Opinion ID: 166819
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Proposed Pre-Trial Order

Text: 13 Through his counsel, plaintiff inserted allegations in the proposed pre-trial order to support a variety of Eighth Amendment conditions of confinement claims and First Amendment denial of access claims. Plaintiff repeats some of those allegations on appeal, where he is also represented by counsel. Specifically, plaintiff notes that he was denied his medically-required special diet, which caused him to lose forty pounds, that he was denied medical care, and that he was denied access to the law library. Defendants objected to the insertion of these and other allegations in the proposed pre-trial order because they were not pled in the Amended Complaint. Defendants did not address these allegations in their motions for summary judgment, which responded only to the claims asserted in the Amended Complaint. Ultimately, the district court disposed of the entire case on summary judgment without directly addressing the parties' dispute over the pre-trial order. The district court did note in its summary judgment orders, however, that plaintiff's responses to the summary judgment motions contained allegations and causes of action not pled in the Amended Complaint, which the court said were not properly before it. 14 Plaintiff argues that the district court's dismissal was premature and in error. He argues that defendants were adequately put on notice of all his claims through the discovery process, his trial brief, and his contributions to the proposed pre-trial order, and accordingly it was error for the trial judge to dismiss the case without addressing the additional issues clarified after the Amended Complaint was filed. Aplt. Br. at 8. We are not persuaded. 15 Plaintiff correctly points out that entry of a pre-trial order would have clarified the issues for trial and eliminated the need to amend previously filed pleadings, Wilson v. Muckala, 303 F.3d 1207, 1215 (10th Cir.2002), but this argument ignores the key fact that the proposed pre-trial order was never finalized and entered in this case. Plaintiff may have been confident that defendants knew the true nature of his constitutional claims, but it is undisputed that the conditions of confinement and denial of access claims appear nowhere in the Amended Complaint. 16 The responsibility for ensuring that one's claims are properly presented lies with the litigant, not the court. If plaintiff was concerned that some of his constitutional claims were omitted from the Amended Complaint, the proper course would have been to file a motion to amend rather than to hope that the district court would enter an expansive pre-trial order before ruling on dispositive motions. Having failed to submit a second amended complaint, plaintiff will not be heard to complain about the court's and defendants' reliance on his last operative pleading, the Amended Complaint. See, e.g., Green Country Food Mkt., Inc. v. Bottling Group, LLC, 371 F.3d 1275, 1280-81 (10th Cir.2004) (holding that while Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(b) permits implied amendments to conform to the evidence, if an opposing party objects to an implied amendment, then the complaining party must file a motion to amend and the opposing party must fail to demonstrate prejudice from the proposed amendment, before the district court may allow the amendment). We find no error in the district court's decision to rule on the summary judgment motions before the pre-trial order was finalized.