Court Opinion

ID: 9896600
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-13 20:01:20.97567+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:08.618569
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-13845   Document: 20-1      Date Filed: 11/13/2023   Page: 1 of 9

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                         ____________________

                              No. 22-13845
                         Non-Argument Calendar
                         ____________________

       ABRAKA OKPOSIO,
                                                     Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
       versus
       BARRY UNIVERSITY, INC.,
       a Florida corporation,
       BETHANY PIERPONT,
       individually,
       LETICIA M. DIAZ,
       ROXANNA P. CRUZ,
       MARIA L. ALVAREZ, et al.,

                                                  Defendants-Appellees.
USCA11 Case: 22-13845      Document: 20-1      Date Filed: 11/13/2023     Page: 2 of 9

       2                      Opinion of the Court                  22-13845

                            ____________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Southern District of Florida
                     D.C. Docket No. 1:20-cv-23814-DPG
                           ____________________

       Before JORDAN, WILSON, and LUCK, Circuit Judges
       PER CURIAM:
              Abraka Okposio appeals from the district court’s denial of
       her motion to file a third amended complaint alleging claims under
       Florida law for fraudulent misrepresentation, gross negligence, and
       vicarious liability against Barry University and its employees—
       Bethany Pierpont, Leticia Diaz, Roxanna Cruz, Maria Alvarez, and
       Amy Lefkowitz. She argues that the district court erred in denying
       her motion and dismissing her action with prejudice because the
       complaint she offered to file if the motion were granted was not a
       shotgun pleading in violation of Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2).
                                          I
              Ms. Okposio sued Barry University, and the employees
       named above, after she was unable to meet the cost of attendance
       at the university’s law school after her ﬁrst year. She claims that the
       university and its employees fraudulently led her to believe that she
       would have access to need-based ﬁnancial aid and that defendants
       were grossly negligent in failing to assist her as an enrolled student.
       See D.E. 47-1 at 12−13; 17–20.
USCA11 Case: 22-13845      Document: 20-1      Date Filed: 11/13/2023     Page: 3 of 9

       22-13845               Opinion of the Court                          3

              After completing her initial year of law school, Ms. Okposio
       learned for the ﬁrst time that international students at the univer-
       sity were ineligible for most forms of need-based aid past their ﬁrst
       year of enrollment. See id. at 10−11. As an international student,
       Ms. Okposio was also ineligible to receive federal student loans to-
       ward tuition costs. Finally, as a result of poor academic perfor-
       mance in her ﬁrst year, Ms. Okposio was unable to secure merit-
       based aid from the university.
              Due to these constraints, Ms. Okposio discontinued her de-
       gree in 2016 before completing her second year of law school. She
       brought an action pro se seeking damages to redress the loss of fu-
       ture earning capacity as a graduate and licensed attorney.
               The district court dismissed Ms. Okposio’s complaint with-
       out prejudice, ruling that her 685-page complaint constituted “an
       impermissible shotgun pleading.” D.E. 10 at 3. Among other deﬁ-
       ciencies, the district court identiﬁed “hundreds of pages of imma-
       terial factual allegations” and a failure to tie “each of those factual
       allegations to the claims raised.” Id. at 3–4. The district court al-
       lowed Ms. Okposio to ﬁle an amended complaint that complied
       with the federal pleading standards. See id. at 4. Ms. Okposio then
       ﬁled her ﬁrst amended complaint, and subsequently moved to pro-
       ceed in forma pauperis.
               The district court dismissed Ms. Okposio’s ﬁrst amended
       complaint without prejudice on similar grounds. According to the
       district court, the amended complaint “continue[d] to include hun-
       dreds of pages of immaterial factual allegations” which prevented
USCA11 Case: 22-13845     Document: 20-1     Date Filed: 11/13/2023    Page: 4 of 9

       4                     Opinion of the Court                 22-13845

       the district court from determining “which allegations [were] rele-
       vant” and whether Ms. Okposio had properly pled “each element
       of the various claims she raise[d].” D.E. 41 at 3. Ms. Okposio then
       ﬁled her second amended complaint.
               The district court dismissed the complaint without prejudice
       again. By this time, Ms. Okposio had re-organized the complaint
       and eliminated over eight hundred pages of text and exhibits. The
       district court nonetheless concluded that it could not “sift through
       such a lengthy pleading in order to determine whether [p]laintiﬀ
       ha[d] alleged suﬃcient factual content to support each element of
       the various claims she raise[d].” D.E. 46. The district court warned
       Ms. Okposio that another improperly pled complaint would “result
       in a dismissal of [the] action with prejudice.” Id. Ms. Okposio then
       ﬁled a motion for leave to submit a third and ﬁnal amended com-
       plaint.
              The district court denied the motion sua sponte and dis-
       missed the action with prejudice on October 31, 2022. In its paper-
       less order, the district court acknowledged Ms. Okposio’s attempt
       at “condensing facts and sentences; removing repetitive factual al-
       legations; removing stand-alone conclusory statements; [and] revis-
       ing counts . . . .” D.E. 48 ¶ 1. The district court ruled, however,
       that the complaint’s “101 pages, 423 paragraphs, and duplicate
       counts” meant that Ms. Okposio had “once again failed to present
       her claims ‘discretely and succinctly.’” Id ¶2. (quoting Weiland v.
       Palm Beach Cnty. Sheriﬀs Oﬀ., 792 F.3d 1313, 1320 (11th Cir. 2015)).
USCA11 Case: 22-13845     Document: 20-1      Date Filed: 11/13/2023    Page: 5 of 9

       22-13845               Opinion of the Court                        5

              This is Ms. Okposio’s appeal. We conclude that the district
       court abused its discretion in denying Ms. Okposio’s motion to ﬁle
       a third amended complaint.
                                        II
              We review dismissals of shotgun pleadings under Rule
       8(a)(2) for the abuse of discretion. Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1320.
              Rule 8(a)(2) requires that a complaint contain “a short and
       plain statement of the claim.” It is within “the district court’s in-
       herent authority to control its docket and ensure the prompt reso-
       lution of lawsuits, which in some circumstances includes the power
       to dismiss a complaint for failure to comply with Rule 8(a)(2).”
       Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1320.
              One type of complaint that violates Rule 8(a)(2) is a shotgun
       pleading. See id. We have described four common examples of
       shotgun pleadings. These are when a complaint (1) contains “mul-
       tiple counts where each count adopts the allegations of all preced-
       ing counts”; (2) is “replete with conclusory, vague, and immaterial
       facts not obviously connected to any particular cause of action”; (3)
       “commits the sin of not separating into a diﬀerent count each cause
       of action or claim for relief ”; and (4) asserts “multiple claims
       against multiple defendants without specifying which of the de-
       fendants are responsible for which acts or omissions, or which of
       the defendants the claim is brought against.” Id. at 1321−23. The
       central question is whether the pleadings “give the defendants ad-
       equate notice of the claims against them and the grounds upon
       which each claim rests.” Id. at 1323. In other words, shotgun
USCA11 Case: 22-13845     Document: 20-1      Date Filed: 11/13/2023    Page: 6 of 9

       6                      Opinion of the Court                22-13845

       pleadings make it “virtually impossible to know which allegations of
       fact are intended to support which claim(s) for relief.” Id. at 1325
       (emphasis in original) (quoting Anderson v. Dist. Bd. Trs. Cent. Fla.
       Cmty. Coll., 77 F.3d 364, 366 (11th Cir. 1996)).
              We afford leeway to pro se litigants when it comes to con-
       forming to pleadings rules. See Pinson v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, Nat’l
       Ass’n, 942 F.3d 1200, 1208 (11th Cir. 2019). This is true for compli-
       ance with Rule 8(a)(2) as well, even when the pleadings contain
       similarities to the four examples we described in Weiland. See id.
       In Pinson, for example, we held that a pro se complaint, which we
       described as “adopt[ing] the allegations of all preceding counts” and
       “longer than it needs to be,” should not have been dismissed as a
       shotgun pleading because it provided sufficient notice to the de-
       fendants of the claims lodged against them. See id.
                                        III
              Though Ms. Okposio’s third amended complaint is not a
       model of brevity, it suﬃciently puts the defendants on notice of the
       claims against them. The proposed third amended complaint at
       issue contains speciﬁc allegations of “the who, what, when, where,
       and how” of the alleged fraud and negligence concerning the al-
       leged misrepresentations and omissions about ﬁnancial aid. See
       Garﬁeld v. NDC Health Corp., 466 F.3d 1255, 1262 (11th Cir. 2006).
       We therefore consider whether it ﬁts within any of the shotgun
       pleading categories we’ve identiﬁed.
             Ms. Okposio’s third amended complaint is not a shotgun
       pleading of the ﬁrst variety. Out of the thirty-ﬁve counts in the
USCA11 Case: 22-13845      Document: 20-1     Date Filed: 11/13/2023     Page: 7 of 9

       22-13845               Opinion of the Court                         7

       complaint, “none of them adopts the allegations in the preceding
       counts.” Barmapov v. Amuial, 986 F.3d 1321, 1325 (11th Cir. 2021).
              Ms. Okposio’s complaint also does not fall under the second
       category of shotgun pleadings. Although Ms. Okposio’s descrip-
       tion of the facts is repetitive at times, the complaint is not plagued
       by conclusory, vague, or immaterial facts; nor does it “leave[] the
       reader to speculate as to which factual allegations pertain to which
       count.” Adams v. Huntsville Hosp., 819 F. App’x 836, 838 (11th Cir.
       2020). Instead, the complaint presents facts in chronological order,
       describing events before, during, and after the alleged tortious con-
       duct. Each count in the complaint then “adopts and realleges spe-
       ciﬁc paragraphs from the complaint’s factual allegations . . . .” in
       order to connect each set of facts with a particular cause of action.
       McKenzie v. Cleveland, 2023 WL 3312539, at *3 (N.D. Ala. May 8,
       2023) (emphasis in original).
              The complaint may appear, at ﬁrst glance, to contain “dupli-
       cate counts.” See D.E. 48 ¶ 1. But it is not a shotgun pleading of the
       third variety. On the contrary, the complaint is exhaustive in sepa-
       rating “each count [into] a unique cause of action.” Barmapov, 986
       F.3d at 1325. The complaint, for instance, asserts four counts of
       fraudulent misrepresentation and ﬁve counts of gross negligence
       against individual employees at Barry University. Each count per-
       tains either to a diﬀerent defendant or a diﬀerent claim based on a
       discrete event. As an example, Ms. Okposio asserts three counts of
       gross negligence against Ms. Diaz, and each count pleads an
USCA11 Case: 22-13845      Document: 20-1      Date Filed: 11/13/2023     Page: 8 of 9

       8                      Opinion of the Court                  22-13845

       alternative theory of liability based on alleged wrongs that oc-
       curred over a span of two months. See D.E. 47 at 67–71; 73–78.
               Ms. Okposio’s complaint is not a shotgun pleading of the
       fourth variety either. Such oﬀending pleadings commit the “rela-
       tively rare sin” of asserting a claim against multiple defendants at
       once without specifying which defendant committed the alleged
       wrong. See Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1320. However, out of the thirty-
       ﬁve counts in Ms. Okposio’s complaint, none “target multiple de-
       fendants” at once. See Barmapov, 986 F.3d at 1325.
               Finally, though the complaint contains surplusage, that de-
       fect alone does not preclude defendants from understanding the
       claims lodged against them. The prohibition against shotgun
       pleadings is not “an indictment against all long complaints.” Vibe
       Micro, Inc. v. Shabanets, 878 F.3d 1291, 1294 n.2 (11th Cir. 2018). Our
       rulings require adequate notice, not “a model of eﬃciency or spec-
       iﬁcity.” Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1325. This is true even where, as here,
       a plaintiﬀ is confronted by the heightened pleading standard of
       Rule 9(b) for fraudulent misrepresentation claims. See Ziemba v.
       Cascade Int’l, Inc., 256 F.3d 1194, 1202 (11th Cir. 2001) (“The appli-
       cation of Rule 9(b) . . . ‘must not abrogate the concept of notice
       pleading.’”) (citation omitted).
                                         IV
             The district court erred in denying Ms. Okposio’s motion to
       ﬁle a third amended complaint under Rule 8(a)(2) because the
       pleading she stated she would ﬁle if the motion were granted
       would “give the defendants adequate notice of the claims against
USCA11 Case: 22-13845     Document: 20-1     Date Filed: 11/13/2023    Page: 9 of 9

       22-13845              Opinion of the Court                        9

       them and the grounds upon which each claim rests” and would not
       make it “virtually impossible to know which allegations of fact are
       intended to support which claim(s) for relief.” Weiland, 792 F.3d at
       1323, 1325 (emphasis in original). This is especially so given the
       leeway we aﬀord to pro se litigants when it comes to complying
       with pleadings rules. See Pinson, 942 F.3d at 1208.
             REVERSED AND REMANDED.