Diaz v. Amezquita
| Decision Date | 27 May 2021 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 20-62583-Civ-Scola |
| Parties | Blanca Nelly Diaz, Plaintiff, v. Hector Leonardo Amezquita and Sandra Catalina Daza Munoz, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida |
Plaintiff Blanca Nelly Diaz seeks damages from Defendants Hector Leonardo Amezquita and Sandra Catalina Daza Munoz, husband and wife, as a result of their trafficking her to the United States, from Colombia, subjecting her to involuntary servitude and captivity, and withholding her pay for fourteen years. (Compl. ¶ 1, ECF No. 1.) The Defendants have filed a motion to dismiss, arguing (1) Diaz's complaint is a shotgun pleading; (2) one of Diaz's human-trafficking claims is beyond the statute of limitations; (3) civil relief is not available for Diaz's human-trafficking claims; (4) Diaz's claims for unjust enrichment and quantum meruit are preempted by the Fair Labor Standards Act; and (5) Diaz fails to state a claim for false imprisonment because her allegations are contradictory. (Defs.' Mot., ECF No. 16.) Diaz opposes the motion. (Pl.'s Resp., ECF No. 17.) And the Defendants have timely replied. (Defs.' Reply, ECF No. 18.) After careful review, the Court denies the Defendants' motion. (ECF No. 16.)
Diaz began working for Amezquita in 2002, in Colombia, when she was around forty-one years old. (Compl. ¶¶ 13, 14.) At that time, Diaz cared for Amezquita's two daughters and cleaned the home. (Id. ¶ 14.) Six months into her employment, Amezquita married Daza Munoz. (Id. ¶ 15.) A year after the Defendants wed, they offered Diaz a job, working for their family in the United States. (Id. ¶ 16.) They promised Diaz that, if she moved to the United States to work for them, she would be paid and otherwise treated fairly and humanely. (Id.) The Defendants also told Diaz she would be able to return to Colombia any time she wanted. (Id.)
The Defendants moved to the United States and then set about procuring a visa for Diaz. (Id. ¶ 17.) In the meantime, while waiting for the visa, Diaz stayed in Colombia, working for Amezquita's mother. (Id.) Also around this time, Daza Munoz gave birth to a daughter. (Id.) Eventually, the Defendants arranged for Diaz to get a temporary business B-1 visa, apparently based on her status as a domestic employee, which was issued on March 9, 2005, with an expiration date of March 7, 2006. (Id. ¶ 18.) Diaz arrived in the United States on March 14, 2005. (Id. ¶ 23.) The Defendants later arranged for a second B-1 visa, on the same basis, issued on December 22, 2005, expiring on August 30, 2007. (Id. ¶ 24.) It does not appear any other immigration documents were ever sought or obtained.
Although the Defendants did not specify in advance what Diaz's salary would be, at the United States Embassy, Amezquita was asked to amend Diaz's employment contract to reflect payment of Florida's minimum wage. (Id. at ¶ 20.) Diaz did not read this contract, was not able to ask any questions about it, nor was she ever provided a copy of the contract. (Id.) After arriving in the United States, it appears the Defendants told Diaz her salary would be 600,000 Colombian pesos per month—equivalent to about $200 U.S. per month. (Id. ¶ 23.) A few months before her second visa was set to expire, the Defendants told Diaz they would not renew it, telling her they would then pay her $400 U.S. a week. (Id. ¶ 25.) Regardless, the Defendants never paid Diaz anything, despite her repeated requests, during the entire time that she served as their domestic employee in the United States. (Id. ¶ 26.)
Initially, the Defendants forced Diaz to sleep in a laundry room, outside their apartment, where she did not have access to a bathroom. (Id. ¶ 28.) She was not afforded a day off until about six or seven years into her employment, working around fourteen hours a day on weekdays and four-and-a-half hours a day on the weekends. (Id. ¶ 29.) On occasion her hours were extended, as well. (Id.) Diaz was also forced to work even if she was sick and was told by Amezquita that she would have to reimburse him for medication he gave her which he had, in turn, gotten from Colombia. (Id. ¶ 30.) Eventually, about eight or nine years ago, Diaz prevailed upon the Defendants and was able to get Saturdays and Sundays off. (Id. ¶ 31.)
Diaz says the Defendants subjected her to verbal and emotional abuse during the fourteen years she worked for them. (Id. ¶¶ 5, 37.) They also constantly monitored her, not allowing her to speak to anyone or ever discuss her immigration status. (Id. ¶ 32.) The Defendants also controlled all Diaz's communications with her family in Colombia, retaining access to all her text messages and calls through the cell phone they gave here. (Id. ¶ 35.)
The entire time Diaz worked for the Defendants, Diaz says the Defendants held her passport, preventing her from ever leaving with her identification or travel documents. (Id. ¶¶ 3, 27.) They forced her to continue working for them, telling her she would never get paid anything unless she continued. (Id. ¶ 33.) They also threatened to send her back to Colombia if she didn't keep working. (Id.) At one point, after Diaz asked for time off to visit Colombia, Amezquita reminded her that he knew where her family lived, which Diaz interpreted as a threat that they would be harmed, bringing her to tears. (Id. ¶ 34.) On one occasion, when Diaz objected to her working conditions and not being paid, Daza Munoz falsely accused Diaz of theft. (Id. ¶ 38.) This accusation appears to have been the final straw, prompting Diaz to contact a domestic workers' advocacy group, Miami Workers Center, which then contacted the Broward County Sheriff's Office. (Id. ¶¶ 6, 38, 39.) When officers arrived at the Defendants' home, on January 28, 2020, Daza Munoz surrendered Diaz's passport. (Id. ¶ 6.) Diaz then gathered her belongings and was transported away from the house, by the officers. (Id.) She then initiated this case in December 2020.
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2), a complaint must provide "a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). Rule 10(b) further requires a party to "state its claims or defenses in numbered paragraphs, each limited as far as practicable to a single set of circumstances." Fed. R. Civ. P. 10(b). "A shotgun pleading is a complaint that violates either Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) or Rule 10(b), or both." Barmapov v. Amuial, 986 F.3d 1321, 1324 (11th Cir. 2021)
A court considering a motion to dismiss, on the other hand, filed under Rule 12(b)(6), must accept all the complaint's allegations as true, construing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Pielage v. McConnell, 516 F.3d 1282, 1284 (11th Cir. 2008). Although a pleading need only contain a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief, a plaintiff must nevertheless articulate "enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). "But where the well-pleaded facts do not permit the court to infer more than the mere possibility of misconduct, the complaint has alleged—but it has not shown—that the pleader is entitled to relief." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 679 (2009) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2)) (internal punctuation omitted). A court must dismiss a plaintiff's claims if it fails to nudge its "claims across the line from conceivable to plausible." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570.
The Defendants argue Diaz's complaint should be dismissed as a shotgun pleading. (Defs.' Mot. at 4-5.) They complain that it "relies on a common core of 42 paragraphs that are incorporated into each successive [c]ount, regardless of whether the allegations relate to a claim for human trafficking, unpaid minimum wages, unpaid wages, or false imprisonment." (Id. at 4.) Because of this, say the Defendants, they are unable "to discern which facts relate to which claim." (Id.) The Court is not persuaded.
Contrary to the Defendants' position, Diaz's complaint does not fall into one of the categories of the "four rough types or categories of shotgun pleadings" identified by the Eleventh Circuit in Weiland v. Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. 792 F.3d 1313, 1321 (11th Cir. 2015). Specifically, the multiple counts here do not "adopt[] the allegations of all preceding counts, causing each successive count to carry all that came before and the last count to be a combination of the entire complaint." Id.; see also Barmapov, 986 F.3d at 1325 ().
Nor does Diaz's complaint fall into one of the other three categories. It is not "replete with conclusory, vague, and immaterial facts not obviously connected to any particular cause of action." Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1322. Nor does it fail to separate "each cause of action or claim for relief" into a different count. Id. at 1323. And, finally, Diaz's complaint is not one that "assert[s] multiple claims against multiple defendants without specifying which of the defendants are responsible for which acts or omissions, or which of the defendants the claim is brought against." Id. Ultimately, the Court does not find that the deficiencies the Defendants identify justify striking Diaz's pleading on shotgun-pleading grounds: while the complaint is by no means perfect, it is not so poorly drafted that it "fail[s] to one degree or another, and in one way or another, to give the defendants adequate notice of the claims against them and the grounds upon which each claim rests." Id. (...
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