Universidad Cent. Del Caribe, Inc. v. Liaison Committee on Medical Educ., 84-1489
| Decision Date | 07 February 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 84-1489,84-1489 |
| Citation | 760 F.2d 14 |
| Parties | UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DEL CARIBE, INC., Plaintiff, Appellant, v. LIAISON COMMITTEE ON MEDICAL EDUCATION, Defendants, Appellees. . Heard |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Judith Berkan, Santurce, P.R., with whom Miriam Naveira De Rodon, San Juan, P.R., and Oscar Gonzalez Badillo, Hato Rey, P.R., were on brief, for plaintiff, appellant.
Adrian Mercado, San Juan, P.R., with whom Rua & Mercado, San Juan, P.R., was on brief, for defendants, appellees.
Before COFFIN, Circuit Judge, WISDOM, * Senior Circuit Judge, and BOWNES, Circuit Judge.
This case raises the issue whether a district court has discretion to convert a plaintiff's notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice under Fed.R.Civ.P. 41(a)(1) into a dismissal with prejudice under Rule 41(a)(2). Rule 41(a)(1)(i) allows a plaintiff voluntarily to dismiss a case by filing a notice of dismissal at any time before service by the adverse party of an answer or of a motion for summary judgment, whichever first occurs. Although the plaintiffs in this case filed a proper notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice under this rule, the district court entered an order and judgment dismissing the plaintiff's claim with prejudice. We vacate that judgment and remand with instructions to enter an order dismissing the case without prejudice.
The plaintiff, Universidad Central del Caribe, Inc. (UCC), owns and administers a medical school in the town of Cayey, Puerto Rico. The school was accredited by the Puerto Rico Council on Higher Education and was provisionally accredited by the defendant, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), a federally recognized accrediting entity jointly composed of members of the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges. In a letter of October 21, 1983, LCME notified UCC that its accreditation would be withdrawn effective June 30, 1984. UCC immediately filed an administrative appeal from that decision, and a hearing was set for mid-February 1984.
In February 1984 the plaintiff filed for declaratory and injunctive relief in federal district court to restrain the defendant from withdrawing accreditation on the proposed date. 1 The plaintiff also sought damages for the threatened loss of accreditation. The district court granted a temporary restraining order on February 21, 1984, and the order was further extended by agreement of the parties on a number of occasions. The defendant never filed either an answer to the complaint or a motion for summary judgment. The only pleadings filed by the defendant were a motion for a change of venue and motions to dismiss under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(2) for lack of personal jurisdiction and under 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.
On April 20, 1984, LCME entered an administrative decision rescinding its earlier decision to withdraw accreditation. On May 3, 1984, the plaintiff filed a notice of voluntary dismissal without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(i). The notice stated that, although there were many issues included in the action that had not been rendered moot by the reinstatement of accreditation, UCC had decided not to continue with the lawsuit at that time. The defendant filed an opposition to the notice of voluntary dismissal, arguing that the dismissal should be with prejudice in view of the fact that the defendant had spent considerable time, effort, and money defending the action, including the cost of a flight from the continental United States to Puerto Rico by the defendant's counsel, and in view of the fact that there were pending before the court motions to dismiss the complaint on the merits.
On May 11, 1984, before the plaintiff had an opportunity to respond to the defendant's argument, the district court entered an order and judgment dismissing UCC's claim with prejudice. The court made no reference in its order to any Federal Rule that provided the basis for its dismissal with prejudice. The plaintiff filed a motion requesting reconsideration of the judgment and replying to the defendant's argument concerning dismissal with prejudice. The court took no further action with respect to the motion. The plaintiff appealed.
Fed.R.Civ.P. 41(a)(1) provides:
Subject to the provisions of Rule 23(e) [], of Rule 66 [], and of any statute of the United States, an action may be dismissed by the plaintiff without order of court (i) by filing a notice of dismissal at any time before service by the adverse party of an answer or of a motion for summary judgment, or (ii) by filing a stipulation of dismissal signed by all parties who have appeared in the action. Unless otherwise stated in the notice of dismissal or stipulation, the dismissal is without prejudice, except that a notice of dismissal operates as an adjudication on the merits when filed by a plaintiff who has once dismissed in any court of the United States or of any state an action based on or including the same claim.
By its terms, this rule governs voluntary dismissals by the plaintiff and does not require the intervention of the court. Dismissals by order of the court are governed by Rule 41(a)(2), which provides:
Except as provided in paragraph (1) of this subdivision of this rule, an action shall not be dismissed at the plaintiff's instance save upon order of the court and upon such terms and conditions as the court deems proper. If a counterclaim has been pleaded by a defendant prior to the service upon him of the plaintiff's motion to dismiss, the action shall not be dismissed against the defendant's objection unless the counterclaim can remain pending for independent adjudication by the court. Unless otherwise specified in the order, a dismissal under this paragraph is without prejudice.
The plaintiff argues that under the unambiguous language of Rule 41(a)(1)(i), it had an unqualified right voluntarily to dismiss its action without prejudice because at the time of the notice of dismissal the defendant had filed neither an answer nor a motion for summary judgment. The plaintiff insists that only Rule 41(a)(2) allows the court to impose conditions on the dismissal of an action, and the district court did not explicitly invoke that Rule in its order dismissing the action with prejudice. The plaintiff therefore concludes that the court's imposition of conditions upon its dismissal was improper.
The defendant responds with two arguments. First, it argues that the Rule 12(b)(6) motion it filed was implicitly treated by the district court as a motion for summary judgment, as provided in Rule 12(b). 2 That being so, the defendant argues that the terms of Rule 41(a)(1) became unavailable to the plaintiff, and the court's dismissal must implicitly have been under Rule 41(a)(2), which allows the court to impose conditions upon the dismissal. We reject this argument, because we can find nothing in the record that supports the contention that the district court treated the Rule 12(b)(6) motion as a motion for summary judgment. The defendant clearly intended that the motion be one for dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) rather than for summary judgment, because the motion stated that, "[l]imiting the grounds of this Motion to the facts alleged in the plaintiffs' Complaint, and taking every alleged fact therein as true for purposes of this Motion", the plaintiff was nonetheless not entitled to relief as a matter of law. The only affidavits submitted with the defendant's pretrial motions were attached to their motion for a change of venue. We therefore conclude that the district court did not treat the defendant's motion under Rule 12(b)(6) as a motion for summary judgment.
Second, the defendant argues that Rule 41(a)(1), despite its literal language, does not provide an absolutely unqualified right to dismiss. To support this argument, the defendant points to two principal cases. In Armstrong v. Frostie Co., 453 F.2d 914, 916-17 (4th Cir.1971), the Court stated that the "[r]ule permitting voluntary dismissal of an action without prejudice at any time before service by adverse party of an answer or Motion for Summary Judgment is designed to permit a disengagement of the parties at the behest of the plaintiff only in the early stages of a suit before defendant has expended time and effort in the preparation of his case" (emphasis added). The defendant argues that under Armstrong it had expended too much time and effort for the plaintiff to avail itself of Rule 41(a)(1), because motions and memoranda raising the merits of the case had been filed, and counsel for the defendant had to travel from the continental United States to Puerto Rico for the hearings in connection with the preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiff.
The defendant's reliance on Armstrong is misplaced. Armstrong is weak authority for the proposition that a district court has general discretion to condition a plaintiff's voluntary dismissal under Rule 41(a)(1) when the merits of the action have been reached, because in Armstrong the defendant had filed both an answer and a motion for summary judgment in response to the original complaint, which cut off the plaintiff's right to dismiss voluntarily under Rule 41(a)(1). The original complaint had been dismissed by the court with leave to amend. The plaintiff then filed an amended complaint, and, before the defendant could answer, gave notice of voluntary dismissal under Rule 41(a)(1). The district court vacated the notice of dismissal and entered an order dismissing the action with prejudice. The Fourth Circuit affirmed, stating that the defendant "satisfied both the letter and the spirit of the rule by filing an answer and a motion for summary judgment to [the plaintiff's] original complaint". Id. at 916....
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