Opinion ID: 3038134
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The New ADA Allegations

Text: We review de novo a district court’s determination of whether a plaintiff’s complaint complied with the notice pleading requirements of Fed. R. Civ. P. 8. In re Dominguez, 51 F.3d 1502, 1508 n.5 (9th Cir. 1995). We review a discovery sanction, including the exclusion of an expert’s testimony for failure to comply with a scheduling order, for abuse of discretion. Wong v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 410 F.3d 1052, 1060 (9th Cir. 2005). [6] In response to the motion for summary judgment, Pickern raised issues of ADA violations that went beyond a failure to provide a ramp. Pickern attempts to justify these new factual allegations as falling within the original complaint under Rule 8’s liberal notice pleading standard. The district court did not err by holding that Pickern failed to provide the Appellees with adequate notice of these new allegations. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) requires that the allegations in the complaint “give the defendant fair notice of what the plaintiff’s claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.” Swierkiewicz v. Sorema N.A., 534 U.S. 506, 512 (2002) (quotation omitted). In her complaint, Pickern made it clear what her claim was when she alleged that the Store “contains architectural barriers that make it inaccessible.” She did not, however, provide any notice concerning the grounds upon which she based this claim. Pickern’s complaint included lists of barriers that she now characterizes as illustrative of the kinds of barriers a disabled person may confront. She alleged that the Appellees’ failure to remove architectural barriers “may include, but is not limited to” these specific barriers. However, she did not allege that any of these barriers actually existed at the Store. Providing a list of hypothetical possible barriers is not a substitute for investigating and alleging the grounds for a claim. Thus, the complaint gave the Appellees no notice of the specific factual allegations presented for the first time in Pickern’s opposition to summary judgment. 8414 PICKERN v. PIER 1 IMPORTS (U.S.), INC. [7] Although the new allegations were not part of the original complaint, Pickern might have proceeded by filing a timely motion to amend the complaint. However, Pickern did not amend the complaint to include more specific allegations. She also did not incorporate the “preliminary site report” into her complaint. Instead, it appears that, many months after filing the complaint, she merely provided a “preliminary site report” to the Appellees as part of settlement negotiations. This did not make the preliminary site report part of the record and it did not give the Appellees notice of what allegations Pickern was including in the suit. In addition, because the expert’s report was not filed and served until after the discovery deadline, that report cannot be construed as notice that would prompt the Appellees to seek discovery regarding the new allegations.5 Thus, the district court did not err in finding that Pickern failed to provide adequate notice of the new allegations. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED. 5 The district court did not abuse its discretion by deciding not to allow the testimony of Pickern’s expert, Joe Card. It is not an abuse of discretion to exclude a party’s expert testimony when that party failed to disclose the expert report by the scheduling deadline and that party reasonably could have anticipated the necessity of the witness at the time of the deadline. Wong, 410 F.3d at 1060. Pickern failed to file and serve the expert report by the deadline set forth in the scheduling order even though she clearly anticipated the need for that report.