UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT

________________ _________________ DAWUD CANA AN STURRUP GABRIEL, Plaintiff - Appellant,

v. MELTON TRUCK LINES, Defendant - Appellee.

––––––––––––––––––– –––––––––––––––– DAWUD CANA AN STURRUP GABRIEL, Plaintiff - Appellant,

v. MELTON TRUCK LINES, Defendant - Appellee. No. 22-5008 (D.C. No. 4:21-CV-00529-GKF-JFJ) (N.D. Okla.)

No. 22-5009 (D.C. No. 4:22-CV-00021-GKF-JFJ) (N.D. Okla.)

________________ _________________ ORDER AND JUDGMENT *

________________ _________________ Before HARTZ , BALDOCK , and McHUGH , Circuit Judges.

* After examining the briefs and appella te record, this pa nel has determined unanimously to honor the party’s request for a decision on the brief without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). These cases are therefore submitted without oral argument. This orde r and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1. FILED United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit 

### April 29, 2022 Christopher M. Wolpert Clerk of Court Appellate Case: 22-5008 Document: 010110677604 Date Filed: 04/29/2022 Page: 12 ________________ _________________ Plaintiff Dawud C.S. Gabriel, proceedi ng pro se, appeals the district court’s orders dismissing two of his disability-dis crimination cases as duplicative of an earlier-filed case against th e same defendant that re mains pending. Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S. C. § 1291, we affirm. On November 16, 2021, Mr. Gabriel fi led a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northe rn District of Oklahoma ag ainst defendant Melton Truck Lines (Melton). On December 9, 2021, a nd January 14, 2022, he initiated two more suits against Melton in the same court. In each case Mr. Ga briel asserted one disparate-treatment claim under the Americans with Disabilities Ac t, claiming that in 2020, Melton, his employer, discriminate d against him because of his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The three complaints, each some 200 pages long, are substantially identical except for a few pages where Mr. Gabr iel alleges different instances of discriminatory conduct: The original co mplaint alleges that in May 2020 Melton instructed an employee to misrepresent when Mr. Gabr iel could attend new-hire training, thereby delaying the start of his em ployment; the next co mplaint alleges that on August 26, 2020, a Melton s upervisor made a derogatory statement to try to cause Mr. Gabriel to resign; and the third compla int alleged that in July 2020 Melton failed to reimburse Mr. Gabriel for transportation e xpenses that he incurred in attending his new-hire training. Appellate Case: 22-5008 Document: 010110677604 Date Filed: 04/29/2022 Page: 23 On January 19, 2022, the district court issued orders directing Mr. Gabriel to show cause why his later-filed cases should not be dismissed as duplicative. After he filed responses, the district court dismissed the cases, reasoning that “all three complaints assert the same claim—disabilit y discrimination in vi olation of 42 U.S.C. § 12112(a)—against the same defendant base d on the same disability in the course of the same employment relations hip.” R. (22-5008), Vol. I at 208; R. (22-5009), Vol. I at 329. The dismissals were without prejudi ce to allow Mr. Gabriel the opportunity to amend the complaint in his first-filed case. Mr. Gabrie l appeals both dismissals, arguing that the cases were not duplicative and that the district judge should have recused. The district court dismissed Mr. Gabriel’ s later-filed cases by applying the rule against claim-splitting, which “r equires a plaintiff to assert all of its causes of action arising from a common set of facts in one lawsuit.” Katz v. Gerardi , 655 F.3d 1212, 1217 (10th Cir. 2011). “[T]he te st for claim splitting is . . . whether the first suit, assuming it were final, woul d preclude the second suit.” Id. at 1218. We review a district court’s dismissal for clai m-splitting for abuse of discretion. See id. at 1217. A second suit is precluded by a prior final judgment on the merits if two conditions are satisfied: “iden tity of parties or privies in the two suits” and “identity of the cause of action in both suits.” Lenox MacLaren Surgical Corp. v. Medtronic,
Inc. , 847 F.3d 1221, 1239 (10th Cir. 2017) (i nternal quotation marks omitted). Here, there is no dispute that the pa rties are the same in each suit. And we conclude that the causes of action are identical as well. “Sui ts involve the same claim (or cause of Appellate Case: 22-5008 Document: 010110677604 Date Filed: 04/29/2022 Page: 34 action) when they arise from the same tr ansaction or involve a common nucleus of operative facts.” Lucky Brand Dungarees, Inc. v. Marcel Fashion Grp., Inc. , 140 S. Ct. 1589, 1595 (2020) (brackets, citations, and internal quotation marks omitted). We have held that “all claims arising from the same employment relationship constitute the same transaction or series of tran sactions for claim preclusion purposes,” Wilkes v. Wyo. Dep’t of Emp. Div. of Lab. Standards , 314 F.3d 501, 504 (10th Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks omitted), at leas t when all the facts underlying the laterfiled suits “were in exis tence at the time the first suit was filed,” Mitchell v. City of
Moore , 218 F.3d 1190, 1202 (10th Cir. 2000). Th at is the situati on here since the three complaints all alleged discrimi natory acts arising from Mr. Gabriel’s employment relationship with Melton in 2020, be fore all three complaints were filed. The district court did not abuse its disc retion in dismissing the later suits as duplicative. We also reject the argumen t that the district judge lacked impartiality and should have recused himself. Mr. Gabr iel bases his argument on rulings by the district judge. But “adverse rulings cannot in themselves form the appropriate grounds for disqualification.” United States v. Wells , 873 F.3d 1241, 1252 (10th Cir. 2017) (internal quota tion marks omitted). Appellate Case: 22-5008 Document: 010110677604 Date Filed: 04/29/2022 Page: 45 The judgments of the district court are AFFIRMED . All pending motions are
DENIED as moot.

Entered for the Court

Harris L Hartz Circuit Judge Appellate Case: 22-5008 Document: 010110677604 Date Filed: 04/29/2022 Page: 5