Abraka Okposio v. Barry University, Inc., et al.

[DO NOT PUBLISH]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.
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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 WILSON, J ORDAN, and L UCK , 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.
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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
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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)).
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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