Thomas v. Pacific Gas and Electric Company

Background

Adrienne Thomas filed the original complaint on January 5, 2023. After Pacific Gas and Electric Company moved to dismiss, Thomas filed an amended complaint late. The court denied the company’s first dismissal motion without prejudice and warned Thomas that any opposition to a later dismissal motion had to meet the stated deadlines.

The company moved to dismiss the amended complaint on May 8, 2023. Thomas requested more time on the date her opposition was due, stating that she had been out of the country. The court granted that request after the company did not oppose it. Thomas filed her opposition on May 30, 2023.

On September 6, 2023, the court granted the company’s motion to dismiss and gave Thomas until September 29, 2023, to file another amended complaint. Thomas did not meet that deadline. The court later granted the company’s request to dismiss the case in part, dismissed the case without prejudice, and directed the Clerk to close the file. Thomas then filed a motion to vacate with a proposed amended complaint, while the company moved for entry of judgment.

Motion to Vacate

The court treated Thomas’s request as a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60. That rule permits relief from a final judgment for reasons including mistake, inadvertence, surprise, excusable neglect, or another reason that justifies relief.

Thomas argued that her failure to meet the deadline resulted from excusable neglect. She stated that she had been under medical care for an acute illness involving impending surgery, but the doctor’s note she provided referred to a sinus infection. She also suggested that she had tried to file the amended complaint but experienced difficulty with the electronic filing system. The court noted that she did not explain why she could not mail the complaint on the filing date.

Applying the factors identified by the Supreme Court for evaluating excusable neglect—including the reason for the delay, whether the delay was within the party’s reasonable control, the length and effect of the delay, possible prejudice, and good faith—the court found that the factors did not favor Thomas. It relied on her previous failures to meet court deadlines and her failure to explain why she did not contact the company or serve the amended complaint by mail.

The court denied Thomas’s motion to vacate.

Entry of Judgment

The company requested entry of judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 58(d), which allows a party to request that judgment be set out in a separate document when required by Rule 58(a). The court granted that request and stated that the order would constitute the judgment.

Disposition

The motion to vacate was denied. The defendant’s motion for entry of judgment was granted, and the order itself constituted the judgment. This order addressed Thomas’s request to undo the dismissal and the form of judgment; the opinion does not describe a merits decision on the underlying claims.