Court Opinion

ID: 9949920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-12 20:01:02.23147+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:34:22.946540
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 23-11646    Document: 37-1     Date Filed: 03/12/2024   Page: 1 of 4

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]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

                          ____________________

                                No. 23-11646
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       NITZA WRIGHT,
                                                     Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
       versus
       CHAIR OF EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY
       COMMISSION,

                                                   Defendant-Appellee.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Southern District of Florida
                    D.C. Docket No. 1:22-cv-21090-RNS
USCA11 Case: 23-11646     Document: 37-1      Date Filed: 03/12/2024    Page: 2 of 4

       2                      Opinion of the Court                23-11646

                            ____________________

       Before NEWSOM, GRANT, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
              Nitza Wright appeals the district court’s order dismissing
       with prejudice her second amended complaint against her former
       employer, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as a
       shotgun pleading. Wright had three chances to file a compliant
       complaint. After the EEOC moved to dismiss her initial complaint
       as a shotgun pleading, she amended it as a matter of course under
       Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(1)(B). The EEOC again moved to dismiss,
       which the district court granted without prejudice, finding that
       Wright’s amended complaint was a shotgun pleading. In response,
       Wright filed a second amended complaint. Finding that this
       complaint—Wright’s third in total—was still a shotgun pleading,
       the district court dismissed her suit with prejudice. Wright appeals.
               We review a district court’s dismissal of a complaint as a
       shotgun pleading for abuse of discretion. Vibe Micro, Inc. v.
       Shabanets, 878 F.3d 1291, 1294 (11th Cir. 2018). We have identified
       four common categories of shotgun pleadings: complaints that (1)
       contain “multiple counts where each count adopts the allegations
       of all preceding counts;” (2) are “replete with conclusory, vague,
       and immaterial facts not obviously connected to any particular
       cause of action;” (3) do not separate each cause of action or claim
       for relief into a different count; and (4) assert “multiple claims
       against multiple defendants without specifying which of the
USCA11 Case: 23-11646      Document: 37-1     Date Filed: 03/12/2024     Page: 3 of 4

       23-11646               Opinion of the Court                         3

       defendants are responsible for which acts or omissions, or which of
       the defendants the claim is brought against.” Weiland v. Palm Beach
       Cnty. Sheriff’s Off., 792 F.3d 1313, 1321–23 (11th Cir. 2015). “The
       unifying characteristic of all types of shotgun pleadings is that they
       fail to one degree or another, and in one way or another, to give
       the defendants adequate notice of the claims against them and the
       grounds upon which each claim rests.” Id. at 1323.
               The district court did not abuse its discretion by dismissing
       Wright’s complaints as shotgun pleadings. As the district court
       found, her first amended complaint constituted a “sporadically
       arranged, prolonged recantation of multiple story lines that bear a
       questionable relevance to one another,” dotted by “repeat and
       unexpected introductions to a complex cast of characters” and a
       litany of obscure acronyms. Worse, it committed what we have
       described as the “mortal sin” of shotgun pleadings: in a multi-count
       complaint, re-alleging all preceding counts in a successive one.
       Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1322.
              Wright’s second amended complaint presents essentially the
       same, meandering factual narrative as the first amended complaint,
       with only superficial edits. And although it tries to fix the
       incorporation problem, it does so by going too far in the opposite
       direction. Now, rather than re-alleging all preceding paragraphs,
       the second count of her complaint incorporates no factual
       allegations at all. And the first incorporates only twenty-five of the
       previous hundred-plus paragraphs, leaving it unclear whether and
       how the vast majority of her complaint applies to her legal claims
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                23-11646

       for relief. Readers are left to sort through the litany of facts (and
       over seventy pages of accompanying exhibits) themselves,
       speculating “as to which factual allegations pertain to which
       count.” Chudasama v. Mazda Motor Corp., 123 F.3d 1353, 1359 n.9
       (11th Cir. 1997).
              There is no “rule requiring district courts to endure endless
       shotgun pleadings.” Vibe Micro, 878 F.3d at 1297. After a district
       court gives a counseled litigant a chance to replead and remedy her
       shotgun pleading, if the litigant is still unable to file a properly
       pleaded complaint, the court does not abuse its discretion by
       dismissing the suit with prejudice. Id. at 1296–97. That is precisely
       what happened here.
             AFFIRMED.