Jones v. County of Westchester

Background

Patricia McDonnell-Megahey, acting as D.J.’s next friend, and Latonia Jones, individually, sued the County of Westchester, Rosa Hazoury, Elke Knudsen, and Lisa Colin, Esq. The operative second amended complaint alleged substantive due-process violations, negligence in the handling of D.J. during her childhood, and legal malpractice by Colin. The action was brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for the constitutional claims.

The plaintiffs moved for permission to file a third amended complaint. The proposed pleading added or revised claims involving D.J.’s and Jones’s due-process rights, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, negligence, legal malpractice, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The proposed complaint grew from 28 pages and 142 paragraphs to 181 pages and 711 paragraphs. The plaintiffs said they had assembled facts from discovery materials, family-court transcripts, reports, notes, evaluations, investigations, and depositions.

The County Defendants and Colin opposed the motion. They argued, among other things, that the proposed complaint violated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 because it was excessively long, disjointed, repetitive, argumentative, conclusory, and difficult to understand. In the alternative, they moved to dismiss the proposed third amended complaint.

Legal standard

Rule 15 generally permits amendment of a pleading with the court’s permission when justice requires. The court may deny permission for reasons including undue delay, bad faith, undue prejudice, or futility. Rule 8 requires a pleading to contain a short and plain statement showing that the pleader is entitled to relief, and requires each allegation to be simple, concise, and direct.

The court explained that the Rule 8 issue here was not merely the complaint’s length. Rule 8 also protects defendants’ ability to obtain a fair understanding of the claims and respond to them. A complaint may violate Rule 8 when its confusion, ambiguity, vagueness, or unintelligibility hides the substance of the claims or unfairly burdens the defendants.

Court’s analysis

The court agreed with the defendants that the proposed third amended complaint violated Rule 8. It described the pleading as an attempt to place the discovery gathered in the case into one document. The court found numerous lengthy, disjointed, and often unattributed references to documents, notes, and transcripts; argumentative and conclusory assertions; opinions and legal conclusions; and apparent cut-and-paste material.

The court also found that the proposed complaint did not coherently establish the factual basis for the claims or clearly connect the facts and quotations to the plaintiffs’ existing and proposed causes of action. As a result, the complaint obscured the basis of the claims and forced the defendants to sort through a mass of material to determine which allegations supported which claims.

The court nevertheless recognized that the plaintiffs wanted to add claims and clarify existing claims using information obtained in discovery. Consistent with the preference for deciding cases on their merits rather than on pleading formalities, the court allowed the plaintiffs another opportunity to seek permission to amend. Any revised complaint would need to state the necessary facts—including who did what, when, where, and how—in a clear and nonconvoluted manner.

Ruling

Judge Nelson S. Roman denied the plaintiffs’ motion for leave to file the proposed third amended complaint for failure to comply with Rule 8. The court granted the plaintiffs permission to seek leave to file a revised third amended complaint consistent with the opinion. Because the proposed complaint could not be filed in its current form, the defendants’ motions to dismiss that proposed complaint were denied as moot. The court continued to reserve decision on the previously pending motions to dismiss the second amended complaint. The clerk was directed to terminate the motions at ECF Nos. 169, 173, and 177.