Nitza Wright v. Chair of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

[DO NOT PUBLISH]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
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2 Opinion of the Court 23-11646
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Before N EWSOM, G RANT, and A NDERSON , 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
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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.
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