Court Opinion

ID: 9496132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:18:42.999387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:23.096849
License: Public Domain

MOORE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
After the district court ruled that Cox’s § 1983 suit should be dismissed because he had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies as the PLRA requires of prisoner litigants, Cox informed the district court that he was no longer incarcerated, and he argued that thus the PLRA’s requirements should not apply to his suit. The district court then issued an order, instructing Cox to submit evidence showing that he had been released from prison if he wanted to continue his lawsuit. Cox submitted the requested affidavit, thereby meeting the requirements that the district court had imposed. Because the majority concludes that this does not satisfy Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15’s definition of a supplemental pleading, and then goes on in dicta to state that even if the district court were properly informed in a Rule 15 motion that a plaintiff was no longer a prisoner, the district court should dismiss the complaint and require the plaintiff to re-file, I respectfully dissent.
I believe that Cox has met Rule 15(d)’s requirements. Adopted to prevent the situation in which “plaintiffs have sometimes been needlessly remitted to the difficulties of commencing a new action even though events occurring after the commencement of the original action have made clear the right to relief,” Fed.R.Civ.P. 15, Advisory *429Committee Notes (1963), Rule 15(d) permits a party to file a supplemental pleading identifying facts that have changed since an earlier filing. Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(d). This covers precisely the situation at issue here: Cox has identified to the court facts that have changed since his initial filing, and the court now proposes that he be needlessly remitted to commencing a new action. To be sure, it does not appear that Cox ever filed a pleading captioned, “Rule 15(d) Supplemental Pleading,” but that is because he did not have to. He made the district court aware of the change in facts, the district court asked for evidence of the change in facts, and Cox provided the district court precisely what the district court had requested. Record Entries # 100, # 107, # 110. I am aware of no rule according to which a plaintiff who has complied with a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure has “waived” the application of that rule to his or her case by failing to cite it by number — when the district court has specifically asked for the required information in a different form.
Having decided that Cox did not file a supplemental pleading under Rule 15, the majority then goes on to hypothesize about what the consequences might have been for Cox if he had filed such a motion. The majority’s suggestion that a district court must dismiss a case in which the plaintiff has filed a proper Rule 15(d) motion to inform the court that he is no longer subject to the PLRA’s exhaustion requirement is both dicta, as the majority has concluded that this case involves no such plaintiff, and inconsistent with the traditional interpretations of Rule 15(d). As already mentioned, Rule 15(d) exists so that litigants may avoid wasting the judicial resources involved in dismissing and refiling a complaint, and instead may simply present a supplemental pleading that more accurately asserts the plaintiffs claims in light of any new factual developments. In other words, a Rule 15(d) pleading has the procedural effect of updating or superseding the- prior pleading. Thus a Rule 15(d) supplemental pleading can cure all sorts of defects in the pleadings.
The majority suggests that the rule of procedure cannot “overrule” a federal statute; true though this may be, it does not resolve the question the majority seeks to answer. A Rule 15(d) supplemental pleading does not overrule substantive requirements, but rather creates an efficient mechanism by which a court may apply substantive requirements to facts that have changed. This is true whether the party invoking Rule 15(d) seeks to use it to overcome a requirement of the Constitution, a federal statute, or another rule of civil procedure. See 6A Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller, & Mary Kay Kane, Federal Practice & Procedure § 1505, at 192-93 (2d ed. 1990) (“Rule 15(d) now expressly approves curative supplemental pleadings and the rule is neither unconstitutional nor beyond the bounds of Congress’ rulemaking authority under the Rules Enabling Act.”) (citing cases). Thus although the Constitution forbids federal courts from entertaining suits over which they lack jurisdiction, Rule 15(d) enables plaintiffs to cure any jurisdictional defects, see 28 U.S.C. § 1653. Similarly, 28 U.S.C. § 1332 permits federal courts to hear cases lacking in a federal question when the parties are diverse at the time of filing, Smith v. Sperling, 354 U.S. 91, 93 n. 1, 77 S.Ct. 1112, 1 L.Ed.2d 1205 (1957), but if a plaintiff files a Rule 15(d) pleading to substitute a non-diverse party, diversity is destroyed and the case must be dismissed, see Grady v. Irvine, 254 F.2d 224, 228 (4th Cir.1958). This result is inexplicable unless the Rule 15(d) pleading becomes the relevant pleading for purposes of determining diversity, the general rule regarding the initial time *430of filing notwithstanding. Finally, Rule 12(b)(6) requires dismissal of any complaint that fails to state a claim on which relief may be granted, but Rule 15(d) permits a party to supplement his or her complaint in order to state a claim and avoid dismissal, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(d), Advisory Committee Notes (1963) (indicating that Rule 15(d) was intended to overcome “the rigid and formalistic view that where the original complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, leave to serve a supplemental complaint must be denied”). In none of these instances is Rule 15(d) considered to “overrule” the constitutional, statutory, or procedural requirement at issue. In all of them, it is simply recognized that facts and allegations may change, so that a plaintiff who formerly did not meet a requirement now does, and nothing is gained by forcing the court to dismiss the suit and the plaintiff to refile it.
As the majority argues in Parts II.A and II.B of its opinion, whether the PLRA’s exhaustion requirement applies depends on whether the “plaintiff was a prisoner when he ‘brought’ his suit.”1 But just as in the constitutional, statutory, and procedural contexts described above, recognizing a supplemental pleading under Rule 15(d) in the PLRA context does not “overrule” any statutory requirements; rather, Rule 15(d) simply enables courts to look to a different set of pleadings in determining whether the PLRA’s exhaustion requirement applies. I see no reason that Rule 15(d) applies differently in the context of a prisoner’s lawsuit — or, more accurately, a former prisoner’s lawsuit — than in other lawsuits, and I respectfully dissent.

. The majority’s thorough argument in Parts II.A and II.B, in which it concludes that the PLRA's applicability turns on whether the plaintiff was a prisoner on the date of filing, is accompanied by a caveat suggesting that the point is assumed but not decided. That footnote suggests that a court could hold that the PLRA exhaustion requirement applies to plaintiffs who are not, in fact, in prison. Notwithstanding the fact that prison grievance procedures are generally available only to prisoners, rendering exhaustion by non-prisoners (or former prisoners) at least in one sense impossible, the PLRA explicitly limits its application to persons who are “incarcerated or detained,” 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(h), a category that does not include former inmates. See Greig v. Goord, 169 F.3d 165, 167 (2d Cir.1999) (reasoning that the justifications for the exhaustion requirement “simply do not apply to individuals who were formerly incarcerated”); Doe v. Washington County, 150 F.3d 920, 924 (8th Cir.1998) (“Congress therefore fully intended to distinguish between those who are 'prisoners’ when they decide whether to file a complaint and those who are not.”); Kerr v. Puckett, 138 F.3d 321, 323 (7th Cir.1998) (suggesting that Congress sought to impose limits on current inmates, not former inmates, and that "[t]he statutory language does not leave wriggle room”).