CLD-232 NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

___________

No. 21-1543

___________

OMAR S. FOLK,

Appellant

v.

BUREAU OF PRISONS, Employees and Medical Staff; PA-C Samuel GOSA; 

ELIZABETH SANTOS/STAHL, Clinical Director; DR. ROBERT E. PUCELL; JOHN 

T. BURN; BRIAN BUSCHMAN; D. PARKER; M. MAGYAR; R. PARKYN; 

C. SMITH; JENNIFER HOLTZ-APPLE; DAVID J. BALL; PA-C ZALNO; CO. 

GENTZYEL; R&D FAUSEY; M. WASHINGTON; L. HUNTER; J. POTOPE; 

T. GREELY; T. ANDRESS; T. CULLEN; J. MARIS; A. RODERMEL; A. DEWALT; 

C. CRAIG; NICK MAIZE; C. ERICKSON; E. STAHL; J. WALKER; C. CAIN; 

J. FREYNIK; D. NICOLLETTE; T. THOMAS

____________________________________

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

(M.D. Pa. Civil No. 3:18-cv-02252)

District Judge: Honorable Robert D. Mariani

____________________________________

Submitted for Possible Dismissal Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B) or 

Summary Action Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 27.4 and I.O.P. 10.6

July 29, 2021

Before: RESTREPO, MATEY, and SCIRICA, Circuit Judges

(Opinion filed: August 11, 2021)
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_________

OPINION*

_________

PER CURIAM

Omar Sierre Folk appeals from orders of the District Court dismissing his claims 

and ruling on several motions. For the reasons that follow, we will summarily affirm the 

District Court’s judgment.

I.

In 2018, Folk initiated an action in the District Court, bringing civil rights claims 

relating to his medical care in prison. Folk subsequently amended his complaint, and 

several defendants moved to dismiss it. The District Court granted their motion without 

prejudice and with leave to further amend.

In doing so, the District Court directed Folk to comply with Federal Rules of Civil 

Procedure 8 and 20 when filing a second amended complaint. The District Court 

explained that Folk’s 14-page amended complaint primarily set out summaries of isolated 

and unrelated events, spanning five years, and named 16 defendants. It instructed him 

about the requirements of Rules 8 and 20, noting that he should identify his related claims 

against each defendant individually, along with the facts supporting those claims. The 

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not 

constitute binding precedent.
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District Court explained that if Folk wished to bring claims about separate, unrelated 

incidents, he should file separate complaints initiating additional actions to address those 

unrelated incidents. The District Court also warned that this would be Folk’s final 

opportunity to amend his complaint to comply with Rules 8 and 20.

Rather than clarify his claims, Folk responded by filing a 247-page second 

amended complaint against 51 defendants. This document is a largely handwritten 

account of Folk’s interactions with various prison staff and medical providers between 

2013 and 2020. In portions of the complaint, Folk alleged that Dr. David J. Ball, a 

private physician, failed to adequately treat knee and thigh injuries from 2013 to 2018. 

Folk stated that Dr. Ball ordered several MRIs and x-rays of Folk’s leg and ordered nerve 

testing and a new knee brace for him. Dr. Ball also recommended injections to treat 

Folk’s pain, but Folk declined them. Folk claimed that Dr. Ball refused to perform 

surgery on his ruptured quadricep because he feared that Folk may have permanent nerve 

damage and recommended physical therapy and exercise as an alternative treatment.

Dr. Ball filed a motion to dismiss, as did a group of defendants employed by the 

Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”); the remaining defendants Folk named in his second amended 

complaint had not yet been served. In the meantime, Folk moved for: (1) reconsideration 

of an earlier order denying his request for intervention from the District Court regarding 

his legal mail; (2) an entry of default against certain defendants; and (3) appointment of 

counsel. The District Court ultimately deemed Folk’s first motion to be withdrawn for 
4

failure to comply with a local rule and denied the others. The District Court subsequently 

granted Dr. Ball’s motion to dismiss Folk’s claims against him pursuant to Federal Rule 

of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). It also dismissed the remainder of Folk’s complaint pursuant 

to Rules 8 and 20. The District Court did so by granting the BOP defendants’ motion and 

dismissing, sua sponte, Folk’s remaining claims against several dozen unserved 

defendants pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B).

Folk timely appealed, specifying that he sought to appeal the dismissal of his 

claims and the District Court’s rulings on his other motions. On appeal, he has filed a 

motion to vacate the District Court’s judgment and remand the case.

II.

We have jurisdiction over this appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. While we 

exercise plenary review over a district court’s dismissal of claims under Rule 12(b)(6), 

see Fowler v. UPMC Shadyside, 578 F.3d 203, 206 (3d Cir. 2009), we review a dismissal 

for failure to comply with the requirements of Rule 8 for an abuse of discretion, see In re 

Westinghouse Sec. Litig., 90 F.3d 696, 702 (3d Cir. 1996). Dismissal for failure to state 

a claim is appropriate “if, accepting all well-pleaded allegations in the complaint as true 

and viewing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, a court finds that [the] 

plaintiff’s claims lack facial plausibility.” Warren Gen. Hosp. v. Amgen Inc., 643 F.3d 

77, 84 (3d Cir. 2011). We construe Folk’s pro se pleadings liberally, see Haines v. 

Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520 (1972), and may summarily affirm a district court’s decision 
5

“on any basis supported by the record” if the appeal fails to present a substantial question,

see Murray v. Bledsoe, 650 F.3d 246, 247 (3d Cir. 2011) (per curiam).

III.

We agree with the District Court’s dismissal of Folk’s claims. For his claims 

against Dr. Ball, the District Court correctly concluded that Folk failed to state a claim 

under Rule 12(b)(6). Although it was not entirely clear, it appeared that Folk sought to 

bring claims of Eighth Amendment deliberate indifference and professional negligence 

under state law. “[D]eliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners 

constitutes the ‘unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain’ . . . proscribed by the Eighth 

Amendment.” Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104 (1976) (citation omitted). 

Establishing a claim requires proving both an objective component — “a serious medical 

need” — and a subjective component — “acts or omissions by prison officials that 

indicate deliberate indifference to that need.” See Natale v. Camden Cnty. Corr. Facility, 

318 F.3d 575, 582 (3d Cir. 2003).

Folk alleged that Dr. Ball conducted testing, ordered an assistive device, and 

offered injections for pain that Folk declined. He also claimed that Dr. Ball would not 

perform surgery on an injury because he feared that Folk would have permanent nerve 

damage, offering alternative treatment in the form of physical therapy and exercise. 

These allegations show that Folk merely disagreed with the course of treatment 

recommended by Dr. Ball. However, mere disagreement with medical treatment does not 
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constitute deliberate indifference under the Eighth Amendment. See Monmouth Cnty. 

Corr. Inst. Inmates v. Lanzaro, 834 F.2d 326, 346 (3d. Cir. 1987); see also U.S. ex rel. 

Walker v. Fayette County, 599 F.2d 573, 575 n.2 (3d Cir. 1979) (per curiam) (“Where a 

prisoner has received some medical attention and the dispute is over the adequacy of the 

treatment, federal courts are generally reluctant to second guess medical judgments and 

to constitutionalize claims which sound in state tort law.”) (citation omitted).

Further, the District Court properly dismissed Folk’s claim of professional 

negligence against Dr. Ball. Folk did not file a certificate of merit (“COM”) or claim that 

a COM was unnecessary, as required by Pennsylvania Rule of Civil Procedure 1042.3,

despite receiving ample notice about the requirement in Dr. Ball’s motion to dismiss. See

Schmigel v. Uchal, 800 F.3d 113, 119-20 (3d Cir. 2015) (“Pennsylvania’s notice 

requirement, like the COM requirement itself, is substantive state law under [Erie R.R. 

Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938)].”); Liggon-Redding v. Estate of Sugarman, 659 

F.3d 258, 264-65 (3d Cir. 2011); see also Pa. R. Civ. P. 1042.6-7. Accordingly, Folk’s 

claims against Dr. Ball were properly dismissed.

We also conclude that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing 

the remainder of Folk’s claims under Rule 8. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a) 

requires a pleading to contain “a short and plain statement of the grounds for the court’s 

jurisdiction” and “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is 

entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(1), (2). Each averment must be “simple, concise, 
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and direct.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(d)(1). “Taken together,” Rules 8(a) and 8(d)(1) 

“underscore the emphasis placed on clarity and brevity by the federal pleading rules.” 

Westinghouse, 90 F.3d at 702 (citation omitted). A statement must be plain “to give the 

adverse party fair notice of the claim asserted so as to enable him to answer and prepare 

for trial,” and must be short to avoid placing “an unjustified burden on the court and the 

part[ies] who must respond to it because they are forced to select the relevant material 

from a mass of verbiage.” Salahuddin v. Cuomo, 861 F.2d 40, 42 (2d Cir. 1988) (citation 

omitted).

Folk’s second amended complaint was anything but “simple, concise, and direct.” 

See Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(d)(1). Rather than clarifying his 14-page amended complaint, 

Folk’s 247-page second amended complaint, which spans seven years of encounters with 

dozens of people, is dense, very difficult to follow, and lacking any consistent structure. 

It is so voluminous and unfocused that it is largely impossible to identify what about 

Folk’s encounters with most prison and medical staff could support any claim for relief or 

what those claims were for each of the 51 defendants.

As was the case here, “a district court acts within its discretion when it dismisses 

an excessively prolix and overlong complaint,” especially after the litigant has been given 

an opportunity “to better tailor [his] pleading.” See Garrett v. Wexford Health, 938 F.3d 
8

69, 93 (3d Cir. 2019), cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 1611 (2020).

1

 The District Court 

“expressly warned [Folk] that failure to replead [his] claims in compliance with Rule 8 

would result in the dismissal of those claims” and explained how to comply with that 

rule. See Westinghouse, 90 F.3d at 704. Where Folk responded by filing an extremely 

lengthy document that was significantly harder to understand, dismissal of his complaint

under Rule 8 was appropriate.

2

 See id. at 703 (affirming the dismissal of an 

“unnecessarily complicated and verbose” 240-page counseled complaint that plaintiffs 

had failed to sufficiently narrow through “two rounds of difficult motions”); see also

Mann v. Boatright, 477 F.3d 1140, 1148 (10th Cir. 2007) (explaining that it is not a 

“district court’s job to stitch together cognizable claims for relief from [a] wholly 

deficient pleading”). Under these circumstances, the District Court also did not err in 

1

 In light of this conclusion, we need not consider the District Court’s additional 

conclusion that Folk’s second amended complaint violated Fed. R. Civ. P. 20, which is 

not an independent basis to dismiss a complaint. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 21. We note, 

however, that the District Court’s Rule 20 analysis further underscores the deficiencies of 

Folk’s second amended complaint under Rule 8. The manner in which Folk included so 

many claims against so many defendants makes it exceedingly difficult to determine 

where one claim ends and another begins and which specific claims relate to which 

specific defendants. In that regard, we note that the fact that Dr. Ball was able to identify 

and respond to claims against him does not mean that the same was true for the other

defendants. Cf. Garrett, 938 F.3d at 96 n.29 (addressing the application of Rule 8 to 

“specific defendants”).

2

 For the same reasons, the District Court did not err in dismissing Folk’s claims against 

the unserved defendants sua sponte under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B) for failure to comply 

with Rule 8. See Simmons v. Abruzzo, 49 F.3d 83, 86 (2d Cir. 1995) (explaining that a 

district court may dismiss claims sua sponte for failure to comply with Rule 8 where a 

“complaint is so confused, ambiguous, vague, or otherwise unintelligible that its true 

substance, if any, is well disguised”) (citation omitted).
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denying Folk further leave to amend. See Grayson v. Mayview State Hosp., 293 F.3d 

103, 108 (3d Cir. 2002).

We further conclude that the District Court did not err in denying Folk’s other 

motions. We discern no error in the District Court’s decision to deem Folk’s motion for 

reconsideration of an earlier order regarding his legal mail to be withdrawn under M.D. 

Pa. Local Rule 7.5 after he did not timely file a brief in support of the motion. See

United States v. Eleven Vehicles, 200 F.3d 203, 214 (3d Cir. 2000). The District Court 

also did not abuse its discretion in denying, without prejudice, Folk’s request for an entry 

of default against defendants who had not yet been served. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 55(a); 

Chamberlain v. Giampapa, 210 F.3d 154, 164 (3d Cir. 2000). Finally, although it is 

unfortunate that Folk appears unable to articulate the claims he may believe he has, we 

have no basis to conclude that any such claims might be potentially valid and thus cannot 

say that the District Court abused its discretion by denying Folk’s request for 

appointment of counsel. See Tabron v. Grace, 6 F.3d 147, 155-56 (3d Cir. 1993).

Accordingly, we will affirm the District Court’s judgment.

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3

 Folk’s motion to vacate and remand is denied.