United States District Court, D. Arizona
ORDER
DOMINIC W. LANZA UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Pending
before the Court is Defendants' motion to dismiss under
Rule 41(b). (Doc. 17.) As explained below, the motion will be
denied. Additionally, the Court will construe Plaintiff's
recent filings as a request under Rule 15(a)(2) to file a
second amended complaint, will grant that request, and will
order Doc. 19 to be treated as her second amended complaint.
BACKGROUND
On
December 12, 2017, Plaintiff Maria Orozco Gonzalez filed a
pro se complaint. (Doc. 1.) The complaint was
difficult to follow. For example, although the complaint
asserted that Plaintiff had suffered “harassment due to
my Disabilities and my Gender, ” it did not
specifically identify or assert any causes of action. (Doc. 1
at 1-2.) Similarly, although the complaint identified, by
name, several different employees of the City of Glendale and
seemed to be accusing each of them of wrongdoing, the
introductory paragraph of the complaint identified only a
single party as a defendant: “The defendant, City of
Glendale C/O Nancy Mangone.” (Doc. 1 at 1.)
On
December 12, 2017, soon after the complaint was filed, the
Court provided Plaintiff with a document entitled
“Notice to Self-Represented Litigant.” (Doc. 4.)
Among other things, this document identified various manuals
and resources that were available to Plaintiff.
On
April 3, 2018, the City of Glendale and Nancy Mangone
(collectively, “Defendants”) filed a motion for a
more definite statement. (Doc. 11.) This motion argued the
complaint was “ambiguous as to who is suing, under what
theories of liability, why Plaintiff sues Nancy Mangone, and
if Plaintiff is suing the City of Glendale.” (Doc. 11
at 2.)
On June
29, 2018, the Court issued an order granting the motion for a
more definite statement. (Doc. 15.) The order concluded that
additional clarification was needed because (1)
“Plaintiff names both the City of Glendale and Nancy
Mangone as Defendants, but her allegations fail to make clear
precisely why the alleged acts in the Complaint give rise to
liability for either the City or Mangone”; (2)
“although the Complaint contains allegations about
Plaintiff's husband's own disabilities, it is unclear
whether Plaintiff purports to bring suit on behalf of her
husband as well” and (3) “Plaintiff fails to
allege the precise cause of action which would give rise to
Defendants' liability.” (Doc. 15 at 2.) Thus, the
order required Plaintiff to file an amended complaint and
specified that the “Amended Complaint shall set out in
separately numbered paragraphs the factual basis for each
claim that Plaintiff alleges and the precise legal theory
supporting that claim. The Amended Complaint shall also make
clear who Plaintiff is suing-and in what capacity- and how
Plaintiff's allegations give rise to liability for each
Defendant named in the Amended Complaint.” (Doc. 15 at
3.)
On July
19, 2018, Plaintiff filed a first amended complaint
(“FAC”). (Doc. 16.) The FAC did not comply with
the Court's previous order. Among other things, (1) the
caption of the FAC suggested Plaintiff was suing more than
one defendant but did not identify each defendant with
precision (“City of Glendale, et al.,
Defendants”); (2) the FAC did not contain
separately-numbered paragraphs, which the Court had expressly
required in its previous order; and (3) although the FAC
broadly alluded to several different statutes and types of
misconduct (the FMLA, the “American with Disability
ACT, ” and harassment), it did not attempt to funnel
these allusions into discrete causes of action.
On
August 3, 2018, Defendants filed a motion to dismiss under
Rule 41(b). (Doc. 17.) In it, Defendants argued that (1) the
FAC remains deficient under Rules 8 and 10- and, in fact,
“is more deficient than her original
Complaint”-because it fails to identify the parties,
damages, and causes of action with any precision; (2) because
the FAC was submitted after the Court ordered Plaintiff to
supply a more definite statement, its submission should be
deemed a violation of a court order; and (3) under Rule
41(b), the Court may dismiss a complaint for failure to
comply with court orders. (Doc. 17 at 2-7.)
On
August 7, 2018, the Court issued an order requiring Plaintiff
to “file with the Clerk of the Court and serve on
opposing counsel a responsive memorandum to [the motion to
dismiss] no later than August 24, 2018.” (Doc. 18.)
On
August 24, 2018, Plaintiff filed a document entitled
“Complaint (Amended) For A Civil Case.” (Doc.
19.) On the one hand, this pleading was not a responsive
memorandum (as required by the Court's August 7, 2018
order). On the other hand, this pleading finally supplied the
details that were missing in Plaintiff's original
complaint and Plaintiff's FAC. It identified two
defendants with precision (City of Glendale and Carl
Westbrooks), asserted that “[t]he basis for federal
court jurisdiction is Federal question, ” identified
three causes of action with prevision (first,
“Violation of the FMLA Act”; second,
“Violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of
1990”; and third, “Gender Discrimination, Title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964”), used numbered
paragraphs to supply the factual allegations supporting each
cause of action, and concluded with a detailed claim for
relief. (Doc. 19 at 1-9.)
On
August 24, 2018, Plaintiff also filed a separate document
entitled “Answer to Order.” (Doc. 20.) The
purpose of this document isn't clear.
On
August 31, 2018, Defendants filed a reply in support of the
motion to dismiss. (Doc. 21.) In it, Defendants argued that
(1) Plaintiff's two submissions on August 24 were
inadequate because neither constituted a “responsive
memorandum” to the motion to dismiss; and (2)
Plaintiff's attempt to submit a new complaint also
violated Rule 15(a)(2) because she didn't “first
seek[] leave of the Court or consent of opposing
counsel.” (Doc. 21 at 2.)
On
September 13, 2018, Plaintiff submitted a document entitled
“Response to Rule 41 Motion to Dismiss.” (Doc.
22.) This pleading includes the following passage: “I
have filed an Amended Complaint. I followed the sample
provided in the form on the United States Federal Court's
website. I listed, in my Statement of Claim, my facts
regarding each of the counts. As ...