Opinion ID: 181092
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Decision to dismiss with prejudice.

Text: Under Fed R. Civ. Pro. 41(a)(2), the court may dismiss a case following the defendant's answer or summary judgment only upon order of the court and upon such terms and conditions as the court deems proper. See Elbaor v. Tripath Imaging, Inc., 279 F.3d 314, 320 (5th Cir. 2002). The purpose of authorizing the court to place conditions on a voluntary dismissal is to prevent unfair prejudice to the other side in the case. Typical examples of such prejudice occur when a party proposes to dismiss the case at a late stage of pretrial proceedings, or seeks to avoid an imminent adverse ruling, or may on refiling deprive the defendant of a limitations defense. Hartford Acc. & Indem. Co. v. Costa Lines Cargo Servs., Inc., 903 F.2d 352, 360 (5th Cir.1990); Oxford v. Williams Cos., Inc., 154 F. Supp 2d 942, 951 (E.D.Tex.2001); see generally 9 CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT & ARTHUR R. MILLER, FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 2366 (3d ed.2010). When a court is faced with a Rule 41(a)(2) motion, it should first ask whether an unconditional dismissal will cause the non-movant to suffer plain legal prejudice. Elbaor, 279 F.3d at 317. The prejudice to co-plaintiffs may also be considered. If such prejudice would ensue, the court may either refuse to dismiss the case or may craft conditions that will cure the prejudice. Id. at 318. Requiring dismissal with prejudice is one available option; the court exercises considerable discretion even in selecting this condition, but it must be careful to craft conditions that are not overbroad. Id. at 320. Plain legal prejudice would accrue to non-movants from an unconditional dismissal of Raymond Bell's case without prejudice. The court would have to realign Keystone RV with a new bellwether plaintiff who resided in a different trailer and whose suit would almost surely add a different group of subsidiary defendants. Not only would Bell be able to refile his suit, but the appellees were in no way spared the continuing costs of legal defense. Appellees' investment in trial preparation for Bell's case was wasted. Moreover, other plaintiffs in the FEMA trailer formaldehyde litigation were disadvantaged by the tactics employed on Bell's behalf as they were delayed in acquiring trial information important for their cases. The size and scope of this multiparty litigation inescapably heightened the prejudice from Bell's motion to dismiss. Nevertheless, converting Bell's motion from voluntary dismissal without prejudice to dismissal with prejudice was a step that deserves serious attention. [4] Although we are aware of no cases directly on point concerning the dismissal with prejudice of the claim of a reluctant bellwether plaintiff, we cannot conclude that the court abused its discretion. Bell wanted to have his cake and eat it by withdrawing from a bellwether trial and then sitting back to await the outcome of another plaintiff's experience against the appellees. When a plaintiff files any court case, however, sitting back is no option. He must be prepared to undergo the costs, psychological, economic and otherwise, that litigation entails. That the plaintiff becomes one of a mass of thousands pursuing particular defendants lends urgency to this reality. Courts must be exceedingly wary of mass litigation in which plaintiffs are unwilling to move their cases to trial. Any individual case may be selected as a bellwether, and no plaintiff has the right to avoid the obligation to proceed with his own suit, if so selected. Confronted with Raymond Bell's request to substitute or continue, and his abrupt refusal to accept the court's offer to instruct the jury on Bell's trial absence, if it occurred, the court faced a stark choice. If it permitted Bell to dismiss without prejudice, it would set a precedent that other plaintiffs could use to manipulate the integrity of the court's bellwether process. It would have subjected Keystone to the rigors and costs of trial preparation against Bell without reaching a resolution of Bell's claim. Moreover, Bell had been aware of the trial date for his mother's case for nearly six months, and his counsel was surely aware of the importance of hewing to a bellwether trial schedule. Whatever might have been the proper exercise of discretion for a case with just two parties involved, the court correctly saw this case as part of a much larger picture in which for the sake of doing justice to thousands of plaintiffs and multiple defendants, the court had to maintain enforceable deadlines. Allowing Bell to receive a dismissal without prejudice at this stage of his case, on the flimsy basis Bell offered, and at a critical stage in the bellwether process threatened to defeat the court's management effort. The court's order explaining its decision to dismiss with prejudice says all this and more. Its action was not so much a sanction against Bell as a necessary device to maintain an orderly resolution of the massed cases. Under all the circumstances, there was no abuse of discretion.