Opinion ID: 618654
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The denial of plaintiff's motion to file an amended complaint

Text: Feliciano-Hernández argues that the district court should have allowed him to belatedly amend his complaint pursuant to Rule 15(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Feliciano-Hernández is incorrect for a number of reasons: (1) the court lacked authority to accept a post-judgment amendment; (2) the amended complaint was untimely, coming after the court granted a motion to dismiss filed a year earlier; (3) the Puerto Rico court documents attached to the amended complaint reinforce that plaintiff failed to state a claim. Feliciano-Hernández requested leave to file his amended complaint on September 6, 2010, after the district court had already entered final judgment on August 24, 2010, dismissing the complaint, and almost a full year after Laboy-Alvarado filed her motion to dismiss. The law in this circuit is clear that a district court may not accept an amended complaint after judgment has entered unless and until the judgment is set aside or vacated under Rules 59 or 60, and the district court here denied the motion to vacate the judgment. See Fisher v. Kadant, Inc., 589 F.3d 505, 509 (1st Cir.2009) (describing as black-letter law the rule that [u]nless postjudgment relief has been granted, the district court lacks power to grant a motion to amend the complaint under Rule 15(a) (quoting Acevedo-Villalobos v. Hernandez, 22 F.3d 384, 389 (1st Cir.1994))). Independently, the district court acted within its discretion in denying plaintiff leave to file an amended complaint first made after it entered its dismissal order. [T]he district court enjoys significant latitude in deciding whether to grant leave to amend, and [w]e defer to the district court's decision `if any adequate reason for the denial is apparent on the record.' ACA, 512 F.3d at 55 (quoting LaRocca v. Borden, Inc., 276 F.3d 22, 32 n. 9 (1st Cir.2002)). Among the grounds for denial are undue delay, bad faith or dilatory motive . . . repeated failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the opposing party . . . [and] futility of amendment. Id. (alteration and omissions in original) (quoting Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182, 83 S.Ct. 227, 9 L.Ed.2d 222 (1962)) (internal quotation marks omitted). The district court had good reason for disallowing filing the amended complaint: it was far too late. It was also futile, as we explain below. The complaint was first filed on June 23, 2009. Laboy-Alvarado filed a motion to dismiss on September 23, 2009, and Rivera-González answered the complaint on October 9, 2009. Feliciano-Hernández could have moved to amend then, but did not. Instead, plaintiff waited to move to amend until September 6, 2010, nearly a year after the motion to dismiss was filed, and after the court had dismissed the case. We have stated that [r]egardless of the context, the longer a plaintiff delays, the more likely [a] motion to amend will be denied, as protracted delay, with its attendant burdens on the opponent and the court, is itself a sufficient reason for the court to withhold permission to amend. Id. (alterations in original) (quoting Steir v. Girl Scouts of the USA, 383 F.3d 7, 12 (1st Cir.2004)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Furthermore, we agree with the district court's determination that the amended complaint would not have altered its conclusions and so was futile. As the district court stated in the course of ruling that it would not reconsider its judgment, the plaintiff was unable to demonstrate that Defendants were liable under Section 1983 in his motion for reconsideration, to which his amended complaint was attached. Feliciano Hernández, 2010 WL 5072567, at . The amended complaint contained several attachments purportedly obtained during discovery, and as result of investigation. These attachments, which were filed with the district court in Spanish in violation of the local rules, are largely those court filings and related publicly available documents which were referred to in the original complaint but not then provided. The failure to provide English translations of the documents also doomed the amended complaint. [6] Turning to the content of the amended complaint, it again makes conclusory allegations that the individual defendants must have had knowledge of each of Feliciano-Hernández's Puerto Rico court filings, but, with one exception, it fails to provide facts as to why this would be so. The defendants were high-level officials in charge of institutions holding thousands of inmates, the running of a number of different facilities, and the employment of numerous personnel. Some defendants were not even in office at the time of the filings in 1998 and 2005. The amended complaint contains just the type of allegations that are so speculative that they fail to cross `the line between the conclusory and the factual' and so must be disregarded. Peñalbert-Rosa, 631 F.3d at 595 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557 n. 5, 127 S.Ct. 1955). The amended complaint does allege that Feliciano-Hernández's 1998 pro se habeas petition put Secretary Laboy-Alvarado on notice of the alleged violations of his rights. [7] The English translations of the Spanish-language documents filed with this court establish otherwise: even if Laboy-Alvarado had been personally served the petition, which was evidently concerned only with Puerto Rico law, it would not have put her on notice of any claimed constitutional violations. Further, the decision of the Puerto Rico court denying habeas would have informed Laboy-Alvarado, contrary to plaintiff's theory, that there was no violation of law in his continued confinement because it was an appropriate matter for the Parole Board which had justifiably denied relief. As to notice of that decision, the decision and order of the Puerto Rico Court of First Instance dated June 3, 1998, and captioned The People of Puerto Rico v. Angel L. Feliciano Hernandez directed that the order and the petition for habeas corpus and its attachments be notified to the Department of Justice, to the Legal Division of the Correction Administration and also to its administrator. But the Department of Correction's response indicated that Feliciano-Hernández did not fully comply with the order. In response to the June 3, 1998 court order, an attorney at the Ponce Correctional Complex filed an informative motion, stating that the Department of Corrections had not received a copy of the petition and did not know about its content. The informative motion also stated that Feliciano-Hernández was referred to the Parole Board once he served his minimum sentence, that the Parole Board had denied him the privilege of release, and it attached the last two resolutions of the Parole Board. Those documents from the Parole Board show that in 1997 the Board denied parole, stating that Feliciano-Hernández had not submitted a required alternate housing plan or a structured exit plan, that because of the length of his sentence the Board wanted additional time to review his adjustment, and concluded he was not prepared at that time for parole. The Parole Board said he would be reviewed the next year and required reports be submitted to it by the Department of Corrections. The June 30, 1998 judgment of the Court of First Instance denied the habeas petition on the grounds that Feliciano-Hernández has available the administrative ordinary and appellate proceedings (before the Parole Board) and the Board had not released him. The court directed that its order be entered and notified to the parties and the Secretary of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Even if plaintiff could sufficiently allege that the June 30, 1998, judgment reached the desk of Laboy-Alvarado, all that judgment would have lead a reasonable administrator to conclude was that there was no error in the Parole Board's being the appropriate vehicle for accomplishing a prisoner's release on rehabilitation under such sentences and that there had been no procedural or substantive violations of law in not releasing a prisoner when the Parole Board had not allowed his release. Under no reasonable interpretation could the June 30, 1998 judgment be seen as notice to Laboy-Alvarado that plaintiff's constitutional rights were being violated. The judgment was to the contrary and so undercuts the allegations of notice of any constitutional violation, much less deliberate indifference. As to the 2005 action, it was, as stated by the Puerto Rico Court of First Instance, an action for mandamus, not a petition for habeas corpus, and it did not seek Feliciano-Hernández's release. The Department of Corrections was the respondent, not any of the individual defendants here. The Department of Corrections was ordered to correct the petitioner's file to reflect the reality of his penal convictions. The Petitioner must notify the court of any deviation to the Order entered herein. There is no claim that the Department of Corrections did not comply or that Feliciano-Hernández ever notified the court of any deviation. Nor does plaintiff plead any facts showing that any of the defendants here individually knew of the 2005 mandamus proceeding or its outcome. Plaintiff has pled that only Pereira-Castillo was in office at that time. Finally, Feliciano-Hernández has not alleged that his 2007 petition for habeas corpus or the Puerto Rico court orders in that case put any of the defendants on notice that his constitutional rights were being violated. Again, only Pereira-Castillo was in office when the April 25, 2008, order was issued. That order states that under Puerto Rico law as it stood at the time Feliciano-Hernández was sentenced, the court understood that annual evaluations of the petitioner should have taken place in order to determine when the imposed security measure would cease, but this was not done. (Citing P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 33, § 3391). Contrary to plaintiff's characterization of the order in the amended complaint, the court did not state that the Department of Corrections had failed to comply with any duty, and the court certainly did not state that any of the individual defendants here did not comply with any duty. After hearing testimony, the court accepted the recommendation of counsel and of the Public Ministry that Feliciano-Hernández be transferred to a halfway house within thirty days, that he remain there for no less than six months and no longer than a year, and that he be referred to the Pre-Release Services to assist him with reintegration into the community. He was also ordered to register with the Sexual Offender Registry and to complete special therapies for sexual offenders offered by the Department. On June 24, 2008, by separate order, the Department was ordered to immediately release Feliciano-Hernández. The order does not state that Feliciano-Hernández's rights under the U.S. Constitution were violated, that the Department of Corrections had violated any constitutional rights, or that any of the defendants in this case violated his constitutional rights or knew or should have known his rights were being violated. None of the defendants in this case were parties to the 2008 habeas proceedings, and there is no allegation that any of them were even notified of the proceedings. Feliciano-Hernández makes an argument on appeal never made to the district court. He has shifted his theory of the case to an argument that Articles 75 and 76 of the Puerto Rico Penal Codeas those provisions read when he was sentenced in 1981imposed a duty upon the unnamed defendant superintendents of the institutions in which he was incarcerated from 1993 to 2008 to provide the court with yearly reports on his rehabilitation process. This argument was available to plaintiff at the time he filed his complaint, but was not made. He did not make the argument to the district court until his motion for reconsideration and for leave to file an amended complaint, and then in only a cursory fashion. So it is doubly waived. Even so, the argument again provides no support for his claim of constitutional violation by the defendants. It is not clear whether Article 75, which was repealed in 2005, applied after the date of repeal. Article 75 by its terms imposed a duty on the court, [8] and while the court could obtain a report from the director of the establishment of confinement, [9] it is far from clear under Puerto Rico law that the director had a statutory duty to produce annual reports absent a request from the courts. Nor is it clear that the mechanism for annual review concerning release did not include the Parole Board, and the plaintiff has offered no citations to Puerto Rico law to the contrary. In fact, the Parole Board is to consider the prisoner's rehabilitation among other factors in determining whether to grant parole. See P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 4, § 1503. Regardless of any purported duty on the directors, the named former-Secretary defendants cannot be held liable under § 1983 for the supposed omissions of their subordinates. In a § 1983 suit . . . each Government official, his or her title notwithstanding, is only liable for his or her own misconduct. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1949. Moreover, the plaintiff does not allege any facts that would have put either the named or the unnamed defendants on individual notice that his incarceration was not being reviewed annually as required by law. Even had the argument under Articles 75 and 76 not been waived, its consideration would not have altered the outcome of dismissal under Iqbal. Rather, it would have enhanced defendants' claims for dismissal. We also add that even were there some violations by someone of duties under Puerto Rico law, that still does not suffice to establish a violation of federal constitutional rights. Berríos-Romero v. Estado Libre Asociado de P.R., 641 F.3d 24, 25-26 (1st Cir.2011).