Curtis v. Citibank

• Decision Date: 01 August 1999
• Docket Number: Docket No. 99-7957
• Citation: 226 F.3d 133
• Parties: (2nd Cir. 2000) BRENDA CURTIS and ALVIN WILLIAMSON, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITIBANK, N.A., CITICORP NORTH AMERICA, INC. and CITICORP SECURITIES, Defendants-Appellees
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 133

226 F.3d 133 (2nd Cir. 2000)

BRENDA CURTIS and ALVIN WILLIAMSON, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITIBANK, N.A., CITICORP NORTH AMERICA, INC. and CITICORP SECURITIES, Defendants-Appellees.

Docket No. 99-7957

August Term, 1999

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

Argued: March 10, 2000

Decided: September 19, 2000

Appellants filed a Title VII discrimination in employment action and after discovery was largely complete, sought leave to amend their complaint a second time. The magistrate judge (Katz, M.J.) denied leave to amend. Plaintiffs appealed to the district court and while awaiting decision, filed the would-be second amended complaint as a separate lawsuit. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Batts, J.) in an order entered July 27, 1999 dismissed the second lawsuit as duplicative.

Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] STEPHEN T. MITCHELL, New York, New York, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

BETTINA B. PLEVAN, New York, New York (James M. Beach, Proskauer Rose LLP, New York, New York, of counsel), for Defendants-Appellees.

Before: FEINBERG, CARDAMONE, and PARKER, Circuit Judges.

CARDAMONE, Circuit Judge:

In a suit against their employer for racial discrimination, plaintiffs, two black employees of a bank, amended their complaint once, but their request to file a second amended complaint was denied by the magistrate judge to whom the case had been assigned. Plaintiffs appealed this denial to the district court and, while waiting for that court to rule, filed their proposed second amended complaint as a new complaint against their former employer since, in the interim, both plaintiffs were no longer employed by the bank. The circumstances of their departures were new causes of action added to the complaint in the second suit - one claim was retaliation, the other was for constructive discharge. When the district court ruled, it affirmed the magistrate judge's denial of leave to file a second amended complaint. It also dismissed, on defendants' motion, plaintiffs' new complaint filed in the second suit, on the ground that it was duplicative of plaintiffs' first suit.

A court must be careful, when dismissing a second suit between the same parties as duplicative, not to be swayed by a rough resemblance between the two suits without assuring itself that beyond the resemblance already noted, the claims asserted in both suits are also the same. Here they are not entirely duplicative. Thus, dismissal in whole was inappropriate and we must remand this case.

BACKGROUND

Plaintiffs, Brenda Curtis and Alvin Williamson, first filed an action against Citibank, N.A., Citicorp North America, and Citicorp Securities, Inc. (collectively Citibank) on February 14, 1997 (Curtis I), alleging discrimination in employment on account of race under federal and New York law. An offensive electronic mail message whose "humor" derived from ethnic, racial, and gender stereotypes lies at the core of the complaint in Curtis I. On January 28, 1997 a then current Citibank employee had sent the e-mail to various Citibank employees at their work e-mail addresses, and at least one Citibank employee allegedly forwarded the e-mail to others. Plaintiffs allege discrimination in Citibank's handling of the e-mail message as well as in other settings.

Curtis and Williamson initially brought Curtis I as a class action on behalf of all African-American Citibank employees who had worked with, or been supervised or evaluated by, the senders or recipients of the e-mail. However, they failed timely to file a motion seeking class certification, and therefore had to pursue their claims individually. The case was originally assigned to Judge Kimba M. Wood of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She referred it to Magistrate Judge Theodore H. Katz for pretrial supervision and to make reports and recommendations on dispositive motions. The case was later transferred on December 16, 1998 from Judge Wood to Judge Deborah A. Batts.

Magistrate Judge Katz set July 30, 1997 as an initial deadline for amending the February 1997 complaint, and at plaintiffs' request, permitted them to serve a proposed amended complaint on that date, and to move for further amendment by September 1, 1997. Plaintiffs actually served their proposed amended complaint on defendant in August 1997. The amended complaint added two Citibank-related corporations as defendants, and included for the first time Curtis' allegation of sex discrimination. The amended complaint was filed with the district court on September 3, 1997. Subsequently, plaintiffs moved to amend it on October 17, 1997, and Magistrate Judge Katz granted the motion on January 5, 1998 without any reference to the effective date of the amendment.

By letter dated April 10, 1998, plaintiffs' counsel, Stephen Mitchell, Esq., sought an extension of the discovery deadline and leave to amend the complaint to add allegations of "numerous retaliatory actions," including Curtis' firing in March 1998. On April 28, Magistrate Judge Katz extended the discovery deadline by two months to July 15, 1998, ordered that further non-technical amendments to the complaint would not be permitted except on a showing of good cause, and directed plaintiffs to propose amendments for good cause in another letter. In a conference on June 2, 1998 the magistrate judge stated that he would allow the amendments as to Curtis, but deferred decision as to Williamson. Plaintiffs submitted the additional letter, alleging retaliation against both plaintiffs.

At 11 p.m. on July 15, the last day for completion of discovery, plaintiffs served extensive document requests and interrogatories. The documents requested included the personnel files for more than 35 Citibank employees, all writings relating to the investigation and discipline of Citibank employees in connection with the offensive e-mail, and unredacted copies of all redacted documents that had been produced during discovery. In denying these requests on September 23, 1998 the magistrate judge ruled that they were untimely and that plaintiffs had failed to show good cause for their failure to serve them earlier. In September 1998 Williamson resigned from Citibank. At the September 23 conference, plaintiffs sought leave to add Williamson's constructive discharge claim and to reopen discovery.

Meanwhile, in August 1998 plaintiffs had moved to "correct" the complaint by revising it to allege a pattern or practice of discrimination by Citibank, which motion was denied at a conference held on October 14, 1998. Also at that conference, the magistrate judge granted leave to add specific paragraphs from plaintiffs' proposed amendments to the complaint, and ordered plaintiffs to serve the amended complaint by October 19, 1998, informing defense counsel that they would have two days to respond. The court and defense counsel both insisted they never received the second amended complaint. Defense counsel stated in an affidavit that she telephoned plaintiffs' counsel on the afternoon of October 19 to ask how the amended complaint would be delivered. Counsel reported that attorney Mitchell seemed surprised by the question and said that he was unaware that he was required to submit and serve a copy of the second amended complaint. He added that he would be unable to serve it before October 21.

Because neither the district court nor the plaintiffs had received a copy of the second amended complaint, and the court had not received any request to extend the deadline, on November 4, 1998 the magistrate judge issued an order denying plaintiffs leave to amend the complaint. Five days later, plaintiffs requested reconsideration of the denial, supporting the request with an affidavit from a MailBoxes Etc. store manager stating that "[o]n or about October 19," Mr. Mitchell had dropped off two packages for mailing - one to a federal judge in New York and one to a law firm in New York City. Several days later Mr. Mitchell sent another letter to the trial court asserting that he had given a copy of the amended complaint "to a service to be mailed on or about October 19," and that he had given no other documents to that service to be mailed around that time. Unpersuaded, the magistrate judge denied the request for reconsideration on November 23, 1998.

Plaintiffs appealed the November 23 denial to the district court. While awaiting Judge Batts' decision in Curtis I, and precisely because they were unsure what it would be, plaintiffs filed on January 26, 1999 the second amended complaint from Curtis I as the present action (Curtis II). In an order entered July 27, 1999, the district court affirmed all Magistrate Judge Katz's rulings and dismissed Curtis II as duplicative of Curtis I and "an attempt to circumvent Judge Katz's orders." Plaintiffs appeal the July 27 order dismissing Curtis II.

DISCUSSION

As part of its general power to administer its docket, a district court may stay or dismiss a suit that is duplicative of another federal court suit. See Colorado River Water Conservation Dist. v. United States, 424 U.S. 800, 817 (1976) ("As between federal district courts, ... though no precise rule has evolved, the general principle is to avoid duplicative litigation."); Adam v. Jacobs, 950 F.2d 89, 92 (2d Cir. 1991); Walton v. Eaton Corp., 563 F.2d 66, 70 (3d Cir. 1977) (in banc). The complex problems that can arise from multiple federal filings do not lend themselves to a rigid test, but require instead that the district court consider the equities of the situation when exercising its discretion. See Colorado River, 424 U.S. at 817; Kerotest Mfg. Co. v. C-O-Two Fire Equipment Co., 342 U.S. 180, 183-84 (1952) (affirming stay of declaratory judgment action on patent's validity in Delaware while patent infringement suit in Illinois proceeded); First City Nat'l Bank...