Schreier v. Drealan Kvilhaug Hoefker & Co. P.A.
- David Doty
- 0:18-cv-02310
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 3
Schreier v. Drealan Kvilhaug Hoefker, Judge Menendez denied Schreier’s motion to add a supplemental complaint.
Allan M. Schreier, whose motion to file a second supplemental complaint was denied; the defendants and counter-claimants were Drealan Kvilhaug Hoefker & Co. P.A. and Hedeen Hughes & Wetering.
What happened
In Schreier v. Drealan Kvilhaug Hoefker & Co. P.A., Allan M. Schreier asked to file a second supplemental complaint about allegedly unpaid or underpaid rent for a family farm leased between 2011 and 2014.
The court denied the motion because those events happened before the lawsuit and the farm-rent claims were already part of the case. The court also said the proposed pleading mainly repeated arguments about a discovery ruling that had denied Schreier permission to use a third expert witness.
Katherine Menendez, the United States magistrate judge who signed the order, also noted that the proposed pleading was not a proper supplemental complaint under the rule governing later events. The court denied Schreier’s motion.
The detailed version
- Schreier v. Drealan Kvilhaug Hoefker & Co. P.A. · No. 0:18-cv-02310
- David Doty
- Apr. 30, 2019
Background
Allan M. Schreier, individually and in several fiduciary and estate-related capacities, filed a “Motion Regarding Second Supplemental Complaint.” He sought permission to add claims concerning unpaid or underpaid rent for a family farm leased by his brother, Carl, and sister-in-law, Michelle, between 2011 and 2014.
Reasons for the ruling
The court denied the motion for two reasons. First, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(d) concerns a supplemental pleading that addresses a transaction, occurrence, or event that happened after the pleading being supplemented. The court found that the farm-rent events occurred between 2011 and 2014, before the lawsuit was filed, and that Schreier had already included the farm-rent claims in his Second Amended Complaint filed on August 6, 2018. The court therefore concluded that adding them as a supplemental pleading would not serve Rule 15(d)’s purpose.
Second, the court found that the proposed pleading appeared to seek a different result on a discovery issue the court had already resolved against Schreier. Schreier had previously sought permission to add a third expert witness to provide a market analysis of farm rental rates for 2011 through 2014. That request had been denied because the court found no loss to the family as a whole from the alleged failure to pay fair-market rent and because adding another expert would be disproportionate to the needs of the case. Schreier objected to that ruling, and the District Court overruled his objections.
The court found that the arguments in the proposed supplemental complaint were essentially the same as Schreier’s earlier objections. It also noted that Schreier expressly said he wanted to pursue relief that had already been denied, including permission to use an expert regarding fair rent. The court characterized the proposed filing as an unsolicited legal memorandum rather than a proper supplemental pleading. In a footnote, the court stated that, if the motion were treated as a request to reconsider the earlier expert ruling, Schreier had not obtained permission required for such a motion, and the District Court had already rejected his arguments.
Disposition
The court denied Schreier’s “Motion Regarding Second Supplemental Complaint.” It did not grant permission to file the proposed Second Supplemental Complaint. The order was signed by Katherine Menendez, United States Magistrate Judge.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.