Swinson v. The City of New York
- Katherine Failla
- 1:19-cv-11919
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 11
In Swinson v. The City of New York, Judge Failla struck unclear amended pleadings, allowed another amendment, and denied related motions as moot.
Randy Swinson and the defendants, including The City of New York and the individual defendants first named in the purported amended complaints.
What happened
In Swinson v. The City of New York, the court received multiple documents labeled as amended complaints after directing Randy Swinson to file one amended complaint by October 30, 2020. The documents added allegations and defendants but did not present one consistent set of claims.
The court ruled that the filings did not give the defendants fair notice of the claims, as required by the federal pleading rules. It struck the purported amended complaints, removed the newly named individual defendants from the docket, and gave Swinson until December 31, 2020, to file a proper amended complaint.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla granted leave to amend, denied Swinson’s application to proceed without prepaying fees or costs as moot, and denied the defendants’ pending motion to dismiss as moot. The court also denied payment-free status for any appeal from the order.
The detailed version
- Swinson v. The City of New York · No. 1:19-cv-11919
- Katherine Failla
- Nov. 20, 2020
Background
The court had directed Randy Swinson at a July 24, 2020 conference to file a single amended complaint by October 30, 2020. The court later treated a September 16, 2020 letter as Swinson’s amended complaint, and the defendants renewed their request to move to dismiss it. The defendants filed that motion and supporting papers on November 9, 2020.
On November 17 and 18, 2020, Swinson filed two additional documents, both captioned as amended complaints. The documents included new allegations and new defendants, omitted allegations from the initial complaint, and did not contain one unified set of allegations. The court found that the filings were inconsistent about both the defendants and the allegations.
Reasoning
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 requires a complaint to give defendants fair notice of the claims and the grounds supporting them. The court concluded that Swinson’s multiple and inconsistent pleadings did not satisfy that requirement. Because the court could not determine Swinson’s current allegations or which defendants faced them, it stated that it could not accept the filings.
The court considered Swinson’s status as a self-represented litigant and decided to give him another opportunity to file a proper complaint. It attached a blank complaint form as a template and warned that failing to file a timely or proper amended complaint would result in dismissal of the action.
Rulings
The court granted Swinson leave to file an amended complaint by December 31, 2020. It directed the Clerk of Court to strike the purported amended complaints at docket entries 33 and 35 and to remove from the docket the individual defendants first named in those filings.
The court denied Swinson’s November 17, 2020 application to proceed without prepaying fees or costs as moot because the court had previously granted him that permission. The court also denied the defendants’ pending motion to dismiss as moot and directed the defendants to inform the court by January 29, 2021, whether they wished to file an answer or move to dismiss the amended complaint.
The court further stated that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied payment-free status for purposes of an appeal. The order did not decide the merits of Swinson’s underlying claims.
Read the full 11-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.