larraux, Cervantes, Clavijo, and Soto were dismissed with leave to amend. - Farias was ordered to file an amended complaint within 28 days. The order stated that claims or defendants omitted from that amended complaint would no longer be part of the action, and that failure to amend within the deadline would result in the case proceeding solely on the identified cognizable claims, with the other claims and defendants dismissed with prejudice for failure to state a claim. - Defendants’ motion for an extension of time to file a dispositive motion was denied as moot.
Effect of the Order
The order set the pleading and scheduling rules for the next stage of the case. It did not decide whether Farias would ultimately prevail on the excessive-force, access-to-courts, or Americans with Disabilities Act claims. It also did not permit the dismissed due-process claim to proceed, while allowing Farias to try to correct the other specified deficiencies through an amended complaint.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.