Opinion ID: 2966324
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Giuffre's Motion to Amend his Complaint

Text: -9- Giuffre's proposed amendments to his complaint do not repair the fundamental problems described above with his attempt to hold Deutsche Bank responsible for Sohmer's wrongdoing. We therefore affirm the district court's denial of Giuffre's motion to amend. See Glassman v. Computervision Corp., 90 F.3d 617, 623 (1st Cir. 1996) (holding that a motion to amend should be denied as futile if the complaint, as amended, would fail to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.). Giuffre's amended complaint does gesture towards a claim that Option One knew or should have known of Sohmer's fraud, but it ultimately falls far short of supporting such a claim. Stripping away several purely conclusory allegations, Giuffre's amended complaint alleges only that Option One should have known that Giuffre was the individual who would be paying the mortgage because Giuffre was a beneficiary of the trust holding the property, and that the bank nevertheless conducted no due diligence to determine whether Giuffre could afford the mortgage. But the relevant fraud here is not that Giuffre had too little financial capacity. Rather, the underlying fraud as alleged by Giuffre is that Sohmer was lying and self-dealing. Giuffre's allegations offer no hint as to how Option One should have discovered that fraud, even if Giuffre were correct (which we doubt) that Option One owed a duty to the beneficiaries of a trust to which the bank's borrower intended to transfer the property. Giuffre's amended complaint also includes two entirely new counts raising issues unrelated to Sohmer's fraud, one questioning whether Deutsche Bank holds the promissory note and the -10- other related to the securitization of the mortgage. Giuffre has never claimed that he was unaware of the facts giving rise to these new claims when he first filed the suit eighteen months before the proposed amendment. We are confident that the district court would have properly rejected Giuffre's last-ditch attempt to mutate the case to avoid dismissal, pressed after more than a year and a half of litigation. In short, this is a classic case of undue delay. See Nikitine v. Wilmington Trust Co., 715 F.3d 388, 390-91 (1st Cir. 2013). In any event, Giuffre fails to adequately plead facts supporting his new claims, and so they are also futile.