Gurman v. Metro Hous. & Redevelopment Auth., Case No. 11–CV–0228 (PJS/JJG).
| Citation | 842 F.Supp.2d 1151 |
| Decision Date | 30 June 2011 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 11–CV–0228 (PJS/JJG). |
| Parties | Mikhail GURMAN; Ester Kruglyak; Valeriy Babushkin; Svetlana Babushkina; Svetlana Barskiy; Rada Shevtsov, f/k/a Rada Babushkina; and Vicro Home Care, Inc., a Minnesota Corporation, Plaintiffs, v. METRO HOUSING AND REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY; Metropolitan Council; Carver County Community Development Agency; Tamara M. Peters, f/k/a Tamara M. Witt, officially and individually; Mary G. Dobbins, officially and individually; Therese A. Smith, officially and individually; Beth A. Reetz, officially and individually; Kathleen M. Shea, officially and individually; Allison Streich, officially and individually; Landrum and Dobbins, LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company; and Defendants X, Y, AND Z, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Minnesota |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Brett M. Larson, Brian P. Lundgren, Richard A. Saliterman, Saliterman & Siefferman, PC, Minneapolis, MN, for Plaintiffs.
Andrew D. Parker, Anthony G. Edwards, Tammy L. Pust, Parker Rosen LLC, Jessica A. Megorden, James R. Andreen, Erstad & Riemer, PA, John M. LeFevre, Jr., Peter G. Mikhail, Kennedy & Graven, Minneapolis, MN, for Defendants.
Under Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2), a complaint must include “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief....” The words “short and plain” are themselves short and plain, and they mean what they say: A complaint must be concise, and it must be clear. Rule 8 was not promulgated to provide helpful advice; it has the force of law, and it must be followed.
In this case, plaintiffs' attorneys have utterly failed to comply with Rule 8. This case grows out of a relatively simple dispute regarding whether two elderly couples living in Section 8 housing are entitled to a one-bedroom apartment (as is typically true for married couples) or a two-bedroom apartment (as is typically true when separate bedrooms are medically necessary). Yet plaintiffs' complaint 1 is not “short.” It sprawls across 60–odd pages and almost 250 paragraphs. Nor is plaintiffs' complaint “plain.” Plaintiffs' factual and legal allegations are, to a substantial extent, incomprehensible. Plaintiffs' complaint manages to be both prolix and uninformative.
Further, plaintiffs' complaint almost certainly violates Fed.R.Civ.P. 11(b)(2) with respect to at least some claims. Rule 11(b)(2) requires counsel, before filing a complaint, to form a reasonable belief that “the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law....” Fed.R.Civ.P. 11(b)(2). The complaint includes 17 different claims—most of which appear to be brought by all 7 plaintiffs against all 13 defendants (3 of whom are unnamed). It is inconceivable that all 17 of these claims satisfy Rule 11(b)(2) as asserted by every plaintiff against every defendant, and some of these claims almost certainly do not satisfy Rule 11(b)(2) as asserted by any plaintiff against any defendant.
This Court has repeatedly criticized the filing of “kitchen-sink” or “shotgun” complaints—complaints in which a plaintiff brings every conceivable claim against every conceivable defendant.2 Such complaints are pernicious for many reasons. See Davis v. Coca–Cola Bottling Co. Consol., 516 F.3d 955, 981 (11th Cir.2008) (). For one thing, complaints like the one in this case unfairly burden defendants and courts. The plaintiff who files a kitchen-sink complaint shifts onto the defendant and the court the burden of identifying the plaintiff's genuine claims and determining which of those claims might have legal support. In this case, for example, plaintiffs have essentially coughed up an unsightly hairball of factual and legal allegations, stepped to the side, and invited the defendants and the Court to pick through the mess and determine if plaintiffs may have pleaded a viable claim or two.
This is emphatically not the job of either a defendant or the Court. It is the plaintiffs' burden, under both Rule 8 and Rule 11, to reasonably investigate their claims, to research the relevant law, to plead only viable claims, and to plead those claims concisely and clearly, so that a defendant can readily respond to them and a court can readily resolve them.
By filing a patently improper complaint in this case—a complaint that is neither concise nor clear, and that is littered with frivolous allegations—plaintiffs have wasted the time and money of the defendants, almost all of whom are public agencies and public officials who serve the poor and disadvantaged. Plaintiffs have also wasted the time and resources of this Court. When judicial resources are wasted in dealing with improper complaints, the burden ultimately falls on the taxpayers, who fund the court system. And when judicial resources are diverted to dealing with improper complaints, the business of other litigants—litigants who have complied with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and who may have meritorious claims to be resolved—is needlessly delayed. That is true in any court, but it is especially true in the District of Minnesota, which is among the 4 or 5 busiest of the 94 federal judicial districts. See Powell v. I–Flow Corp., 711 F.Supp.2d 1012, 1017 (D.Minn.2010).
It is important to note that kitchen-sink complaints also harm the very plaintiffs who bring them. In most cases, a genuine dispute that supports a viable legal claim—or even a few viable legal claims—underlies a plaintiff's complaint. But this genuine dispute becomes almost impossible to discern when it is wreathed in a halo of frivolous and near-frivolous legal claims. The bad obscures the good.
Unfortunately, the Court often does not learn of a complaint's failure to comply with Rule 8 and Rule 11 until the summary-judgment stage, at which point it is usually more efficient for the Court to simply rule on the summary-judgment motion before it. But in this case, plaintiffs' complaint is before the Court on a motion to dismiss. And at this early stage in the litigation, the Court will no longer tolerate the filing of kitchen-sink complaints—complaints that almost always violate Rule 8 and often violate Rule 11. 3
The Court will therefore dismiss plaintiffs' complaint for failure to comply with Rule 8, but the Court will stay the dismissal until July 29, 2011. If plaintiffs wish to pursue their lawsuit, they must file a second amended complaint that complies with both Rule 8 and Rule 11 by July 29, 2011. Given the substantial defects in plaintiffs' complaint, the Court provides some additional guidance that plaintiffs must follow if they choose to file a second amended complaint:
First, the second amended complaint must not exceed 10,000 words.
Second, the facts with respect to each set of plaintiffs must be presented chronologically, and the complaint must make clear which specific plaintiffs and which specific defendants are the subject of which specific allegations. Blanket references to “plaintiffs” or “defendants” are unacceptable unless the references genuinely apply to every plaintiff and every defendant.
Third, as required by Rule 11(b)(3), plaintiffs' factual contentions must “have evidentiary support” and must not be misleading by omission. To take only one example of a misleading contention, the complaint asserts that the denial by defendant Metro Housing and Redevelopment Authority (“Metro HRA”) of a two-bedroom Section 8 voucher to the Gurmans “is the subject of a current appeal that was heard by Metro HRA....” Am. Compl. ¶ 120 (emphasis added). This plainly implies that, when the complaint was drafted, the appeal was not decided. Yet attached to the complaint as Exhibit G is a written order dated February 18, 2011 showing that the appeal was decided, and the Gurmans lost.
To take another example of a misleading contention, the complaint asserts that “Defendants”—all of them, apparently—“admitted to employing a policy that intentionally discriminates against disabled people....” Am. Compl. ¶ 121. To support this rather remarkable assertion, the complaint cites the written order rejecting the Gurmans' appeal of a defendant's denial of a two-bedroom Section 8 voucher. The Court has reviewed that order and, although it refers to arguments made by plaintiffs' counsel to the effect that Metro HRA has a policy that discriminates against disabled people, the Court finds no suggestion in the order that any defendant—much less every defendant—admitted discriminating on the basis of disability.
Fourth, as required by Rule 11(b)(2), plaintiffs' claims and legal contentions must not be frivolous. Yet many of the 17 claims in plaintiffs' complaint appear to be either entirely frivolous or frivolous with respect to certain defendants. For instance, the Court doubts that plaintiffs have even one nonfrivolous claim against defendants Mary Dobbins and her law firm, Landrum and Dobbins, LLC, who merely served as counsel for one of the defendants in administrative proceedings. And the Court discerns no basis in the complaint for a claim of race discrimination in contracting under 42 U.S.C. § 1981. Further, to the extent that plaintiffs' various discrimination claims assert every possible basis for discrimination—disability, religion, sex, age, and national origin—the Court strongly suspects that no evidence supports claims of discrimination on certain of these bases. (If such evidence exists, it is surely not apparent from the complaint.) And, almost certainly, not every state tort claim can be asserted by every plaintiff against every defendant. For example, almost certainly, not every defendant uttered every one of the allegedly defamatory statements described in paragraphs 162 and 163 of the complaint, as the complaint alleges.4
By singling out some of plaintiffs' claims for comment...
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