IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS 

BEAUMONT DIVISION 

DR. JOHNATHAN CASTILLE, 

 Plaintiff, 

v. 

PORT ARTHUR ISD, MARK PORTERIE, 

MELISSA OLIVA, MONIQUE 

BIENVENUE, MICHAEL OLIVER, and 

MICHAEL MORATH, 

 Defendants. 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

CIVIL ACTION NO. 1:23-CV-209-MJT 

 MEMORANDUM ORDER 

DENYING PLAINTIFF’S CORRECTED RULE 59(e) MOTION [Dkt. 59] 

Pending before the Court is Plaintiff’s Corrected Rule 59(e) Motion filed on August 27, 

2024 [Dkt. 59]. Defendants Port Arthur ISD, Dr. Mark Porterie, Monique Beinvenue, Dr. Melissa 

Oliva, and Michael Oliver filed a Response on September 7, 2024 [Dkt. 61] and Defendant Mike 

Morath timely responded on September 10, 2024 [Dkt. 62]. Plaintiff filed Replies to the 

Responses. [Dkts. 63, 64]. The Motion is ripe for review. 

I. Procedural Background 

This case was filed on May 30, 2023. [Dkt.1]. Plaintiff’s complaint was not a model of 

clarity. He asserted causes of action listed as: “Administrative Appeal,” “Texas Whistleblower 

Act,” “and “Constitutional Violations.” [Id. at 21-22]. Regarding constitutional violations, he 

alleged a conspiracy to violate his rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. [Id. at 22]. 

Defendant Morath filed his first motion to dismiss on September 15, 2023, and argued that Plaintiff 

lacked standing and failed to state any claims. [Dkt. 5]. On October 2, 2023, Defendants Port 

Arthur ISD, Bienvenue, and Porterie filed their first motion to dismiss and asserted that Plaintiff 

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did not state any federal claims and that the Court did not have jurisdiction to hear the state law 

claims. [Dkt. 6]. 

Plaintiff amended his complaint on October 24, 2023, and the Court denied as moot 

previous motions to dismiss. [Dkts. 10, 11]. Plaintiff’s amended complaint, however, did not 

clarify which claims were lodged against which defendants. [Dkt. 10]. Within the section entitled 

“Causes of Action,” Plaintiff asserted: “Judicial Review of Administrative Appeal,” “Texas 

Whistleblower Act,” and “Constitutional Violations,” again claiming that Defendants had joined 

together in a civil conspiracy to violate his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. [Id. at 16-17]. 

In response to the first amended complaint, Defendants Port Arthur ISD, Bienvenue, and 

Portie filed another motion to dismiss on November 7, 2023, and Defendant Morath filed his 

second motion to dismiss on November 16, 2023. [Dkts. 12, 13]. Plaintiff requested an extension 

until December 20, 2023 to respond to the motions. [Dkt. 14]. This Court granted the request in 

part and extended Plaintiff’s deadline to December 6, 2023. [Dkt. 15]. Plaintiff filed his responses 

to the motions to dismiss on December 6, 2023. [Dkts. 17, 18, 19]. In one response he informed 

the Court that he would file a motion for leave to amend his complaint to address the issues raised 

in the motion to dismiss before December 21, 2023. [Dkt. 18 at 5]. Plaintiff never filed such a 

motion, and the first amended complaint [Dkt. 10] remained as the operative complaint. 

Defendants Oliva and Oliver each filed motions to dismiss on December 19, 2023, and 

June 26, 2024, respectively. [Dkts. 21, 42]. These motions largely reiterated the same arguments 

lodged by the other individual Port Arthur ISD Defendants. In pertinent part, they (1) asserted 

qualified immunity and (2) argued that Plaintiff failed to state any constitutional claims. Plaintiff 

responded to Defendant Oliva’s motion by focusing on his claim that Port Arthur ISD has an 

“unwritten policy” to punish employees that are allegedly disloyal. [Dkt. 31 at 2-5]. 

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Plaintiff did not file a response to Defendant Oliver’s motion to dismiss. Instead, Plaintiff 

filed an opposed motion asking the Court for two additional weeks to respond. [Dkt. 43]. The 

Court granted the motion in part, providing Plaintiff an extension of one week, or until July 17, 

2024. [Dkt. 45]. On July 16, 2024, Plaintiff filed a “Notice” and an “Amended Notice” to inform 

the Court that he planned to file an amended complaint “as a matter of course” based on Defendant 

Oliver’s motion, rather than filing the proposed response for which he requested an extension. 

[Dkts. 46, 47]. The Court struck those notices and denied the construed request to amend on July 

17, 2024. [Dkt. 48]. In the order, the Court reiterated that the response deadline to Defendant 

Oliver’s Motion was July 17, 2024, and that if Plaintiff did not file a response by the end of the 

day, then the Court “would proceed without the brief.” [Id. at 4.] On the evening of July 17, 2024, 

Plaintiff filed an opposed motion for leave to file a second amended complaint. [Dkt. 49]. 

On July 18, 2024, Magistrate Judge Stetson issued a Report and Recommendation [Dkt. 

50] with the following conclusions and recommendations: (1) Plaintiff failed to overcome 

Defendants Bienvenue’s, Oliva’s, Oliver’s, and Porterie’s assertions of qualified immunity, 

meaning all claims against those defendants should be dismissed without prejudice, (2) Plaintiff 

failed to state a conspiracy claim under § 1985 against Defendant Port Arthur ISD and the Court 

should dismiss such a claim with prejudice, (3) with no remaining federal claims1

, the Court should 

dismiss without prejudice all remaining state law claims, and (4) Plaintiff should not be granted 

leave to amend because doing so would be futile and Plaintiff failed to address these same issues 

in a prior amendment. 

1 Because Plaintiff specifically excluded Defendant Morath from the only federal claim alleged (the conspiracy to 

violate Plaintiff’s constitutional rights) [Dkt. 50 at n. 4 (citing Dkt. 19 at 1-2)], only supplemental state law claims 

were asserted against Defendant Morath. 

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At the end of the fourteen-day objection window provided by the Local Rules, Plaintiff 

filed objections to the report and recommendation. [Dkt. 55]. Plaintiff’s objections were 

problematic. First, the objections contained pages of a factual recitation of Plaintiff’s case and 

irrelevant arguments. [Id. at 2-8]. Next, under the heading of “Specific Objections,” Plaintiff 

listed a series of quotes from the report and recommendation but did not explain what was wrong 

with each quote, or how the legal analysis was impacted by each statement. Finally, Plaintiff 

identified three overarching objections: (1) Judge Stetson allegedly erred by finding Plaintiff failed 

to state a conspiracy claim, (2) she also allegedly erred by recommending that the Court decline to 

exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Plaintiff’s state law claims, and (3) that Plaintiff should be 

granted leave to amend, but provided no analysis of how the magistrate judge allegedly erred. 

On August 6, 2024, the Court overruled Plaintiff’s objections. The Court found that 

Plaintiff’s objection that he did not plead a 42 U.S.C. § 1985 claim, but rather a “civil conspiracy 

claim” based on the alleged violation of his constitutional rights, was conclusory. [Dkt. 56 at 3]. 

Plaintiff pointed to no case law suggesting that the law provides a civil conspiracy claim based on 

violations of constitutional rights independent of 42 U.S.C. § 1985. 

Next, Plaintiff objected to the finding that he did not overcome the individual Defendants’ 

claims of qualified immunity. [Dkt. 50 at 10]. This objection was also overruled because nowhere 

in any of his responses to the motions to dismiss did Plaintiff point to any authority clearly 

establishing the constitutional rights being invoked. [Dkt. 56 at 4]. 

Finally, the Court determined that Plaintiff should not be allowed to amend his complaint, 

as he had already amended as a matter of course in the face of nearly identical motions to dismiss 

[Dkts. 5, 6, 10], to no avail, and that to allow Plaintiff to amend once again at this late stage would 

prejudice the Defendants [Dkt. 56 at 4]. 

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In sum, after conducting a de novo review of the objections, the Court overruled Plaintiff’s 

objections and adopted the report and recommendation. The Court found that Plaintiff failed to 

overcome Defendants Bienvenue’s, Oliva’s, Oliver’s, and Porterie’s assertions of qualified 

immunity and dismissed those claims without prejudice. The Court also found that Plaintiff failed 

to state a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1985 against Defendant Port Arthur ISD and dismissed the claim 

with prejudice. The Court, thereafter, declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over 

Plaintiff’s state law claims2 which were dismissed without prejudice. [Dkts. 56, 57]. 

In his pending motion under Rule 59(e), Plaintiff seeks to alter or amend the judgment to 

correct manifest errors of law and prevent manifest injustice. [Dkt. 59]. 

II. Discussion 

The Fifth Circuit holds that a Rule 59(e) motion must clearly establish either a manifest 

error of law or fact or must present newly discovered evidence. Ross v. Marshall, 426 F.3d 745, 

763 (5th Cir. 2005) (citing Simon v. United States, 891 F.2d 1154, 1159 (5th Cir. 1990)), cert. 

denied, 549 U.S. 1166 (2007). “These motions cannot be used to raise arguments which could, 

and should, have been made before the original order or judgment was issued.” Id. Nor can they 

“be used to argue a case under a new legal theory.” Id. Rule 59(e) does not permit the submission 

of matters already available or known to the party submitting the new evidence. See, e.g., Matador 

Petroleum Corp. v. St. Paul Surplus Lines Ins. Co., 174 F.3d 653, 658 n.1 (5th Cir. 1999). 

Plaintiff’s Corrected Rule 59(e) Motion does not present meritorious grounds to alter or 

amend the judgment. Plaintiff has not clearly established a manifest error of law or fact or 

presented newly discovered evidence. Instead, he simply identifies complaints to the Court’s 

order: (1) improper dismissal of the § 1983 claim, (2) denial of leave to amend, (3) 

2 As noted in footnote 1, this would include all claims against Defendant Morath, and it would include state law claims 

for administrative appeal and violations of the Texas Whistleblower Act. 

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mischaracterization of the conspiracy claim, (4) improper application of qualified immunity, (5) 

improper burden shifting in qualified immunity, (6) inconsistent positions on qualified immunity; 

(7) failure to conduct a Connick v. Myers analysis, (8) substantive due process violations, and (9) 

premature dismissal of state law claims. [Dkt. 59 at 2-3]. Other than a recitation of criticisms with 

a brief description, Plaintiff provides no case law or substantive analysis to support his assertions 

of manifest error. [Id.] 

Moreover, complaints (1), (2), and (3) were already raised in Plaintiff’s objections and 

overruled. Plaintiff has not shown a manifest error in fact or law in the Court’s rulings, and he is 

not entitled to an alteration or amendment of the judgment on those grounds. 

As for complaints (4), (5), (6), (7), (8) and (9), these issues were never raised in any of 

Plaintiff’s responses to the motions to dismiss [Dkts. 18, 19, 31] or in Plaintiff’s objections to the 

report and recommendation [Dkt. 55]. A motion to alter or amend a judgment under Rule 59(e) is 

not the proper vehicle for making new arguments that could have been but were not raised before 

the entry of the judgment. Templet v. HydroChem Inc., 367 F.3d 473, 478-79 (5th Cir. 2004). 

Plaintiff offers no justification for why these arguments could not have been raised earlier and, as 

such, the Court will not entertain them now. The Court accordingly concludes that reconsideration 

of the Order Adopting the Report and Recommendation [Dkt. 56] or the Final Judgment [Dkt. 57] 

is unwarranted. 

 

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It is therefore ORDERED that Plaintiff’s Corrected Rule 59(e) Motion [Dkt. 59] is 

DENIED. 

IT IS SO ORDERED. 

____________________________

Michael J. Truncale

United States District Judge SIGNED this 18th day of September, 2024.

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