Court Opinion

ID: 9783120
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 19:40:50.057941+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:20.170907
License: Public Domain

BRYNER, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I disagree with the opinion’s interpretation of the order dismissing DeNardo’s state action and with its conclusion that the dismissal left DeNardo free to renew his state action after the federal court dismissed his federal action.
The crucial question here is the meaning of the superior court’s order dismissing DeNar-do’s initial state action “with prejudice.” The order incorporated the parties’ stipulation, which agreed to dismiss DeNardo’s state claims “against all defendants ... in their entirety with prejudice ... [without affecting] plaintiffs claims against Calista ... currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska.” The meaning of the order and stipulation raise questions of law. Civil Rule 41(a)(1) presumes that a stipulated dismissal will be entered “without prejudice” but leaves it to the parties to supply a different meaning. Here the parties expressly agreed to a dismissal “with prejudice”; but the provision allowing further proceedings on DeNardo’s federal claims make it obvious that they contemplated something narrower than the traditionally broad meaning of “with prejudice.” Given these circumstances, I would take guidance from the somewhat narrower meaning usually given to a dismissal “on the merits” under Civil Rule 41(b)’s default provision. As we recently recognized, a dismissal with prejudice under the default provision of Rule 41(b) typically bars the claimant from refiling the same claims in the court that ordered the dismissal: “ ‘unlike a dismissal “without prejudice,” the dismissal ... bar[s] refiling of the same claim in the [same court].’ ”1
Apart from being the usual meaning given to the term “with prejudice” in a dismissal order of this kind, this meaning comports with the express terms of the stipulation in this case, which unequivocally contemplated finally dismissing DeNardo’s state-court action, while at the same time leaving DeNardo free to pursue his already pending federal action in federal court. The usual meaning similarly comports with Calista and ANI’s understanding of the stipulation; more to the point, it also comports with DeNardo’s own description of the stipulated dismissal’s meaning.
The argument DeNardo actually advances here, as I see it, boils down to this: (1) his original state action only asserted tort claims *336and did not include a statutory discrimination claim; (2) in stipulating to dismiss his original action, he simply meant to give up his state-court tort claims, while preserving his right to pursue his then-pending action in federal court, which included a statutory discrimination claim; and (3) once the federal court dismissed his discrimination claim “without prejudice,” he was free to raise it in state court, because he had never raised it there before.
Thus, in presenting his own case, DeNardo essentially admits understanding that the stipulation precluded him from returning to state court with claims that he had already raised; he merely argues that the stipulation did not preclude him from filing new state claims. As already pointed out above, this is the usual meaning given to a dismissal with prejudice under Civil Rule 41(b)’s default provision. The only issue this meaning leaves open here is whether DeNardo’s current discrimination claim is “a new claim” or part of “the same claim” he originally filed in the superior court.
DeNardo’s argument on this point might have merit if he were correct in assuming that his discrimination claim could evade being barred merely because it relied on a new legal theory that he chose not to include in his original state complaint. But this assumption is legally flawed: his statutory discrimination claim arises from the same transaction as his original tort claims and could have been filed with those claims; so for purposes of determining the stipulated dismissal’s preclusive effect, the claim-splitting doctrine requires us to treat the later discrimination claim as “the same claim” — as if DeNardo had actually included it in his original state action.2 Under DeNardo’s own view of the stipulated dismissal’s meaning, then, his new statutory discrimination claim is barred as a matter of law by the stipulated order dismissing his state claims.3
Today’s opinion nonetheless comes to De-Nardo’s rescue by invoking the maxim that a pro se litigant’s pleadings should be interpreted leniently. The opinion reads DeNar-do’s original state complaint as advancing an implied statutory discrimination claim, and concludes that his new discrimination claim consequently evades the claim-splitting doctrine; the opinion finds that the stipulation meant to allow DeNardo to return to state court with any claim then pending in his federal ease; and it construes DeNardo’s new state action as permissibly including both his discrimination claim and an implied IIED claim.
The trouble with this analysis is that it gives the stipulation a meaning that neither party has ever asserted, and it adopts a substantive legal theory that flatly conflicts with each aspect of the theory DeNardo actually argues here. Even though DeNardo’s briefing repeatedly insists that he did not assert his current discrimination claim in his original state action, the opinion says that he is wrong — he did. Although DeNardo acknowledges that by stipulating to dismiss the original action he meant to abandon his right to pursue his state tort claims,4 the opinion rejects his description of his own intentions and finds that the stipulations left him free to return to state court with any claim pending in his federal case, including his tort claim. And despite the facts that DeNardo’s new state complaint omits the express IIED claim advanced in his earlier complaints and that *337his appellate briefing omits any mention of an intent to pursue this tort claim, the opinion insists that DeNardo must have meant to pursue it, finding that an implied IIED claim lies embedded in his new state complaint.
In my view, this analysis improvidently expands the rule allowing courts to treat pro se litigants’ pleadings leniently: until now, we have carefully confined this rule to situations in which courts need to relax technical pleading requirements to enable pro se litigants to make the substantive points they actually try to pursue.5 Yet today’s opinion vastly broadens the power of leniency toward pro se litigants by using it to assist DeNardo in prevailing on a substantive theory that he actively disavows. In my judgment, the court errs by giving DeNardo relief on un-raised substantive grounds that stray so dramatically from the theories actually briefed.6 I would affirm the superior court’s ruling on the issues DeNardo actually argued.
Accordingly, I dissent.

. DeNardo v. Barrans, 59 P.3d 266, 268-69 (Alaska 2002) (quoting Semtek Int’l, Inc. v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 531 U.S. 497, 506, 121 S.Ct. 1021, 149 L.Ed.2d 32 (2001)).

. See, e.g., McDowell v. State, 23 P.3d 1165, 1166 (Alaska 2001).

. And this holds true even though DeNardo might have mistakenly believed that the statutory claim would not be barred by the stipulated dismissal. For his mistaken belief would at most have amounted to a unilateral mistake of law, and, even viewing DeNardo’s pleadings in the light most charitable to him, he has failed to allege any compelling justification that would excuse his ignorance of the law and justify the extraordinary remedy of relief from judgment on that ground under Civil Rule 60(b). DeNardo undeniably had a right to split the discrimination claim from his original state claims and file it in federal court. But by electing to dismiss his state claims with prejudice, he consented to a judgment that, as a matter of law, barred all future state claims arising from the same transaction as the claims he originally filed. DeNar-do’s failure to understand the legal effects of his stipulation is a mistake of law, and because ANI did not share in this misunderstanding, it was a unilateral mistake of law.

.As DeNardo put it during oral argument before this court when he summed up his intent in stipulating to the dismissal, "So, what I did is I just dismissed the state tort claims.”

. See, e.g., Gilbert v. Nina Plaza Condo Assn, 64 P.3d 126, 129 (Alaska 2003).

. At a minimum, I think that fundamental fairness should require that both parties be given advance notice of the court’s proposed ruling and an opportunity to address it in supplemental briefs.