Court Opinion

ID: 9553186
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:24:52.007705+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:30:11.572931
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
There are two cases before us, one filed by Hearns in 2003, and one filed in 2005. I concur in the reversal and remand in the 2005 case, and dissent in the 2003 case. We are all agreed that Hearns’s 2005 complaint should not have been dismissed. My dissent, therefore, has no bearing on whether Hearns may proceed with his case. The important issue is whether district courts may apply Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 and our precedent.
The district court, granting the motion to dismiss in the 2003 case, carefully explained that the court was acting pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a) as construed in our decisions Nevijel v. North Coast Life Insurance1 and McHenry v. Renne.2 The panel does not follow these authorities, even though they are binding circuit law. The district court exercised its discretion to dismiss only after giving plaintiff numerous opportunities to cure not only the pleading defect but also other defects, and providing the plaintiff with guidance about what was wrong with the complaint. The district court’s liberality was repaid with contumaciousness and evasion. The plaintiff filed an amended complaint distinguished from the dismissed version only by smaller margins.3
The majority opinion recites but does not actually apply the standard of review for dismissal under Rule 8, abuse of discretion.4 The majority offers no authority *1134and no reason for its extraordinary holding, that the district court should have stricken “[m]any or all of the paragraphs from 33 through 207” or excused defendants from answering them. The closest it comes is a Second Circuit case addressing a 4page pro se complaint, not an 81 page counseled complaint.5 The majority errs by holding that district courts have the duty (not merely the discretion) to “relieve a defendant of the burden of responding to a complaint with excessive factual detail” and should “simply strike the surplusage from” faulty complaints.6 One might suppose that this jurisprudential surprise would occur in a pro se case, but this is a counseled case, in which plaintiff has had at least three attorneys of record.
The many additional authorities cited in the majority opinion largely uphold dismissals and none of them uphold the new rule announced by the panel, the citations in the majority opinion being more in the nature of decorations than applications of law.7

Facts.

A comprehensive factual recount shows why the district court reasonably exercised its discretion to dismiss Hearns’s complaint.
The original complaint is 81 pages long, much longer than we allow appellate briefs to be. It has 336 separate averments of events spanning more than a decade (and setting out many alleged wrongs for which the statute of limitations would bar claims, as well as Title VII claims against fellow employees rather than the employer, plainly barred by law).8 It is very hard to understand. Even the chronology is hard to follow because the events are not set out in any logical order, chronological or otherwise. The claims do not start until page 57, after a lengthy, largely irrelevant and entirely unnecessary history of Hearns’s life and work, and the many wrongs committed against him and others at work.
In 2005, a different lawyer filed a different complaint, alleging substantially the same history and claims plus a retaliation claim. By contrast with the 2003 complaint and amended complaint, the 2005 complaint is clear and concise, 9 pages instead of 81, and 39 averments instead of 336. Were there the slightest doubt whether the case lent itself to a clear and concise pleading, the well pleaded 2005 case would eliminate the doubt.
The complaint and amended complaint in the 2003 case are not just prolix and largely unnecessary to the “short and plain statement of the claim[s]” required by Rule 8(a)(2), but are also very difficult to read because of odd rhetorical devices. For example, instead of calling defendants “defendants,” or using their names where the averments and claims distinguish them, it calls them the “GOBN,” defining this acronym (which one must memorize to read the complaint) as the “Good Ole Boys Network” (plaintiff is male, and does not allege sex discrimination).
The district judge, in dismissing the 2003 complaint, explained that “the complaint is unnecessarily long, even given *1135that it contains seventeen legal claims.” The factual section is “over 50 pages long, and includes many details that are not necessary in order to give Defendants notice of the allegations of racial discrimination at issue here. For example, plaintiff need not have inserted entire email exchanges into the complaint ... in order to give Defendants notice that Plaintiff was alleging a hostile relationship between himself’ and a particular supervisor. Nor did the averment about some coworker’s alleged rapes have much to do with Hearns’s claims. The district court aptly noted that “such specificity at the initial pleading stage is unduly cumbersome to Defendants’ ability to timely answer the complaint.”
On June 25, 2004, the district court gave plaintiff 18 days to file an amended complaint or else have the action dismissed for failure to prosecute under Rule 41(b). Two weeks after this deadline passed, instead of dismissing the case, the court issued an order to show cause why the action should not be dismissed. Again, no response.
Plaintiff did not file anything until two and a half months after the dismissal without prejudice, long after the deadline on the order to show cause. Counsel claimed (but did not swear or declare under penalty of perjury) that she “did not become aware until Sunday, 9/5/04” of either order. She requested another 18 days to file an amended complaint. Meanwhile, she had been quoted in a newspaper accusing defendants of racial harassment perpetrated by the GOBN.
The court expressed skepticism about counsel’s unsworn claim that she had not received the orders, and noted that the record showed that both documents were mailed to counsel at her present law office address, but gave her the 18 days she asked for anyway. Though she filed the amended complaint within 18 days, she did not make any substantive changes. She instead used narrower margins to cut the number of pages. The amended complaint rambled on in the same prolix way about the GOBN, about how those blacks and other minorities who were not mistreated were “tools” and “decoys,” and claimed that promotions went to WTW’s. This acronym was defined as “who they want.” The amended complaint has about the same number of words as the initial complaint.
This case was not just a counseled case rather than a pro se case, but also it was a counseled case in which the plaintiff as well as his attorney bore personal responsibility for the defiance of Rule 8 and of the court order. Hearns’s lawyer, Danuta Tuszynska, gave defense counsel an affidavit which was filed, stating that a contract attorney, Letitia Pepper, had actually drafted the original complaint. Tuszynska said in her sworn statement that “[ajfter the court’s order granting the first motion to dismiss, I advised plaintiff that we needed to shorten the pleading, but he refused. Instead he urged me to lengthen the first amended complaint by adding additional parties, which I declined to do.” Tuszynska shortened the complaint from 81 pages down to 68 pages, but not by cutting what the judge had said to cut. She just deleted four of the 336 averments and made the margins narrower.
Granting a motion to dismiss the amended complaint, this time with prejudice, the judge explained that he “thoroughly compared the [First Amended Complaint] to the complaint and conclude[d] that they include nearly all of the same factual and legal allegations. Hearns ... made no genuine effort to comply with the June 25 order. Hearns’ factual allegations remain grossly excessive, and in certain parts, repetitive and immaterial. It is clear that Hearns’ [First Amended Complaint] has not cured the pleading deficiencies dis*1136cussed in the June 25 order.” The district court expressly considered sanctions other than dismissal with prejudice, but rejected them because of the history:
The court does not believe that alternative measures less drastic than dismissal with prejudice would be effective here. See McHenry, 84 F.3d at 1178. The court has already given Hearns leave to amend to comply with Rule 8(a), which he failed to do. Moreover, when Hearns’ counsel claimed not to have received the June 25 order or the July 28, 2004 Order to Show Cause why his case should not be dismissed for failure to amend within the time allotted by the court, the court extended the time to file a [First Amended Complaint], even though it was ‘extremely coincidental’ that Hearns’ counsel did not receive two court documents mailed from the Clerk of the Court to her present law office address.
After the dismissal of the amended complaint, Hearns substituted Tuszynska’s contract attorney, Letitia Pepper, as his new counsel. Pepper missed what she understood to be the appeal deadline, and blamed it on Hearns’s first lawyer, Tuszynska. Pepper sought an extension of time to file an appeal because of Tuszynska’s “gross negligence and/or egregious misconduct.” According to Pepper, Tuszynska delayed in releasing Hearns’s files, failed to convey messages to Hearns about Pepper’s willingness to help Tuszynska with the First Amended Complaint, and failed to timely appeal the dismissal order. Pepper also blamed the delay on a falling out between herself and Tuszynska that arose from when Tuszynska initially represented Pepper after she was arrested for dog theft (no charges were filed) and Tuszynska abruptly ended the representation.
Analysis
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) requires a “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Subsection 8(d)(1) requires that “[e]ach allegation must be simple, concise and direct.”9 Rule 84 provides that “[t]he forms in the Appendix suffice under these rules and illustrate the simplicity and brevity that these rules contemplate.” The forms in the Appendix for complaints range from three to eight averments, none requiring more than a few pages after the caption, even for such complex matters as patent infringement, copyright infringement and unfair competition, and interpleader and declaratory relief.
“We review dismissal of a complaint with prejudice for failure to comply with a court’s order to amend the complaint to comply with Rule 8 for abuse of discretion.” 10 “The district judge’s evaluation of whether the plaintiff complied with his order is entitled to considerable weight.”11 I cannot see that the majority opinion gives any weight, much less “considerable weight,” to the district judge’s evaluation.
We have for decades upheld dismissals with prejudice of needlessly prolix and confusing complaints, after plaintiff failed to take advantage of an invitation to cure the defects in an amended complaint.12 So have our sister circuits.13 Federal courts
*1137not infrequently exercise discretion not to dismiss with prejudice rambling complaints by pro se litigants who are not likely to be able to plead any more clearly.14 “Conversely, the federal courts are far less charitable when one or more amended pleadings already have been filed with no measurable increase in clarity.”15
I now turn to the earlier of the two cases upon which the district judge based his decision, Nevijel v. North Coast Life Insurance Company.16 As in the case before us, the district court dismissed with prejudice, after first giving the plaintiff an opportunity to amend. We affirmed, holding that in appropriate circumstances “[a] complaint which fails to comply with rules 8(a) and 8(e) may be dismissed with prejudice pursuant to rule 41(b),”17 and that such a dismissal will be overturned on appeal “only” if the district court abused its discretion.18 The circumstances in that case resembled those in the case at bar, except that the complaint in Nevijel was nowhere near as verbose and confusing as the one in this case, nor did the plaintiff in Nevijel sneak around the court’s instructions in the earlier dismissal by word processor manipulation.
Fifteen years later, in McHenry v. Renne,19 we followed our holding in Nevijel. We upheld a dismissal with prejudice of a civil rights complaint a fraction of the length of the one in the case before us, and comparably confusing. The majority’s ground for not following McHenry is that among the many faults with the complaint, one could not figure out which defendants were being sued on which claims. That is not much of a distinction, considering the hours it would take to prepare an outline of the complaint in the case before us, nor was that the issue on which McHenry turned. As in the case before us, the complaint in McHenry “read[ ] like a magazine story instead of a traditional complaint.” 20
We held in McHenry that the Federal Rules “require,” not merely suggest, that complaints be “simple, concise and direct,” 21 and pointed out that Rule 84 and the Appendix of Forms illustrated the “simplicity and brevity” contemplated by Rule 8.22 As in the case before us, the complaint' in McHenry was “argumentative, prolix, replete with redundancy, and largely irrelevant.”23 We took special note that “[njone of this material has any resemblance to the sample pleadings in the Appendix of Forms,” and rather than set out the claims, “the pleading seems designed to provide quotations for newspaper stories.”24
True, dismissal with prejudice is a harsh remedy. But so is the failure to dismiss with prejudice, where such a dismissal is appropriate. The harshness and injustice of failure to dismiss falls not only on *1138courts, but also on defendants and litigants in other cases. As we explained in McHenry, complaints like this one require the judge in effect to draft a proper complaint in chambers, a task likely to take at least half a day. The majority thinks the judge ought to have trudged through the 81 pages, 336 averments with a red pen, striking averments or drafting an order telling defendants when averments did not need to be answered. Indeed, in this case, that is just what the majority says the district judge should have done, as though the judge should have been Hearns’s fourth lawyer in this case. By contrast with the hours of effort the majority imposes on the district judge, all Hearns’s lawyer evidently had to do was a “select all” and narrow the margins on her word processor.
Failure to dismiss reeks of unfairness to defendants. The defendants are put to the expense of a far more extensive pre-trial process, and in all likelihood a far lengthier trial requiring expensive preparation on all sorts of irrelevancies, leaving as detritus the uncertainty about how.to apply res judicata to whatever was adjudicated, if the plaintiff sues again.
Prolix, confusing complaints such as the ones plaintiffs filed in this case impose unfair burdens on litigants and judges. As a practical matter, the judge and opposing counsel, in order to perform their responsibilities, cannot use a complaint such as the one plaintiffs filed, and must prepare outlines to determine who is being sued for what. Defendants are then put at risk that their outline differs from the judge’s, that plaintiffs will surprise them with something new at trial which they reasonably did not understand to be in the case at all, and that res judicata effects of settlement or judgment will be different from what they reasonably expected. “[T]he rights of the defendants to be free from costly and harassing litigation must be considered.” Von Poppenheim [v. Portland Boxing and Wrestling Comm’n, 442 F.2d 1047, 1054 (9th Cir.1971) ].
The judge wastes half a day in chambers preparing the “short and plain statement” which Rule 8 obligated plaintiffs to submit. He then must manage the litigation without knowing what claims are made against whom. This leads to discovery disputes and lengthy trials, prejudicing litigants in other case who follow the rules, as well as defendants in the case in which the prolix pleading is filed. “[T]he rights of litigants awaiting their turns to have other matters resolved must be considered ____” Nevijel, 651 F.2d at 675; Von Poppenheim, 442 F.2d at 1054. While commendable in its consideration for plaintiffs in this case, the magistrate’s thorough analysis and thirty-page report, and the judge’s study of the report, took a great deal of time away from more deserving litigants waiting in line.25
A complaint with hundreds of averments generates tens of thousands of dollars in discovery and motions expenses. Even answering the complaint is an expensive and unjustified burden, because Rule 8(b) requires the defendants to state their defenses to “each” claim, and worse, in a complaint with hundreds of averments, to “admit or deny the allegations asserted against it by an opposing party.”26 One experienced in litigation knows how time consuming for the lawyer and expensive for the client it is to search out documents and personnel and get people on the phone, in order to file a good faith answer to hundreds of averments. The majority’s *1139claim that “[(defendants should have no difficulty in responding to the claims with an answer and/or with a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss” assumes days of associates’ time available and an unlimited litigation budget.
Failure to dismiss with prejudice, as we explained in McHenry, also imposes injustices on other litigants waiting in line for the district court’s time. No doubt judges feel that they are doing a fine and charitable thing when they devote a great deal of time to an incompetently pleaded complaint, trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.
The feeling of compassion, though, may be unjustified. The judge who does what the majority opinion says he ought to do with a complaint that violates Rule 8 is like a clerk in a grocery store displaying warmth and friendliness by chatting with the customer at the register, while a half dozen others stand seething in the slow line. The district court owes it to the other litigants in other cases as well as to the defendants to husband its resources for cases that are properly pleaded.
None of our disagreement goes to whether Hearns may litigate his civil rights claim. We are all agreed that dismissal of the 2005 complaint was indeed an abuse of discretion. The only reason I can see for why the district court dismissed that complaint was that it could hardly be seen, under the huge pile of garbage dumped on the court by the complaint and amended complaint in the 2003 case. What our dispute is about is whether the mandatory language of Rule 8 shall be followed, and whether a panel shall follow the binding precedents of our own court. Today’s majority decision means that a district judge who conscientiously applies the rule and follows our precedents in Nevijel and McHenry cannot count on us to do the same.

. 651 F.2d 671 (9th Cir.1981).

. 84 F.3d 1172 (9th Cir.1996).

. There were negligibly minor revisions and four fewer averments.

. McHenry v. Renne, 84 F.3d 1172, 1177 (9th Cir.1996).

. Simmons v. Abruzzo, 49 F.3d 83, 85 (2d Cir.1995).

. Majority Opinion p. 1132.

. See Wynder v. McMahon, 360 F.3d 73, 80 (2d Cir.2004); Garst v. Lockheed-Martin Corp., 328 F.3d 374, 378 (7th Cir.2003); Mann v. Boatright, 477 F.3d 1140, 1148 (10th Cir.2007); McHenry v. Renne, 84 F.3d 1172, 1176-79 (9th Cir.1996); Nevijel v. North Coast Life Ins. Co., 651 F.2d 671, 674 (9th Cir.1981); Schmidt v. Herrmann, 614 F.2d 1221, 1223-24 (9th Cir.1980); Gillibeau v. City of Richmond, 417 F.2d 426, 431-32 (9th Cir.1969); Corcoran v. Yorty, 347 F.2d 222, 223 (9th Cir.1965); Agnew v. Moody, 330 F.2d 868, 870 (9th Cir.1964).

. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a).

. Emphasis added.

. McHenry v. Renne, 84 F.3d 1172, 1177 (9th Cir.1996).

. Id.

. See Nevijel v. North Coast Life Ins. Co., 651 F.2d 671, 674 (9th Cir.1981); Schmidt v. Herrmann, 614 F.2d 1221, 1223-24 (9th Cir.1980); Agnew v. Moody, 330 F.2d 868, 871 (9th Cir.1964).

. Kuehl v. FDIC, 8 F.3d 905 (1st Cir.1993); In re Westinghouse Secs. Litigation, 90 F.3d 696 (3rd Cir.1996); Smith v. Intn’l Longshoremen's Ass’n, AFL-CIO, Local No. 333, 592 F.2d 225 (4th Cir.1979); Collier v. First Mich*1137igan Coop. Housing Ass'n, 274 F.2d 467 (6th Cir.1960); Garst v. Lockheed-Martin Corp., 328 F.3d 374 (7th Cir.2003); Koll v. Wayzata State Bank, 397 F.2d 124 (8th Cir.1968); Ausherman v. Stump, 643 F.2d 715 (10th Cir.1981); McCann v. Clark, 191 F.2d 476 (D.C.Cir.1951).

. 5 Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1217 (3d ed.2004).

. Id.

. 651 F.2d 671 (9th Cir.1981).

. Id. at 673.

. Id. at 674.

. 84 F.3d 1172, 1177 (9th Cir. 1996).

. Id. at 1176.

. McHenry, 84 F.3d at 1177.

. Id. at 1177.

. Id.

. Id. at 1178.

. McHenry, 84 F.3d at 1179-80.

. Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 8(b)(1).