Mendez v. FMC Facility Section
- Nancy Brasel
- 0:19-cv-02820
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 3
In Mendez v. FMC Facility Section, Judge Leung denied Mendez’s motion, and the case remained stayed until August 14, 2020.
Raphael Mendez and the status of his federal case; the case remained stayed until August 14, 2020.
What happened
In Mendez v. FMC Facility Section, Raphael Mendez, representing himself, asked the court to remove or disregard his earlier motion to amend the complaint and to keep the case stayed. The court had previously denied that amendment motion as procedurally improper and stayed the case until August 14, 2020.
The court treated Mendez’s new filing as a request for limited relief from the stay so he could have the earlier motion removed from the record. It ruled that the request to disregard the earlier motion was moot because the court had already decided it, and that the earlier motion’s procedural defect did not require removing it from the record.
The court denied Mendez’s motion and ordered that the case remain stayed until August 14, 2020. The order was signed by United States Magistrate Judge Tony N. Leung.
The detailed version
- Mendez v. FMC Facility Section · No. 0:19-cv-02820
- Nancy Brasel
- June 11, 2020
Background
Raphael Mendez, who was representing himself, filed a motion asking the court to dismiss, strike, or disregard his earlier motion to amend the complaint, identified as ECF No. 8. He also asked the court to keep in place the stay previously entered in the case.
The court had denied Mendez’s motion to amend without prejudice because it was procedurally improper. The court had also stayed the case until August 14, 2020.
Court’s analysis
The court explained that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allow a court to strike certain improper material from a pleading, but Mendez was asking to strike a motion rather than a pleading. Reading his filing liberally because he was representing himself, the court construed it as a request for limited relief from the stay so he could have the procedurally improper motion removed from the record.
The court ruled that Mendez’s request to disregard the earlier motion was moot because the court had already ruled on that motion. It also ruled that finding the motion procedurally improper did not necessarily mean that the motion should be removed from the case record.
Disposition
The court denied Mendez’s motion. It ordered that the case remain stayed until August 14, 2020. The court also reminded Mendez that any future motion to amend must comply with applicable laws, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the District of Minnesota’s local rules, and the requirements in the court’s earlier order.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.