WHITWORTH v. CHAMBERS et al

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF GEORGIA
ATHENS DIVISION
MIRANDA WHITWORTH,
Plaintiff,
v.
Officer JOHNATHON CHAMBERS, in
his individual capacity; Officer DANNY
WOODS in his individual capacity; JESSE
ELDER, in his individual capacity; and
FRANKLIN COUNTY,
Defendants.
CIVIL ACTION NO.
3:25-cv-00138-TES
ORDER
In this case, Plaintiff Miranda Whitworth is proceeding in forma pauperis (“IFP”)
under 28 U.S.C. § 1915. [Doc. 3, p. 2]. On September 2, 2025, the Court directed service
of Plaintiff’s Complaint [Doc. 1] on the following defendants: Officer Johnathon Tyler
Chambers, Officer Danny Bryan Woods, and Jesse Len Elder as required by Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 4(c)(3).1 [Id. at p. 12]. On November 8, 2025, Plaintiff filed an
Amended Complaint [Doc. 8], and given that she’s proceeding IFP, the Court must
review that amended pleading pursuant to § 1915(e). In her Amended Complaint,
Plaintiff not only attempts to add a new party, but she also attempts to assert a Monell
claim against that party. [Doc. 8, p. 1].
1 As of the date of this Order, the United States Marshals Service has yet to serve these three defendants.
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Now, if the Court were to proceed in a hyper technical fashion and take
Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint at face value—that is, as a true “amended complaint”—
then the substance of that filing would likely be the operative pleading in this case.
Under black letter federal law, “an amended complaint supersedes the initial complaint
and becomes the operative pleading in the case.” Lowery v. Ala. Power Co., 483 F.3d 1184,
1219 (11th Cir. 2007) (citations omitted). Put differently, “the original pleading is
abandoned by the amendment, and [the original pleading] is no longer a part of the
pleader’s averments against h[er] adversar[ies].” Dresdner Bank AG v. M/V Olympia
Voyager, 463 F.3d 1210, 1215 (11th Cir. 2006) (citation omitted); see also Hoefling v. City of
Mia., 811 F.3d 1271, 1277 (11th Cir. 2016) (initial pleading “bec[o]me[s] a legal nullity”).
To have Plaintiff’s original Complaint completely displaced by her Amended
Complaint is clearly not what she intended with this most recent filing.
Here, in attempting to amend her Complaint, the Court recognizes that Plaintiff
says, “No other changes are made to the Complaint at this time.”2 [Doc. 8, p. 1].
However, out of an abundance of caution, the Court CONSTRUES her Amended
Complaint as a Motion to Add Party. “Federal courts sometimes will ignore the legal
label that a pro se litigant attaches to a [filing] and recharacterize [it] in order to place it
2 “As a general rule, an amended complaint supersedes and replaces the original complaint unless the
amendment specifically refers to or adopts the earlier pleading.” Varnes v. Local 91, Glass Bottle Blowers
Ass’n, 674 F.2d 1365, 1370 n.6 (11th Cir. 1982) (citation omitted).
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within a different legal category.” Retic v. United States, 215 F. App’x 962, 964 (11th Cir.
2007) (quoting Castro v. United States, 540 U.S. 375, 381 (2003)). Courts may do this “to
create a better correspondence between the substance of [a filing] and its underlying
legal basis.” Id. Since the Court “[o]n motion or on its own, . . . may at any time, on just
terms, add or drop party,” the Court GRANTS Plaintiff’s Motion to Add Party and
DIRECTS the Clerk of Court to ADD Franklin County as a defendant in this case. Fed.
R. Civ. P. 21. With Franklin County now added as a defendant, the Court turns to
whether Plaintiff’s factual allegations for the new claim she seeks to assert against it are
sufficient to survive frivolity review under § 1915(e).
A. 	28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)
Again, since Plaintiff is proceeding IFP the Court is required to review her
allegations against the newly added party to determine whether they are frivolous or
malicious or fail to state a claim for which relief may be granted. 28 U.S.C. §§
1915(e)(2)(B)(i)–(ii). The standards governing dismissal at the frivolity-review stage
have been previously discussed by the Court in its previous Order, so it will not rehash
them here. See [Doc. 3, pp. 2–4]. For the reasons about to be discussed, however, the
Court DISMISSES Plaintiff’s Monell claim against Franklin County without prejudice
pursuant to § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii) because her allegations against it fail to state a claim on
which relief may be granted. Robinson v. United States, 484 F. App’x 421, 422 n.2 (11th
Cir. 2012) (per curiam) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii)).
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B. 	Plaintiff’s Monell Claim Against Franklin County
Via her efforts to add Franklin County to this case, Plaintiff asserts that Franklin
County is liable “under Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978) . . .
because the constitutional violations described in the original Complaint were caused
by the [c]ounty’s failure to train, supervise, or discipline its officers, or by policies and
customs that reflect deliberate indifference to the rights of individuals such as [her].”
[Doc. 8, p. 1]. This is woefully insufficient to state a plausible Monell claim against
Frankin County.
To be sure, whether a complaint states a claim for relief is measured by reference
to the pleading standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8—a “short and plain
statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P.
8(a)(2); Barreth v. Reyes 1, Inc., No. 5:19-cv-00320-TES, 2020 WL 4370137, at *2 (M.D. Ga.
July 29, 2020) (citation omitted). Rule 8 doesn’t require detailed factual allegations, but
it does require “more than unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me
accusations.” McCullough v. Finley, 907 F.3d 1324, 1333 (11th Cir. 2018) (citation omitted)
(alterations adopted). In other words, it requires more than what Plaintiff has put forth
in this case. Rule 8’s sole purpose is to provide a defendant “with ‘fair notice’ of the
claims and the ‘grounds’ for entitlement to relief.” Barreth, 2020 WL 4370137, at *2
(citation omitted); Twombly v. Bell Atl. Corp., 550 U.S. 544, 555–56 (2007).
Now, to decide whether Plaintiff’s Monell claim against Franklin County survives
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frivolity review, the Court uses a two-step framework. McCullough, 907 F.3d at 1333
(citation omitted); see also Mitchell v. Farcass, 112 F.3d 1483, 1490 (11th Cir. 1997)
(holding that dismissal under § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii) is governed by the same relevant
standards for a motion based on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6)). The first step
is to identify the allegations that are “no more than conclusions.” McCullough, 907 F.3d
at 1333 (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 679 (2009)). “Conclusory allegations are
not entitled to the assumption of truth.” Id. After disregarding the conclusory
allegations, the second step is to “assume any remaining factual allegations are true and
determine whether those factual allegations ‘plausibly give rise to an entitlement to
relief.’” Id. “A court decides whether [Rule 8’s pleading standard] is met by separating
the legal conclusions from the factual allegations, assuming the truth of only the factual
allegations, and then determining whether those allegations allow [it] to reasonably
infer that [a] plaintiff [may be] entitled to the legal remedy sought.” Barreth, 2020 WL
4370137, at *2 (citation omitted).
“To prove a Monell claim, a plaintiff must show: (1) that [her] constitutional
rights were violated; (2) that the municipality had a custom or policy that constituted
deliberate indifference to that constitutional right; and (3) that the policy or custom
caused the violation.” Andre v. Clayton Cnty., Ga., 148 F.4th 1282, 1300 (11th Cir. 2025).
As her allegations are currently pled, Plaintiff has only provided the elements for a
Monell claim. She has not provided any factual allegations whatsoever to support such a
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claim against Franklin County. She must do more, much more.
Plaintiff’s barebones allegations are nothing more than legal conclusions. Yes, of
course, Plaintiff’s factual allegations—had she asserted any in support of her Monell
claim—would’ve been taken as true at this stage, but the Court is not bound to accept
her legal conclusions couched as facts. Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. When a party merely offers
legal conclusions, as Plaintiff has done in her short-shrift efforts to add a Monell claim
against Franklin County, courts must “identify [those] conclusory allegations and then
discard them—not ‘on the ground that they are unrealistic or nonsensical’ but because
their conclusory nature ‘disentitles them to the presumption of truth.’” McCullough, 907
F.3d at 1333 (11th Cir. 2018) (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 681). When the Court, as
McCullough instructs, disregards Plaintiff’s conclusory allegations, there is nothing left
for it to determine whether she states a plausible Monell claim against Franklin County.
In drafting her factual allegations for her Monell claim, Plaintiff needed to “plead more
than labels and conclusions or a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of
action.” McCullough, 907 F.3d at 1333 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555). Since she only
asserted legal conclusions with respect to her Monell claim against Franklin County, it
cannot proceed forward. Plaintiff’s “formulaic recitation” pleading will not push her
Monell claim through for further factual development.
Rest assured, the Court is cognizant of its obligation to give lenience to pro se
litigants and liberally construe their pleadings. Hughes v. Lott, 350 F.3d 1157, 1160 (11th
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Cir. 2003). This leniency, though, does not give the Court license to serve as de facto
counsel for Plaintiff or to rewrite her deficient pleading on her behalf so that it sustains
a cause of action. GJR Investments, Inc. v. County of Escambia, Fla., 132 F.3d 1359, 1369
(11th Cir. 1998); Lemons v. Lewis, 969 F. Supp. 657, 659 (D. Kan. 1997) (pro se status does
not absolve litigant of duty to comply with fundamental procedural rules; nor is it a
court’s “function to become an advocate for the pro se litigant”).
C. 	Conclusion
Based on the foregoing, the Court DISMISSES Plaintiff’s Monell claim against
Franklin County without prejudice pursuant to § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii) for failure to state a
claim on which relief may be granted. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii). The Court DIRECTS
the Clerk of Court to TERMINATE Franklin County as a party to this action. There
shall be no service of process on Franklin County.
SO ORDERED, this 13th day of November, 2025.
S/ Tilman E. Self, III
TILMAN E. SELF, III
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
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