CS Business Systems, Inc. et al v. Schar et al
Filing
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ORDER denying #8 Defendants' Motion for a More Definite Statement; granting #9 Defendants' Motion for Leave to File Excess Pages. Defendants may answer the Complaint or otherwise respond on or before April 14, 2017. Signed by Magistrate Judge Philip R. Lammens on 3/28/2017. (CAB)
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
MIDDLE DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
OCALA DIVISION
CS BUSINESS SYSTEMS, INC., JAMES
L. SHELTON, VIRGINIA L. SHELTON,
BRAD HECKENBERG, LANA C.
HECKENBERG, PJS RENTAL, LLC,
WON Y. SHIN TRUST, WON Y. SHIN,
BART SUTHERIN, KATHRYN
SUTHERIN and ITZ GROUP, LLC, a
foreign for-profit corporation
Plaintiffs,
v.
Case No: 5:17-cv-86-Oc-PGBPRL
DWIGHT C. SCHAR, PAUL E.
SIMONSON, DCS INVESTMENTS
HOLDINGS GP, LLC, DCS REAL
ESTATE INVESTMENTS, LLC, DCS
REAL ESTATE INVESTMENTS I, LLC,
DCS REAL ESTATE INVESTMENTS
II, LLC, DCS REAL ESTATE
INVESTMENTS III, LLC, DCS REAL
ESTATE INVESTMENTS IV, LLC, DCS
REAL ESTATE INVESTMENTS IV-A,
LLC, DCS REAL ESTATE
INVESTMENTS V, LLC, BELLA
COLLINA PROPERTY OWNERS
ASSOC., INC., DAVID BURMAN,
AEGIS COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
SOLUTIONS, INC., RANDALL F.
GREENE, KEITH CLARKE, PAUL
LEBREUX, RICHARD C. ARRIGHI,
JAMES D. RYAN, MICHAEL J. RYAN,
THE RYAN LAW GROUP, LLC,
CULLEN D’AMBROSIO, ROCKING
RED H, LLC, RICKY L. SCHARICH
and BELLA COLLINA TOWERS, LLC
Defendants.
ORDER
Before the Court is a motion for a more definite statement. (Doc. 8). It is brought (or at
least joined (Docs. 21, 25)) by all of the Defendants and Plaintiffs have now responded (Docs. 29–
31). In sum, Defendants ask the Court to order Plaintiffs to file a new pleading, contending that
the current Complaint (Doc. 1) is either a quintessential shotgun pleading or is otherwise so
unwieldy that it constitutes a de facto shotgun pleading that renders a response impossible.
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(e), “[a] party may move for a more definite
statement of a pleading to which a responsive pleading is allowed but which is so vague or
ambiguous that the party cannot reasonably prepare a response.” A movant proceeding under
12(e) “must point out the defects complained of and the details desired.” Fed. R. Civ. P 12(e).
Generally speaking, such motions are disfavored in this district “in view of the liberal pleading
and discovery requirements set forth in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.” BB In Tech. Co.
v. JAF, LLC, 242 F.R.D. 632, 640 (S.D. Fla. 2007); Pesci v. Budz, No. 2:10-CV-428-FTM-38,
2015 WL 1349711, at *2 (M.D. Fla. Mar. 25, 2015) (“Rule 12(e) motions are disfavored and
granted only sparingly.”).
In the context of a Rule 12(e) request that a complaint be re-plead, when a complaint “gives
the defendants fair notice of the nature and basis of the claims as well as a general indication of
the type of litigation involved,” the motion for a more definite statement will be denied. Decker
v. Cty., No. 5:15-CV-24-OC-30PRL, 2015 WL 12844302, at *3 (M.D. Fla. May 19, 2015). In
other words, “[t]he basis for granting a motion for more definite statement is unintelligibility, not
lack of detail; as long as the defendant is able to respond, even if only with simple denial, in good
faith, without prejudice, the complaint is deemed sufficient.” S.E.C. v. Digital Lightwave, Inc.,
196 F.R.D. 698, 700 (M.D. Fla. 2000). With all of that said, I note that there is certainly a context
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in which Rule 12(e) motions are favored: courts prefer that a defendant seek a more definite
statement—in lieu of a responsive pleading—when faced with a “shotgun” complaint. Anderson
v. Dist. Bd. of Trustees of Cent. Florida Cmty. Coll., 77 F.3d 364, 366 (11th Cir. 1996); Nehrer v.
Bank of Am., N.A., No. 6:11-CV-50-ORL-31DAB, 2011 WL 1883041, at *2 (M.D. Fla. May 17,
2011); Judge Emmett Ripley Cox, Thirty-Two Years on the Federal Bench: Some Things I Have
Learned, 66 FLA. L. REV. 1685, 1693 (2014) (“[T]he Federal Rules provide an effective weapon
in Federal Rule 12(e) to combat bad pleading.”).
The instant action arises from a real estate development located in Lake County known as
Bella Collina. There are over ten Plaintiffs and over twenty named Defendants. I note that some
of the Defendants represent that they are already familiar with some of the Plaintiffs and their
counsel, given previous state-court proceedings that involved Bella Collina. See (Doc. 8 at p.4)
(stating that Plaintiffs seek to litigate here previously adjudicated or settled matters); (Doc. 21 at
p.3) (same).
The Complaint at issue here spans ninety-one pages, includes over five-hundred
paragraphs, and attempts to state eighteen claims for relief. The claims range from racketeering
to breach of contract. To be sure, Defendants’ plight is certainly sympathetic. They are faced
with a ninety-one-page-behemoth-like Complaint that forces even the most interested reader to
pause and re-read it several times. But based on the motion before me, I am compelled to deny
this 12(e) request for the following reasons.
First, Defendants argue that the Complaint is a shotgun pleading because it incorporates
each and every of the four-hundred and eight factual allegations into each and every of the eighteen
counts (or as the Complaint calls them, “claims”). (Doc. 8 at pp.1, 5–6). Certainly, one form of
a quintessential shotgun pleading is when the complaint re-alleges each and every count into the
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subsequent counts, see Anderson, 77 F.3d at 366; but this Complaint does not do that and thus this
case is distinguishable from Nehrer, upon which Defendants rely. See Nehrer, 2011 WL 1883041
at *1 (“Each of the claims begins with a sentence incorporating every single sentence that preceded
it. The Complaint is a quintessential shotgun pleading.”); see also Kassem v. Martin, No. 5:15CV-623-OC-30PRL, 2016 WL 3079952, at *1 (M.D. Fla. June 1, 2016) (declining to find a
complaint a shot gun pleading when “it incorporate[d] the sixty-five general allegations from the
beginning of the complaint into each count, [but did] not incorporate allegations of preceding
counts into each count”). Notably, Defendants do not claim that the counts themselves fail to list
the facts that support them—indeed, they do not point to even one particular purportedly defective
count.
Compare Hepp v. Paul Revere Life Ins. Co., No. 8:13-CV-02836-EAK, 2014 WL
3865389, at *7 (M.D. Fla. Aug. 5, 2014) (declining to find a shotgun pleading when the complaint
re-alleged and incorporated all of the general allegations in every count but “each count [wa]s
supported by additional particular facts”) with Le Macaron, LLC v. Le Macaron Dev. LLC, No.
8:16-CV-918-17TGW, 2016 WL 6211718, at *5 (M.D. Fla. Oct. 24, 2016) (ordering the plaintiffs
to file a more definite complaint and directing them to “either include all necessary facts within
[the count at issue] or Plaintiffs shall selectively incorporate specific paragraph numbers by
reference”).
And the failure to point to any specific count that is purportedly so defective as to render a
response impossible leads me to Defendants’ other basis for their 12(e) motion: Defendants argue
that the Complaint contains so many conclusory, irrelevant, implausible, and unwieldy factual
allegations that it is impossible to respond to Plaintiffs’ claims (even if the Complaint is not
technically at shotgun pleading).
(Doc. 8 at pp.2, 4, 6; Doc. 21 at pp.1–3).
Admittedly,
Defendants anecdotally identify facts that are allegedly irrelevant to the claims at hand (Doc. 8 at
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p.6; Doc. 21 at p.2–3), yet they do not explain how a simple denial of such irrelevant facts would
be insufficient (and it is notable that Defendants have not moved to strike any pleading under Rule
12(f) as redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous). They instead claim that the inclusion
of these facts forces the Court (and Defendants) to “pars[e] through the allegations for support for
the individual claims.” (Doc. 8 at p.1). This claim, however, stops short of submitting that the
counts themselves fail to give Defendants notice of the facts supporting them; in other words,
Defendants do not assert that the counts are only supported by incorporated yet irrelevant factual
allegations (as was apparently the case in Lawrie v. Ginn Dev. Co., LLC, No. 3:09-CV-446-J32JBT, 2014 WL 4788067, at *9 (M.D. Fla. Sept. 19, 2014), aff’d, 656 F. App’x 464 (11th Cir.
2016), which they cite in support of their motion).
Lastly, Defendants also argue that the Complaint fails to suffice under Rules 8 and 10.
(Doc. 8 at pp.6–7). As to Rule 10, Defendants provide no example of any particular paragraph
that purportedly is not limited to a single set of circumstances, at least as far as practicality would
allow. Fed. R. Civ. P. 10(b). And as to Rule 8, Defendants appear to argue that by incorporating
all of the factual allegations, which contain supposed irrelevancies, into the counts Plaintiffs have
rendered the Complaint “the exact opposite of ‘short and plain.’” (Doc. 8 at p.6). But this theory
falls short of asserting that the counts themselves do not rectify this purportedly problematic
incorporation of the factual allegations.
Accordingly, the motion for a more definite statement (Doc. 8) is DENIED.
The
unopposed motion to file a motion to dismiss in excess of twenty-five (but no more than fifty)
pages (Doc. 9) is GRANTED. Defendants may answer the Complaint or otherwise respond on
or before April 14, 2017.
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DONE and ORDERED in Ocala, Florida on March 28, 2017.
.
Copies furnished to:
Counsel of Record
Unrepresented Parties
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