UNITED STATES CO URT OF APPEALS FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT

RAYMOND L. ZISUMBO, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v. OGDEN REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER; ANTHONY RODEBUSH, Defendants-Appellees. No. 12-4191 (D.C. No. 1:12-CV-00091-TS) (D. Utah)

ORDER AND JUDGMENT *

Before HARTZ , BALDOCK , and GORSUCH , Circuit Judges.
This appeal concerns the prope r interplay between two lawsuits. In the first suit, Raymond Zisumbo alle ged that his former employer violated Title VII. Long after the court’s deadline for the filing of any amended pleadings, Mr. Zisumbo sought to do just that. He pr esented a motion seeking leave to file an amended complaint in order to add a new legal theory and a new defendant. The district court denied the mo tion, explaining that Mr. Zisu mbo easily could have filed

* After examining the briefs and appella te record, this pa nel has determined unanimously that oral argument would not mate rially assist the de termination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctr ines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cite d, however, for its persuasi ve value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1. FILED United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit 

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Elisabeth A. Shumaker Clerk of Court- 2 - his amended complaint before the deadline, that he had offered no cogent explanation for his delay, and that permitting the am endment now would prejudice the defense. That brings us to the s econd suit. After Mr. Zisumbo lost his motion to amend in his first suit he decided to bring a second. The complaint in th is second suit turned out to be essentially identical to the amendment he had wa nted to make in the first suit. Next, Mr. Zisumbo filed a motion in the second lawsuit seeking to consolidate it with the first. Qu ite plainly, Mr. Zisumbo sought to achieve indirectly what he couldn’t achieve directly. Seeing this , the defendants opposed the motion to consolidate and filed a motion to dismiss. In the end, the district court agreed with the defendants, denying the motion to cons olidate and dismissing the second suit. These are the rulings now at issue befo re us, and we can find no fault with them. When it dismissed Mr. Zisumbo’s second suit, the di strict court relied on the long-settled rule against clai m-splitting. In order to c onserve public judicial resources, that rule usually requires plaintiffs to assert and pursue all of their causes of action arising from a common set of facts in a single lawsuit. Katz v. Gerardi , 655 F.3d 1212, 1217 (10th Cir. 2011). When a district court dismisses duplicative litigation from its docket on claim-splitting grounds, our review looks only for abuses of discretion. Id. Here, we can discern none. Mr. Zisumbo doesn’t deny that his second suit is based on the same facts as his first. Neither does he challenge the district court’s app lication of our claim- splitting precedents.- 3 - Instead, Mr. Zisumbo argues that the outcome is inequitable because the claim-splitting problem could have been so lved just as easily by granting his motion to consolidate. As the dist rict court explained, however, if any inequity arises in these circumstances it is when parties se ek to “use the ta ctic of filing two substantially identical complaints to expa nd the procedural right s [they] would have otherwise enjoyed.” Hartsel Springs Ranch of Colo., Inc. v. Bluegreen Corp. , 296 F.3d 982, 990 (10th Cir. 2002) (quotation marks omitted). If Mr. Zisumbo thinks the district court erred when it denied his motion to amend, his remedy lies in a properly presented appeal. That’s the e quitable and legally prescribed route for seeking to achieve his goal; as the district court held, the evasive claims-splitting maneuver he attemp ted is not. Affirmed. Entered for the Court

Neil M. Gorsuch Circuit Judge