Beck v. FCA US, LLC

Filing 44

OPINION & ORDER Denying Plaintiff's Motion to Alter or Amend Judgment (Dkt. 40 ). Signed by District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith. (Sandusky, K)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
DONALD J. BECK,
Plaintiff,
Case No. 17-cv-10267
v.
HON. MARK A. GOLDSMITH
FCA US LLC,
Defendant.
_________________________/
OPINION & ORDER
DENYING PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO ALTER OR AMEND JUDGMENT (Dkt. 40)
This motion is before the Court on Plaintiff Donald Beck’s motion to alter or amend the
Court’s August 11, 2017 opinion, order, and judgment which granted Defendant FCA US, LLC’s
(“FCA”) motion to dismiss and disposed of the case accordingly. See Beck v. FCA, 273 F. Supp.
3d 735 (E.D. Mich. 2017). The issues have been fully briefed. Because oral argument will not
aid the decisional process, the motion will be decided based on the parties’ briefing. See E.D.
Mich. LR 7.1(f)(2); Fed. R. Civ. P. 78(b). For the reasons that follow, the motion is denied.
I. BACKGROUND
Beck, a California citizen, brought this putative class action, alleging that several of FCA’s
vehicles have a defective gearshift system that inaccurately indicates that the vehicles are in Park
when they, in fact, are not. See Beck, 273 F. Supp. 3d at 741. Beck alleged that the defect resulted
in a number of rollaway incidents. Id.
FCA brought a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The
Court granted the motion on the following grounds: (i) Beck lacked standing to bring the suit
because Beck could not claim he suffered economic harm as a result of the defect, see id. at 747;

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(ii) Beck failed to provide pre-suit notice, as required by California’s Consumers Legal Remedies
Act (“CLRA”), see id. at 748; (iii) Beck failed to state a claim for any affirmative misrepresentation
under California’s Unfair Competition Law (“UCL”), see id. at 750; (iv) Beck failed to sufficiently
allege facts that FCA had a duty to disclose the defect, thus requiring dismissal under the UCL,
see id. at 756; (v) Beck did not present his vehicle for repair, necessitating the dismissal of his
express warranty claims, see id. at 758; and (vi) Beck did not stop driving his vehicle, requiring
that his implied warranty claims be dismissed, see id. at 762.
Following entry of the judgment, Beck filed the instant motion to alter or amend judgment
pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) (Dkt. 40). FCA filed a response to the motion
(Dkt. 43).
II. STANDARD OF DECISION
Rule 59(e) allows a party to file a motion to amend or alter a judgment, so long as the
motion is filed within 28 days after the entry of the judgment. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e). “A court
may grant a Rule 59(e) motion to alter or amend if there is: (1) a clear error of law; (2) newly
discovered evidence; (3) an intervening change in controlling law; or (4) a need to prevent manifest
injustice.” Intera Corp. v. Henderson, 428 F.3d 605, 620 (6th Cir. 2005) (citations omitted).
III. ANALYSIS
Beck offers two principal arguments. First, he argues that the Court should not have
dismissed his complaint with prejudice and should now instead permit him to file an amended
complaint, which would cure the deficiencies in the dismissed complaint. Second, Beck argues
the Court committed clear error when it dismissed his implied warranty claims. The Court finds
that both arguments lack merit.

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In arguing that he should be permitted leave to file an amended complaint, Beck observes
that Rule 15(a) allows for liberal amendment of complaints. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a). He further
argues that his failure to amend the complaint prior to opposing FCA’s motion should not preclude
an amendment now.
Beck is correct that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require that leave to amend should
be freely given when justice so requires. See id. However, he ignores that the Sixth Circuit has
instructed that parties may not “rely on the district court’s opinion to identify deficiencies in his
complaint.” Pond v. Haas, 674 F. App’x 466, 473 (6th Cir. 2016); accord Leisure Caviar, LLC v.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 616 F.3d 612, 616 (6th Cir. 2010) (explaining that a permissive
post-judgment amendment policy is not advisable because plaintiffs could “use the court as a
sounding board to discover holes in their arguments, then reopen the case by amending their
complaint to take account of the court’s decision”) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, a
plaintiff must shoulder a heavier burden when seeking leave to amend post-judgment, and provide
a compelling reason for failure to seek leave to amend earlier. See Pond, 674 F. App’x at 473.
There is no such compelling reason here. Beck argues that he “had a genuine, good-faith
belief that an amended complaint was unnecessary” when the Court entered its order and that he
“believed that his allegations were sufficient to withstand FCA’s Motion to Dismiss.” Pl. Mot. at
6, PageID.2432 (Dkt. 40). But were the Court to grant leave to amend on this basis, it would be
allowing Beck to use the Court as a sounding board. That is to say, Beck would be using the Court
to discover the deficiencies in his complaint and then immediately file an amended complaint to

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fix those deficiencies. The Sixth Circuit has explicitly disapproved of this method. See Leisure
Caviar, 616 F.3d at 616. Accordingly, the Court denies this portion of Beck’s motion.1
Beck also argues that the Court erred in relying on his continued use of the car in dismissing
his implied warranty claims. In order to succeed on his motion, Beck must show that the Court
made a clear error in law. However, Beck has not even cited controlling precedent, let alone
controlling precedent that contradicts the Court’s opinion dismissing the claims. See Oto v.
Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 224 F.3d 601, 606 (7th Cir. 2000) (explaining that a party must
“demonstrate that there was a disregard, misapplication or failure to recognize controlling
precedent” to demonstrate error sufficient to grant a Rule 59 motion to amend judgment) (emphasis
added). Beck cannot rely solely on nonbinding precedent and still establish that the Court
committed a clear error in its decision.
Even if he could rely solely on nonbinding precedent, Beck has not shown clear error in
the Court’s decision. Beck argues that the case law cited by the Court supports his contention that
continued use of the car is just one factor that courts consider in assessing whether a vehicle is fit
for driving. See Pl. Mot. at 16-17, PageID.2442-2443. But in those cases cited by the Court, the
continued use of the vehicle was clearly the predominant factor considered. In Tae Hee Lee v.
Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., 992 F. Supp. 2d 962, 980 (C.D. Cal. 2014), the Court led with

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In this portion of Beck’s brief is an argument that the Court should not have dismissed the claim
under a California consumer protection statute due to a lack of pre-suit notice, because the action
only sought injunctive relief. See Pl. Mot. at 10-11, PageID.2030-2031. As FCA observes, this is
a wholly different argument than the one Beck made when arguing the motion to dismiss, when
Beck argued that FCA was not required to be notified because it was being sued as a manufacturer
and because it was already on notice. See Pl. Resp. to Mot. to Dismiss at 24-25, PageID.22592260 (Dkt. 28). “A motion for reconsideration is not a vehicle to advance positions that could
have been argued earlier but were not,” McDermott v. Randall S. Miller & Associates, P.C., 835
F. Supp. 2d 362, 374 (E.D. Mich. 2011), and thus Beck’s failure to raise that theory in the initial
motion practice precludes him from raising it now. Regardless, as FCA argues, Beck did indeed
seek damages for his CLRA claim, see Compl. ¶ 133 (Dkt. 1), and thus his argument is meritless.
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that reason in finding dismissal appropriate. See id. (“In this case, Plaintiffs have not alleged that
they stopped using their vehicles.”). That court’s parenthetical explanation of Kent v. HewlettPackard Co., No. 09-5341, 2010 WL 2681767, at *4 (N.D. Cal. July 6, 2010), also relied upon in
this Court’s opinion, makes it clear that it understood a failure to allege abandoned use of the
product to be a defect requiring dismissal. See Lee, 992 F. Supp. 2d at 980 (“See, e.g., Kent, 2010
WL 2681767, at *4 (dismissing implied warranty claim because ‘[p]laintiffs do not allege that they
have been forced to abandon the use of their computers’)”). It is not, as Beck claims, that the
courts in Lee and Kent considered continued use of the product as merely one of several relevant
factors in determining fitness, and thus Beck has not shown that the Court committed clear error.2
Accordingly, this portion of Beck’s motion is denied.
IV. CONCLUSION
For these reasons, Beck’s motion to alter or amend judgment pursuant to Rule 59(e) is
denied.
SO ORDERED.
Dated: July 10, 2018
Detroit, Michigan

s/Mark A. Goldsmith
MARK A. GOLDSMITH
United States District Judge
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

The undersigned certifies that the foregoing document was served upon counsel of record and any
unrepresented parties via the Court's ECF System to their respective email or First Class U.S. mail
addresses disclosed on the Notice of Electronic Filing on July 10, 2018.
s/Karri Sandusky
Case Manager
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Beck has also cited several cases in which district courts did not consider whether a plaintiff is
still driving the vehicle. See Pl. Mot. at 18, PageID.2444. But these citations take no account of
whether the plaintiffs in those cases did indeed continue using the vehicle or, crucially, if opposing
counsel raised the issue to the court. Accordingly, those cases cannot be the basis of a showing
that the Court committed clear error.
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