Opinion ID: 775759
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Motion to Supplement the Complaint.

Text: 43 This Court reviews a district court's denial of a motion to supplement the complaint for abuse of discretion. Quaratino v. Tiffany & Co., 71 F.3d 58, 66 (2d Cir. 1995). 44 The DOP fired Weeks in March 2000, three months before trial. On April 20, Weeks served on opposing counsel a motion to supplement her amended complaint to allege that the termination was discriminatory and retaliatory, and to include further evidence of a hostile work environment. However, as established at oral argument in this Court, the motion was never docketed with the district court, and for that reason there was no hearing on this issue until June 2, 2000--the Friday before the scheduled start of the trial on Monday. Although the DOP did not oppose the motion (in the interest of judicial economy, it says), the court denied it from the bench, presumably to avoid delay of the trial or delay at trial. 45 A motion to plead events that have transpired since the date of the party's most recent pleading is technically categorized under [Fed. R. Civ. P.] 15(d) [`Supplemental Pleadings'] as opposed to Rule 15(a) [`Amendments']. Flaherty v. Lang, 199 F.3d 607, 613 n.3 (2d Cir. 1999) (internal quotation marks omitted). Rule 15(d) provides in relevant part that: 46 [u]pon motion of a party the court may, upon reasonable notice and upon such terms as are just, permit the party to serve a supplemental pleading setting forth transactions or occurrences or events which have happened since the date of the pleading sought to be supplemented. 47 Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(d). The threshold consideration for the district court is whether the supplemental facts connect [the supplemental pleading] to the original pleading. Quaratino, 71 F.3d at 66. In Weeks' case, this consideration is affected by the requirement under Title VII that an unexhausted, supplemental claim be reasonably related to the original EEOC charge. Rose v. New York City Bd. of Educ., 257 F.3d 156, 163 (2d Cir. 2001) (citing Butts v. City of New York Dep't of Hous. Preservation and Dev., 990 F.2d 1397, 1401 (2d Cir. 1993)). If there is a relationship, then leave to supplement should be freely permitted absent undue delay, bad faith, dilatory tactics, undue prejudice to the party to be served with the proposed pleading, or futility. Quaratino, 71 F.3d at 66. The parties advised us at oral argument that the motion was denied for reasons of undue delay and futility. 48 We need not decide whether the termination issue was or was not sufficiently related to Weeks' prior complaints or to the allegations in Weeks' EEOC charge. In either event, it was within the sound discretion of the district court to deny leave to amend. See Zahra v. Town of Southold, 48 F.3d 674, 685 (2d Cir. 1995). The motion, which was never docketed, was first presented to the court for decision the Friday before the Monday trial. Although it appears that the court was aware for some time that Weeks had been fired and that this development might precipitate a new claim, it cannot be expected that the court would entertain the issue sua sponte. By the time the court was presented with the issue, the granting of the motion would potentially have entailed an amended pre-trial order, additional documents and additional witnesses (with any associated evidentiary issues), additional briefing, an expanded jury charge, and a longer trial than anticipated. The court had discretion to grant the motion--defendant's counsel was not objecting--but by the same token the court had discretion to consider its own interests in systematic trial preparation and an orderly trial, and to deny the motion, as it did. 49