Weinacker v. Baer
| Decision Date | 23 August 2016 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action Number 1:15-cv-267-AKK |
| Parties | TERESA Y. WEINACKER, Plaintiff, v. CHARLES BAER, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Alabama |
Teresa Y. Weinacker pursues this case against the named defendants1 under 18 U.S.C. §§ 241 and 242, and 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, 1985, 1986, and 1988. Doc. 28. Weinacker alleges that during a civil bankruptcy she filed for her company, the named defendants acted individually and in concert to obstruct justice and violate her constitutional rights. See generally doc. 28. Presently before the court are motions to dismiss the amended complaint filed by numerous defendants. See docs. 36, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46. Based on a review of the evidence andthe law, the court finds that Weinacker has failed to state cognizable claims and the motions are due to be granted.2
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2), a pleading must contain "a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the claimant is entitled to relief." "[T]he pleading standard Rule 8 announces does not require 'detailed factual allegations,' but it demands more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009).
A motion made pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) is permitted when a plaintiff has failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). In a motion to dismiss, the factual allegations in the plaintiff's complaint are taken as true and "the court limits its consideration to the pleadings and exhibits attached thereto." Grossman v. Nationsbank, N.A., 225 F.3d 1228, 1231 (11th Cir. 2000); South Florida Water Mgmt Dis. v. Montalvo, 84 F.3d 402, 406 (1996). To survive a motion to dismiss, "a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to 'state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'" Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (citing Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007)). A claim is plausible where it "pleadsfactual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged." Id. Dismissal for failure to state a claim, then, is appropriate where the plaintiff fails to state a claim that is "plausible on its face." Id. This is a "context specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense." Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679.
The allegations in this lawsuit center around Xena Express, a business Weinacker incorporated in 1992. In March 2009, Xena Express' creditors began filing lawsuits to recover outstanding debts. That October, after several creditors obtained judgments against Xena Express, including the seizure of a company bank account and garnishments of the Wal-Mart account used to pay company receivables, Weinacker hired Charles Grodsky, one of the defendants in this case, to file a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition for Xena Express.
As far as the court can ascertain, Weinacker alleges that Grodsky, various bankruptcy administrators, and creditors behaved unfairly and unlawfully. Allegedly, Grodsky failed to adequately represent Xena Express by refusing to amend the filing to include updated financial information. Weinacker also contends that Bankruptcy Judge William Shulman violated her constitutional rights byinstructing her to assert the Fifth Amendment and then drawing a negative inference when Weinacker's refused to answer certain questions.
Apparently, at some point, authorities initiated a criminal investigation against Weinacker for fraud in the bankruptcy filing. Weinacker contends that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Special Agents Lisa Reiter and Amy White purportedly failed to adequately investigate the evidence against her before presenting it to Assistant United States Attorneys Charles Baer and John Cherry, who then also purportedly failed to investigate prior to presenting their evidence and securing an indictment against Weinacker. Also, Special Agents Reiter and White allegedly violated Weinacker's Fifth Amendment rights when they interviewed her prior to providing her with a copy of the indictment.
As a result of the indictment, Weinacker hired the Friedlander Firm to represent her in the criminal proceeding. This representation is the basis for her claims against the law firm in this lawsuit. Among other things, Weinacker claims the firm failed to investigate, research, file motions, produce mitigating evidence, or prepare a defense strategy. Her primary contention is that the Friedlander Firm purportedly failed to prepare for trial and misled her into accepting a plea deal.
Weinacker has filed a twenty-three count complaint. The movants raise several grounds for dismissal: statute of limitations, failure to state a claim, judicialimmunity, prosecutorial immunity, and standing. To say that Weinacker's complaint is not a model of the short and plain statement required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 would be an understatement. Indeed, it is the quintessential shotgun pleading that requires the parties and the court to parse out what precisely Weinacker is alleging against each defendant and what laws they purportedly violated. The court has painstakingly reviewed the complaint and the parties' briefs and concludes that Weinacker has failed to plead cognizable claims. To deal with the large volume of allegations, the court will first address the general deficiencies in Weinacker's complaint. Thereafter, in section B, the court will group the defendants into subcategories and address the contentions of each subcategory collectively. Finally, in section C, the court will address the state law claims.
Defendants raise various deficiencies in Weinacker's pleadings that they contend violate Rule 8(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In reviewing these contentions, the court must construe Weinacker's pleadings liberally because she is proceeding pro se. See Alba v. Montford, 517 F.3d 1249, 1252 (11th Cir. 2008). However, this does not mean that the court is at liberty "to serve as de facto counsel for [Weinacker], or to rewrite an otherwise deficient pleading in order to sustain an action." GJR Invs. v. Cnty. of Escambia Fla., 132 F.3d 1359, 1369 (11th Cir. 1998), overruled on other grounds by Randall v. Scott, 610 F.3d 701 (11th Cir.2010). With these general edicts in mind, the court will now address the specific contentions.
Although Weinacker names McMillon, Roberts, and Hendricks as defendants, the amended complaint does not identify which counts apply to them. In fact, the complaint does not identify what their role is, if any, in this dispute. Having reviewed the complaint, the court agrees with McMillon, Roberts, and Hendricks that Weinacker makes no specific allegations against them and that she does not provide any information from which the court can infer their alleged wrongful conduct. See generally docs. 1 and 28. Because the allegations against these defendants fail to comply with the pleading standards of Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a) and fail to state a cognizable claim against them, their motion to dismiss, doc. 42, is due to be granted.
The court also agrees with the remaining defendants that Counts 8, 9, 13, 18, 19 and 20 fail to state any cognizable right to relief. These counts amount to unsupported legal conclusions that Weinacker generally alleges against all 34 defendants and that offer no reasonable inference of liability. See Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679. For example, Weinacker asserts a violation of unspecified "latent rights" under the Ninth Amendment in Count 8, due to unspecified "unlawful conduct bythe Defendants." Doc. 28 at 19. In Count 9, she invokes Article 1 of the Alabama Constitution against all defendants, alleging that defendants "[denied her] equality and rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Id. In Count 13, she asserts a claim for an alleged failure to prevent a conspiracy, including a claim that "Defendants furthered the conspiracy by cooperation with lending aid and encouragement to or ratified and adopted the acts of Defendants in turning a blind eye." Id. at 23. This count does not specifically outline what the defendants did and what laws they purportedly violated, and instead generally references the bankruptcy case and the alleged procedural issues that occurred at Weinacker's criminal sentencing. Id. Next, in Count 18, Weinacker asserts that some of the named defendants falsely portrayed themselves as "victims" of her fraud at sentencing and again takes issue with her criminal conviction. Id. at 27. In Count 19, she makes a generalized claim for "restitution" that seems to assert that she is entitled to recover a sum of money because the judge in her criminal case purportedly miscalculated the restitution amount Weinacker owed, and, in Count 20, she makes a claim under the "one satisfaction rule" in which she contends that various defendants erred in concluding that she had committed bankruptcy fraud. Id. at 27-28. While Rule 8(a) allows for liberal pleading, these counts are unadorned accusations of purported harm with no indication of what laws thesedefendants purportedly violated or how their actions would result in the imposition of liability against them. Therefore, these counts are due to be dismissed.
Counts 1-22 repeatedly reference 18 U.S.C. §§ 241 and 242, which are criminal statutes that prohibit individuals from conspiring or depriving another person's civil rights. To the extent Weinacker intended to raise a civil claim for purported violations of these statutes, she cannot do so because neither statute provides a private cause of action. See Butler...
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