UPDATE:
Ouch. And on and on and on for 64 scathing pages, including:Many of the Amended Complaint’s characterizations of events are implausible because they lack any specific allegations which might provide factual support for the conclusions reached. For instance, the contention that former FBI director James Comey, senior FBI officials, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “overzealously targeted” Plaintiff and conspired to harm him through appointment of special counsel are strikingly similar to the conclusory and formulaic allegations found deficient in the seminal Supreme Court case of Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009). What the Amended Complaint lacks in substance and legal support it seeks to substitute with length, hyperbole, and the settling of scores and grievances.
Gov.US Courts
Ouch again.Plaintiff has annotated the Amended Complaint with 293 footnotes containing references to various public reports and findings. He is not required to annotate his Complaint; in fact, it is inconsistent with Rule 8’s requirement of a short and plain statement of the claim. But if a party chooses to include such references, it is expected that they be presented in good faith and with evidentiary support. Unfortunately, that is not the case here.
Might work on the press and the supporters, but not a good idea to put before a judge.By filing the Amended Complaint, Plaintiff’s lawyers certified to the Court that, to the best of their knowledge, “the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law,” and that “the factual contentions have evidentiary support[.]” Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b)(2). I have serious doubts about whether that standard is met here.
[...]
Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is a quintessential shotgun pleading, and “[c]ourts in the Eleventh Circuit have little tolerance for shotgun pleadings.” Vibe Micro, Inc. v. Shabanets, 878 F.3d 1291, 1295 (11th Cir. 2018). Such pleadings waste judicial resources and are an unacceptable form of establishing a claim for relief. I To say that Plaintiff’s 193-page, 819-paragraph Amended Complaint is excessive in length would be putting things mildly. And to make matters worse, the Amended Complaint commits the “mortal sin” of incorporating by reference into every count all the general allegations and all the allegations of the preceding counts. See id. at 1323; see also Magluta v. Samples, 256 F.3d 1282, 1284 (11th Cir. 2001). Such a format hopelessly complicates any effort to untangle what facts apply to which claims or defendants.
Ouch!Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint does not describe the fictitious defendants with the requisite specificity to proceed against them in this fashion. He describes the John Doe defendants as “journalists, publishers, editors, investigators, state or federal officials, co-conspirators, officers, employees, agents, managers, owners, principals and/or other duly authorized individuals who caused or contributed to the incident or incidents for which the Plaintiff seeks damages[.]” (Am. Compl. ¶ 44). He describes the ABC corporations as “media companies, publication companies, editorial companies, municipalities, state or federal agencies, law enforcement authorities, investigative agencies, political organizations, political affiliates, private firms and/or other duly authorized corporate or governmental entities who caused or contributed to the incident or incidents for which the Plaintiff seeks damages[.]”
[...]
As a result, the fictitious individual and corporate defendants are dismissed without prejudice.
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“[A] complaint must . . . contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Am. Dental Ass’n v. Cigna Corp., 605 F.3d 1283, 1289 (11th Cir. 2010) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570). At this stage, a court must construe the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and accept as true all the plaintiff’s factual allegations. See Christopher v. Harbury, 536 U.S. 403, 406 (2002); Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 93–94 (2007). However, pleadings that “are no more than conclusions, are not entitled to the assumption of truth. While legal conclusions can provide the framework of a complaint, they must be supported by factual allegations.”
[...]
Plaintiff added eighty new pages of largely irrelevant allegations that did nothing to salvage the legal sufficiency of his claims. The inadequacies with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint are not “merely issues of technical pleading,” as Plaintiff contends, but fatal substantive defects that preclude Plaintiff from proceeding under any of the theories he has presented. At its core, the problem with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm; instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum.
[...]
It is not simply that I find the Amended Complaint “inadequate in any respect”; it is inadequate in nearly every respect.
"With prejudice" means Plaintiff cannot file on this issue again.Because Plaintiff was unable to cure his Complaint even with all its shortcomings clearly laid out for him, and because most of Plaintiff’s claims are not only unsupported by any legal authority but plainly foreclosed by binding precedent as set forth by the Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit, I find that amendment would be futile and that this case should be dismissed with prejudice as to the Defendants that have raised merits arguments.
Plaintiff should be chastised and embarrassed, but we know this particular plaintiff will be no such thing.
I don't know which idiot lawyers filed this other than the idiot Alina Habba, but maybe the judge should consider sanctions. Oh, wait.
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