Mendez v. FMC Rochester

Background

On March 31, 2022, the court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss and dismissed the action with prejudice. On April 25, 2022, Raphael Mendez filed a motion to correct that order. The opinion states that the filing largely repeated arguments from his earlier submissions.

Requests before the court

The court construed the filing primarily as a motion to reconsider its earlier ruling under Local Rule 7.1(j). That rule required Mendez to show compelling circumstances before filing such a motion. Mendez also raised a separate issue: he argued that the court had incorrectly stated that his original federal case in the District of the Virgin Islands began with an indictment in 1990, rather than with a criminal information.

Court’s reasoning

The court stated that the docket in the original case referred only to “Criminal Charges/Counts” and did not contain the charging document. It also noted that courts in other jurisdictions had described this part of Mendez’s procedural history differently. The court nevertheless concluded that whether the original case began with an indictment or an information had no effect on its ruling on the defendants’ motion to dismiss.

The court therefore found that Mendez had not shown the compelling circumstances required for reconsideration. It also treated the request concerning the charging history, to the extent it sought correction of a clerical mistake, oversight, or omission, as a request under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(a). The court explained that this rule allows a court to correct an omission to reflect what it originally intended, but it does not provide a way to make the court address an issue it did not intend to consider.

Disposition

The court denied Mendez’s request for reconsideration. It also denied his request for a correction under Rule 60(a). The earlier dismissal with prejudice remained in place.