UNITED STATES COURT 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 proper interplay between two lawsuits. 

In the first suit, Raymond Zisumbo alleged 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 presented 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 motion, explaining that Mr. Zisumbo easily could have filed 

 

*

 After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined 

unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist the determination 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 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 

October 30, 2013

Elisabeth A. Shumaker 

Clerk of Court
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his amended complaint before the deadline, that he had offered no cogent explanation 

for his delay, and that permitting the amendment now would prejudice the defense. 

That brings us to the second suit. After Mr. Zisumbo lost his motion to amend 

in his first suit he decided to bring a second. The complaint in this second suit turned 

out to be essentially identical to the amendment he had wanted to make in the first 

suit. Next, Mr. Zisumbo filed a motion in the second lawsuit seeking to consolidate 

it with the first. Quite 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 consolidate and dismissing the second suit. 

These are the rulings now at issue before us, and we can find no fault with 

them. When it dismissed Mr. Zisumbo’s second suit, the district court relied on the 

long-settled rule against claim-splitting. In order to conserve 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 application of our claim-splitting precedents. 
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Instead, Mr. Zisumbo argues that the outcome is inequitable because the 

claim-splitting problem could have been solved just as easily by granting his motion 

to consolidate. As the district court explained, however, if any inequity arises in 

these circumstances it is when parties seek to “use the tactic of filing two 

substantially identical complaints to expand the procedural rights [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 equitable and legally prescribed route for 

seeking to achieve his goal; as the district court held, the evasive claims-splitting 

maneuver he attempted is not. 

Affirmed. 

 Entered for the Court 

 Neil M. Gorsuch 

 Circuit Judge