Sperry v. Corizon Health, Inc.
| Decision Date | 22 June 2020 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 18-3119-EFM-ADM |
| Parties | JEFFREY J. SPERRY, Plaintiff, v. CORIZON HEALTH, INC. ET AL., Defendants |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Kansas |
This matter comes before the court on pro se Plaintiff Jeffrey J. Sperry's Motion for Permission to Amend Complaint. (ECF No. 57.) Mr. Sperry asserts claims against the company providing medical treatment to inmates and two of its nurses stemming from care and treatment he received for Hepatitis-C. He now seeks leave to amend his complaint to name six additional individual defendants who were involved with his care and treatment. Defendants oppose Mr. Sperry's motion on the grounds of untimeliness under the scheduling order, undue delay, undue prejudice, and futility of the amendment. For the reasons explained below, the court finds that Mr. Sperry has not shown good cause to extend the scheduling order deadline to allow for his untimely motion to amend. And because the proposed amended complaint is based on facts that appear to have been known to Mr. Sperry for more than a year, he has unduly delayed in seeking to amend, and defendants would be unduly prejudiced by significant amendments at this late stage of the case. Although defendants also argue that Mr. Sperry's claims against these defendants are subject to dismissal and are therefore futile, the court cannot reach this conclusion on the present record. For these reasons, the court denies Mr. Sperry's motion.
Mr. Sperry is incarcerated at the El Dorado Correctional Facility and proceeds pro se. This case originates from a broad complaint that he filed on November 7, 2016, in which he asserted various claims against numerous prison officials and related entities. (See Sperry v. Wildermuth, 16-3222-SAC, ECF No. 1.) On May 9, 2018, the court severed the claims Mr. Sperry asserted in his amended complaint into four separate suits, including this one. (Id., ECF No. 28.) This case involves allegations that defendants failed to notify Mr. Sperry that he tested positive for Hepatitis-C for over a year and then failed to provide him with treatment. He asserts a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violations of his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment and a conspiracy to violate his civil rights. (ECF No. 1, at 10.) He also asserts Kansas state law claims for medical malpractice, outrage, battery, mistreatment of a confined person, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence. (Id.) The remaining defendants include Corizon Health, Inc., and Rebecca Talbert and Amber Brundege, two registered nurses employed by Corizon (collectively "the Corizon defendants").
The Kansas Department of Corrections ("KDOC") filed a Martinez report on May 9, 2019, that provides additional details about the facts giving rise to Mr. Sperry's claims and attaches Mr. Sperry's medical records. (ECF No. 24.) Those records provide the names of other individuals who rendered treatment to Mr. Sperry and additional information about the course and scope of his medical care.
The court issued a scheduling order on March 4, 2020. (ECF No. 22.) Among other things, the scheduling order established April 20 as the deadline for motions to amend the pleadings and a discovery deadline of August 20. On April 27, Mr. Sperry filed a motion to amend his complaint. (ECF No. 50.) The motion requested leave to file an amended complaint to add defendants and toclarify facts, but the motion did not specify any defendants Mr. Sperry sought to add. Rather, it appeared that Mr. Sperry sought leave to plead that: (1) the statute of limitations did not accrue until Mr. Sperry's Hepatitis-C was treated and cleared; (2) the statute of limitations for acts controlled by a written contract, like a healthcare contract, is three years; and (3) he was unable to obtain his medical records until the KDOC filed a Martinez report. (ECF No. 51.) The court characterized the first two contentions as more in the vein of legal conclusions rather than claims that must be pleaded or facts alleged in support of the claims. (Id.at 1.) The court characterized the third contention as a factual allegation that did not appear to relate to any remaining claim. (Id.) Regardless, because Mr. Sperry did not attach his proposed pleading as required by D. KAN. RULE 15.1(a), the court denied the motion without prejudice to refiling.
Mr. Sperry filed this renewed motion to amend on May 11, seeking leave to add six Corizon healthcare providers as party defendants to what is largely the same claims as already pleaded, with the exception that it appears Mr. Sperry seeks to drop his claim for mistreatment of a confined person. See Sperry v. Corizon Health, Inc., No. 18-3119-SAC, 2020 WL 905745, at *4 (D. Kan. Feb. 25, 2020) (). According to Mr. Sperry, he could not obtain his medical records until the KDOC filed the Martinez report. The Corizon defendants oppose the motion on the grounds that it is untimely under the scheduling order, undue delay, undue prejudice, and futility of the amendment. The court addresses each of these arguments below.
Because Mr. Sperry is moving to amend after the deadline set in the scheduling order, he must (1) demonstrate good cause for modifying the scheduling order under FED. R. CIV. P. 16(b)(4), and (2) satisfy the standards for amendment under FED. R. CIV. P. 15(a). Gorsuch, Ltd.,B.C. v. Wells Fargo Nat. Bank Ass'n, 771 F.3d 1230, 1240 (10th Cir. 2014). As discussed below, Mr. Sperry has not established good cause, and the Corizon defendants have shown undue delay and undue prejudice.
A scheduling order "may be modified only for good cause and with the judge's consent." FED. R. CIV. P. 16(b)(4). To establish good cause, the moving party must show that it could not have met the motion to amend deadline despite "diligent efforts." Husky Ventures, Inc. v. B55 Invs., Ltd., 911 F.3d 1000, 1020 (10th Cir. 2018). Because Rule 16 requires diligence, if a party knows of "the underlying conduct but simply failed to raise [its] claims, . . . the claims are barred." Gorsuch, 771 F.3d at 1240. On the other hand, "Rule 16's good cause requirement may be satisfied . . . if a [party] learns new information through discovery or if the underlying law has changed." Id.
The Corizon defendants contend that good cause does not exist. They note that Mr. Sperry has had access to the Martinez report since May 9, 2019, and that he has had every opportunity to amend his complaint prior to the April 20 deadline but did not do so. Mr. Sperry does not address these arguments. Instead, he focuses on the timeliness of his first motion to amend, which the court already decided, and the prison mailbox rule, which the court addresses separately below.
While the undersigned is prepared to grant Mr. Sperry some leeway given his status as a pro se incarcerated plaintiff, Mr. Sperry declined to address the applicable legal standard even though the Corizon defendants' brief put Mr. Sperry on notice regarding the deficiency. For example, Mr. Sperry does not set forth his own diligence during the time period between when he received the medical records to nearly a year later when he moved to amend; he does not explain his diligence in attempting to understand or research procedural requirements when he filed hisfirst motion to amend; and he does not explain his diligence between the time he filed his first motion to amend and the present motion to amend. While the record suggests that Mr. Sperry did not understand the local rules' requirements for a motion to amend, he has declined to set forth any examples of his own diligence beyond simply noting that he previously filed a procedurally deficient motion arguably within the deadline. Because the court cannot find good cause to extend the scheduling order deadline, the court denies Mr. Sperry's motion as untimely. See Husky Ventures, 911 F.3d at 1019 (); see also Strope v. Collins, 315 F. App'x 57, 61 (10th Cir. 2009) ().
In addition to denying Mr. Sperry's motion based on untimely under the scheduling order, the court also denies the motion under a Rule 15 analysis. Once a party has filed a responsive pleading, the opposing party "may amend its pleading only with the opposing party's written consent or the court's leave," which should be freely given when justice requires. FED. R. CIV. P. 15(a)(2). The rule's purpose "is to provide litigants the maximum opportunity for each claim to be decided on its merits rather than on procedural niceties." SCO Grp., Inc. v. Int'l Bus. Machines Corp., 879 F.3d 1062, 1085 (10th Cir. 2018) (internal quotations omitted). The court may refuse leave to amend "only [upon] a showing of undue delay, undue prejudice to the opposing party, bad faith or dilatory motive, failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, or futility of amendment." Wilkerson v. Shinseki, 606 F.3d 1256, 1267 (10th Cir. 2010); see also Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962) (same).
Practically speaking, the party opposing a motion to amend generally bears the burden to demonstrate why the amendment should not be permitted. See Wilkerson, 606 F.3d at 1267 (); see also Eminence Capital, LLC v. Aspeon, Inc., 316 F.3d 1048, 1052 (9th Cir. 2003) (...
To continue reading
Request your trial