United States District Court

for the

Southern District of Florida

Pamela Taylor, Plaintiff,

v.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., 

Defendant.

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Civil Action No. 20-22161-Civ-Scola

Omnibus Order

This matter is before the Court upon Plaintiff Pamela Taylor’s motion for 

reconsideration of the Court’s Order granting the motion to dismiss (Order, 

ECF No. 19) and her separate motion for leave to amend the complaint. (Pl.’s 

Mot. for Reconsideration, ECF No. 21; Pl.’s Mot. for Leave to Amend, ECF No. 

22.) This maritime action arises from damages Taylor sustained when she 

tripped and fell while disembarking a cruise operated by Defendant Royal 

Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (ECF No. 6 at ¶ 18.) After careful review, the Court 

granted Royal Caribbean’s motion to dismiss Taylor’s case in its entirety. See 

Taylor v. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., No. 20-22161-CIV, 2020 WL 6826486 

(S.D. Fla. Nov. 20, 2020) (Scola, J.). In response, Taylor now asks the Court to 

reconsider its order dismissing her complaint and to afford her leave to amend 

her complaint. In her reply brief, Taylor acknowledges that in response to the 

arguments made in the motion to dismiss, “it clearly would have been 

preferable for the Plaintiff to address those alleged insufficiencies in an 

amended complaint . . . .” (ECF No. 27 at 2.) The Court agrees and after careful 

consideration of Taylor’s motions, the record, and the relevant legal authorities, 

the Court denies the motions (ECF Nos. 21–22).

To begin with, “in the interests of finality and conservation of scarce 

judicial resources, reconsideration of an order is an extraordinary remedy that 

is employed sparingly.” Gipson v. Mattox, 511 F. Supp. 2d 1182, 1185 (S.D. 

Ala. 2007). A motion to reconsider is “appropriate where, for example, the 

Court has patently misunderstood a party, or has made a decision outside the 

adversarial issues presented to the Court by the parties, or has made an error 

not of reasoning but of apprehension.” Z.K. Marine Inc. v. M/V Archigetis, 808 

F. Supp. 1561, 1563 (S.D. Fla. 1992) (Hoeveler, J.) (citation omitted). “Simply 

put, a party may move for reconsideration only when one of the following has 

occurred: an intervening change in controlling law, the availability of new 

evidence, or the need to correct clear error or prevent manifest injustice.” 

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Longcrier v. HL-A Co., 595 F. Supp. 2d 1218, 1247 (S.D. Ala. 2008) (quoting 

Vidinliev v. Carey Int’l, Inc., No. CIV.A. 107CV762-TWT, 2008 WL 5459335, at 

*1 (N.D. Ga. Dec. 15, 2008)). However, “[s]uch problems rarely arise and the 

motion to reconsider should be equally rare.” Z.K. Marine Inc., 808 F. Supp. at

1563 (citation omitted). Certainly, if any of these situations arise, a court has 

broad discretion to reconsider a previously issued order. Absent any of these 

conditions, however, a motion to reconsider is not ordinarily warranted.

Here, Taylor does not complain that the Court erred substantively in 

dismissing her amended complaint. Instead, she argues that her claims may 

potentially be barred by a one-year statute of limitations, and therefore, 

dismissal could work a manifest injustice. The Court finds Taylor’s arguments 

unavailing and therefore does not find reconsideration warranted.

“The only grounds for granting a Rule 59 motion [to amend] are newlydiscovered evidence or manifest errors of law or fact.” Arthur v. King, 500 F.3d 

1335, 1343 (11th Cir. 2007). Taylor does not argue that there is newly 

discovered evidence, nor does she cite to any legal authority to support her

proposition that a de facto dismissal with prejudice, without more, operates as 

a manifest error of law. The motion thus fails to meet the Rule 59 standard, 

which is the rule pursuant to which the motion to reconsider was filed. (ECF 

No. 21 at 1.) Nevertheless, the Court will proceed to apply Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 16(b)(4). See Watkins v. Bigwood, No. 18-cv-63035, 2020 WL 

4922359, at *2 (S.D. Fla. Aug. 21, 2020) (Bloom, J.) (citation omitted) (holding, 

in a case involving a pro se plaintiff, “when a motion for leave to amend a 

pleading is filed after the deadline set in a court’s scheduling order, the court 

employs a two-step analysis” governed by Rule 16(b)(4)). “First, the movant 

must demonstrate good cause under Rule 16(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil 

Procedure.” Id. “If the movant demonstrates good cause, the court proceeds to 

determine whether an amendment to the pleadings is proper . . . .” Id.

Here, the Court finds no good cause to revisit its ruling. Indeed, Taylor

had ample opportunity to cure the defects in her pleading and chose not to do 

so. The Court struck Taylor’s first complaint as a shotgun pleading, pointing 

out to her that she must do “more than assert fact-free, wholly conclusory, 

boilerplate allegations” and instead must “allege facts, not merely labels and 

boilerplate conclusions. (ECF No. 5 at 2-3 (quoting Gharfeh v. Carnival Corp., 

309 F. Supp. 3d 1317, 1333, n.7 (S.D. Fla. 2018) (Goodman, Mag. J.) and 

citing Ward v. Carnival Cruises, No. 17-24628, 2019 WL 342027, at *2-3, n.1, 

n.2 (S.D. Fla. Jan. 28, 2019) (Scola, J.) (collecting cases))) The Court granted 

her leave to file an amended complaint and advised Taylor that “failure to 

comply with this order may result in dismissal of this case with prejudice or 

other appropriate sanctions.” (ECF No. 5 at 3.) Royal Caribbean moved to 

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dismiss the amended complaint and argued that Taylor failed to allege 

causation and that Royal Caribbean was on notice of the allegedly dangerous 

condition. (ECF No. 11 at 3, 8.) Royal Caribbean’s motion to dismiss put Taylor

on notice of her pleading’s shortcomings. At that point Taylor had a choice: 

stand on her pleading and oppose the motion to dismiss or request leave to 

amend in order to address her pleading’s flaws. As a tactical decision, Taylor

chose to oppose the motion and lost. The Court will not now afford her another 

bite of the apple where she declined “to follow the well-trodden procedural path 

toward amendment.” Eiber Radiology, Inc. v. Toshiba Am. Med. Sys., Inc., 673 

Fed. App’x 925, 930 (11th Cir. 2016) (also noting the propriety of dismissal 

with prejudice “where a counseled plaintiff has failed to cure a deficient 

pleading after having been offered ample opportunity to do so”).

While it is certainly true that our legal system favors the resolution of 

cases on their merits, that rule is not without limits. Especially where, as here, 

the plaintiff’s own strategic decisions dictated the course of litigation. Here, 

Taylor reviewed Royal Caribbean’s motion to dismiss, vigorously opposed it and 

then sat back and waited to see if the Court would let her pleading stand. 

Taylor had every opportunity to fix the deficiencies Royal Caribbean identified 

prior to the Court’s careful and thorough review. She should have taken her

best shot from the get-go; she should not have waited for Royal Caribbean and 

the Court to have worked through her pleading before bothering to inform all 

involved that she had a much better pleading in her quiver in case things went 

badly for her. The Court is not persuaded by Taylor’s after-the-fact attempt to 

recast this tactic as a defensible strategy for having the Court provide a 

roadmap for how to survive dismissal. Her present request does not allege new 

information uncovered in discovery. At bottom, the delay was a tactical choice 

that does not warrant leave to amend months after the deadline.

Lastly, Taylor’s argument that amendment should be allowed under Rule 

15(a)(2) misses the mark. (ECF No. 22 at 2.) While that rule indeed requires 

“[t]he court [to] freely give leave” to amend “when justice so requires,” Taylor

has sought leave to amend long after the deadline to do so has passed. When 

leave to amend is sought after the deadline to amend the pleadings has passed, 

the movant must do more than argue leave is due under Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 15(a). Instead, the movant must also show “good cause” under 

Federal Rule of Civil 16(b)(4) in order to obtain the right to amend. See Sosa v. 

Air Print Sys., Inc., 133 F.3d 1417, 1418 (11th Cir. 1998); Fed. R. Civ. P. 

16(b)(4) (“A schedule may be modified only for good cause and with the judge’s 

consent.”). The standard set forth in Rule 16(b) “precludes modification [of the 

scheduling order] unless the schedule cannot ‘be met despite the diligence of 

the party seeking the extension.’” See Sosa, 133 F.3d at 1418. Thus, “diligence 

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is the key to satisfying the good cause requirement.” De Varona v. Discount 

Auto Parts, LLC, 285 F.R.D. 671, 672–73 (S.D. Fla. 2012) (Ungaro, J.). Only if 

“good cause” for an untimely amendment is shown under Rule 16(b), does Rule 

15(a)’s instruction, that leave should be freely given when justice so requires, 

come into play. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2). While the standard under Rule 

15(a) is lenient, still, “a motion to amend may be denied on numerous grounds 

such as undue delay, undue prejudice to the [opposing party], and futility of 

the amendment.” See Maynard v. Bd. of Regents, 342 F.3d 1281, 1287 (11th 

Cir. 2003) (citations omitted). As discussed above, Taylor has failed to satisfy 

Rule 16(b) as she did not show good cause justifying her untimely proposed 

amendment. She merely made the strategic choice to await the Court’s ruling.

“Permitting another round of amendments” at this point, “would . . . unduly 

protract [these] proceedings . . . and promote[] judicial inefficiency.” Eiber, 673 

Fed. App’x at 930.

For the foregoing reasons, the Court denies Taylor’s motions for 

reconsideration and for leave to amend (ECF Nos. 21–22).

Done and ordered, in Miami, Florida on January 15, 2021.

Robert N. Scola, Jr.

United States District Judge

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