Court Opinion

ID: 9475904
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:42:18.719366+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:01.326264
License: Public Domain

BECKER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
This Court has held that a “trial court may properly deny leave to amend where the amendment would not withstand a motion to dismiss.” Massarsky v. General Motors Corp., 706 F.2d 111, 125 (3d Cir.1983). In my view, the procedure followed here by the district court raises what is in effect the “next” question, i.e. whether or not leave to amend can be denied because, as was the case here, the judge thinks the amended complaint would not survive a motion for summary judgment.
Although the majority does not reach this question, I think that whether a motion for summary judgment may be considered at a particular stage of a lawsuit’s progress is an important question which is necessarily presented by the procedural history of the case.1 Therefore, although I concur entirely in the majority’s opinion and result, I write separately to address this issue. For the reasons set forth below in Part II, I would hold that a motion for leave to amend a complaint may not be denied simply because the district court believes that the amended complaint would *618not survive a motion for summary judgment.'
I.
When read together, the Supreme Court’s recent opinions in Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., — U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986), and Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, — U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986), instruct that a motion for summary judgment must be granted unless the party opposing the motion can adduce evidence which, when considered in light of that party’s burden of proof at trial, could be the basis for a jury finding in that party’s favor. This is at least a break in tone with prior law, under which summary judgment was understood to be a “drastic remedy” which “may not be granted where there is the slightest doubt as to the facts.” Tomalewski v. State Farm Life Insurance Co., 494 F.2d 882, 884 (3d Cir.1974). The party requesting summary judgment need not put on any evidence himself: he may succeed by pointing out those lacunae in the nonmovant’s evidence which the movant claims would prevent a jury from finding in the nonmovant’s favor at trial. Celotex, 106 S.Ct. at 2553.
Under Celotex and Anderson, therefore, a plaintiff can be put to his proof whenever the defendant chooses. If the motion for summary judgment is considered on the merits, plaintiff will be out of court if he has not adduced sufficient evidence to get to a jury on every element of his case. This makes the timing of summary judgment motions a very important matter, for it is quite likely that, when a complaint is first filed — or amended to set out a new theory of liability — a plaintiff will indeed lack enough evidence to get to a jury on every element. But we would not want to end the case because the plaintiff has not then adduced sufficient evidence. We would instead want to permit the plaintiff to go forward with the discovery he believes necessary, and only put him to his proofs after he has had the opportunity to develop them.
Rule 56(f), Fed.R.Civ.P., governs when a motion for summary judgment may be considered on the merits. We have held that under that provision a trial judge may abuse his discretion if he decides a summary judgment motion when the party opposing it needs and is entitled to additional discovery which might demonstrate the existence of questions of material fact. See Mid-South Grizzlies v. National Football League, 720 F.2d 772 (3d Cir.1983). Under the regime of Celotex and Anderson, the Mid-South Grizzlies timing requirement becomes more important.
The foregoing suggests that, by assuming the complaint amended in this case and then granting summary judgment for the defendant, the district court ignored the important question whether a summary judgment motion should have been considered at that point. Indeed, whenever a district court rejects an amendment to a complaint because the complaint as amended would not survive a motion for summary judgment, it necessarily ignores the timing question, or more accurately, it implicitly concludes that the summary judgment motion is timely. In many cases that unexamined assumption will not be correct.
To facilitate the separate analysis of the timing question, I believe that the district court should have addressed the issues in the following order:
1. Should the amendment be allowed?
(decided without reference to whether the amended complaint would survive a motion for summary judgment); If so,
2. Should a motion for summary judgment be entertained now?
(decided by analysis of whether the party opposing the motion needs and is entitled to further discovery to demonstrate the existence of questions of material fact); If so,
3. Should summary judgment be granted? 2
*619II.
That the timing issue is important in this case is demonstrated by the fact that defendant Fidelity has pointed to gaps in the plaintiff’s case relating to the state of mind of the attorney who represented Mamiye in the negotiations with Fidelity over the scope of the stipulation. Fidelity argues that
there is no evidence of record to support Mamiye’s contention as to what Mr. Shore “thought when he signed the stipulation” (Mamiye’s brief, p. 18), as to how Mr. Shore defined the trust fund to include principal and interest (Mamiye’s brief, p. 19), as to Mr. Shore’s reliance on Fidelity’s Amended Answers to the Interrogatories in Attachment (Mamiye’s brief, pp. 19, 20, 23), as to Mr. Shore’s reliance on the stipulation and order (Mamiye’s brief, p. 25) as to Mr. Shore’s conviction that “he had Mamiye’s interests protected” (Mamiye’s brief, p. 25), as to what Mamiye “could” have done had it been informed of the existence of the two separate accounts (Mamiye’s brief pp. 16, 17), or indeed what Mamiye “would” have done or argued in the proceeding before Judge Gafni (00266, 00270) and what Judge Gafni “would” have ruled (00270).
Appellee’s br. at 14-15. Mamiye responds to this list of gaps in its case by arguing that any uncertainty about these issues should be resolved at trial. Mamiye Reply Br. at 4.
Notwithstanding Mamiye’s contention, I believe it possible that the factual issues raised above could be resolved on summary judgment, but only after Mamiye had been given an opportunity to depose Mr. Shore to ascertain his state of mind. Mamiye was not obliged to have sought that discovery before it moved to amend its complaint to advance a theory under which this information was relevant. Yet addressing — and granting — Fidelity’s motion for summary judgment immediately upon the filing of the amended complaint in effect subjected Mamiye to exactly that obligation, and penalized Mamiye with dismissal because of its failure to produce this kind of evidence at that early stage.
I am persuaded that summary judgment was improperly granted here because, as the majority observes, at 617, the Trust Agreement does not indicate in any way that Commonwealth had an account at Fidelity which was not governed by the Trust, and which was therefore more likely to be subject to attachment than the funds which were so governed. Even if Mamiye’s counsel had read the document, therefore, he would not have been put on adequate notice. To the extent that that fact is not itself dispositive of the motion for summary judgment, however, the motion must turn on other indications of what actually motivated Mamiye’s lawyer. See Majority opinion at 617 (discussing plaintiff’s averment that plaintiff “would have” taken various precautions had it known about the existence of a second Fidelity account). Because that issue is of such importance here, I think the district court erred by addressing and granting Fidelity’s motion for summary judgment without first deciding, whether Mamiye had yet had sufficient opportunity to gather the information necessary to eliminate what Fidelity contends are the gaps in plaintiff’s case.

. The district court did not assess the sufficiency of the complaint, but rather the sufficiency of the record, to ascertain whether the record left questions of material fact unresolved.

. Whether or not a party "needs and is entitled to further discovery" may often turn on what gap in the party’s case the court thinks might be grounds for a grant of summary judgment. *619Once those grounds have been identified the district court may then find it profitable to go back and ascertain whether the non-moving party is at fault because those gaps in its case have not yet been filled.