Hendry v. The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers
- Vernon Broderick
- 1:23-cv-10107
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Hendry v. ASCAP, Judge Broderick ordered ASCAP to say whether its pending dismissal motion should be treated as moot or evaluated.
Jackie Hendry and American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, doing business as ASCAP; the defendant must file the required letter within seven days.
What happened
In Hendry v. American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, Jackie Hendry filed an amended complaint while the defendant’s motion to dismiss was still pending.
The court gave the defendant two options: ask that its current motion be treated as moot and file a new motion, or ask the court to evaluate the current motion using the amended complaint.
Judge Vernon S. Broderick ordered the defendant to file a letter within seven days choosing between those options. The court did not decide the motion to dismiss or the underlying claims.
The detailed version
- Hendry v. The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers · No. 1:23-cv-10107
- Vernon Broderick
- Feb. 1, 2024
Background
On January 31, 2024, Jackie Hendry filed an amended complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a)(1)(B). The defendant’s motion to dismiss was still pending.
Order
The court explained that, after a plaintiff properly amends a complaint while a motion to dismiss remains pending, the court may either deny the pending motion as moot or evaluate it using the allegations in the amended complaint.
The court ordered the defendant to file a letter within seven days stating whether its current motion to dismiss should be treated as moot, without prejudice to filing a new motion under Rule 15(a)(3), or whether the court should evaluate the current motion in light of the amended complaint.
Effect of the Order
The court did not grant or deny the motion to dismiss and did not decide the underlying claims. The order required the defendant to choose how the pending motion should proceed.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.