UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
VANESSA T. HAYES,
Plaintiff,
v. Civil Action No. 11-00800 (BAH)
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,
Defendant.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Presently before the Court is plaintiff’s motion for reconsideration of this Court’s July 15,
2011 decision to deny plaintiff leave to file an amended complaint for failure to comply with Fed.
R. Civ. P. 15(a) and Local Civil Rule 7(m). For the reasons explained below, the Court denies the
motion for reconsideration, but, in the alternative, the Court will grant the plaintiff an extension of
time nunc pro tunc to enable her to file her amended complaint.
I. BACKGROUND
On January 18, 2011, the plaintiff filed a complaint in the Superior Court of the District of
Columbia. See Compl at 1. The Complaint alleges various claims for relief arising out of the death
of Gerard El Hayes while he was in police custody. See generally Compl. On April 27, 2011, the
defendant, the District of Columbia, removed the case to this Court. ECF No. 1, Notice of
Removal.
On May 20, 2011, the defendant timely filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P.
12(b)(6). ECF No. 6. Pursuant to Local Civil Rule 7(b), the plaintiff’s opposition to the motion to
dismiss was due within 14 days – i.e., by June 3, 2011. Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(d), three extra
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days may be added to this deadline, which would have required the plaintiff’s opposition to the
motion to dismiss to be filed by June 6, 2011.
On June 6, 2011, the plaintiff filed a motion, which was consented to by the defendant, to
extend her time to respond to the motion to dismiss until July 6, 2011. ECF No. 7 (“Extension
Motion”). This motion for extension of time was untimely under this Court’s Standing Order,
which states that “[m]otions for extensions of time or for continuances of court proceedings are
strongly discouraged. . . .When good cause is present, however, the court will consider such a
motion that . . . is filed at least 4 business days prior to the deadline the motion is seeking to extend
. . . .” ECF No. 2, Standing Order, ¶ 7. Despite the untimely nature of the plaintiff’s request for
extension of time, the Court granted the request for extension on June 7, 2011 by a Minute Order
that stated: “The plaintiff’s opposition to the defendant’s motion to dismiss shall be filed by July 6,
2011.” The language of this order closely paralleled the language of the plaintiff’s own motion,
which stated that the “plaintiff respectfully requests that she be granted an extension of time
extension of time, up to and including July 6, 2011, to file her opposition.” 1 Extension Motion at 2.
On July 6, 2011, the plaintiff attempted to file an amended complaint instead of an
opposition to the motion to dismiss. The plaintiff did not file any motion requesting leave to file an
amended complaint, nor was the issue of amending the complaint addressed in the Extension
Motion.
Presumably unaware that the plaintiff had attempted to file an amended complaint on July 6,
the defendant filed a motion on July 15, 2011, requesting that the Court grant its motion to dismiss
as conceded since the plaintiff “still ha[d] not filed an opposition to [the motion to dismiss] by July
6, 2011, the date ordered by the Court, nor has she sought additional time to do so.” ECF No. 8.
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The plaintiff did not attach any proposed order to her motion to extend time, which violates Local Civil Rule 7(c). See
Local Civil Rule 7(c) (“Each motion and opposition shall be accompanied by a proposed order.”).
2
On July 15, 2011, the Court denied the plaintiff leave to file her amended complaint for
failure to comply with Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a), which governs the amendment of pleadings, and Local
Civil Rule 7(m), which requires that parties confer before filing non-dispositive motions.
The plaintiff now moves for reconsideration of the Court’s July 15, 2011 Order denying the
plaintiff leave to file the amended complaint.
II. DISCUSSION
The plaintiff contends that the Court “erroneously determined that the plaintiff failed to
comply with Rule 15(a)” and that “[t]he fact of the matter is that the plaintiff fully complied with
the applicable provisions” of that rule. Pl.’s Motion for Reconsideration (“Reconsideration
Motion”) at 3-4. According to the plaintiff, she was entitled to amend her complaint as a matter of
course under Rule 15(a), and, therefore, the Court was required to accept her July 6 amended
complaint as filed.
Rule 15(a) provides, in pertinent part, as follows:
(a) Amendments Before Trial.
(1) Amending as a Matter of Course. A party may amend its pleading once as a
matter of course within:
(A) 21 days after serving it, or
(B) if the pleading is one to which a responsive pleading is required, 21 days after
service of a responsive pleading or 21 days after service of a motion under Rule
12(b), (e), or (f), whichever is earlier.
(2) Other Amendments. In all other cases, a party may amend its pleading only with
the opposing party’s written consent or the court's leave. The court should freely give
leave when justice so requires.
Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a).
Here, the defendant filed a motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b) on May 20, 2011.
Pursuant to Rule 15(a)(1)(B), the plaintiff had 21 days – i.e., until June 10, 2011 – in which she
could have amended her complaint as a matter of course without the defendant’s consent or the
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court’s leave. The plaintiff did not amend her complaint within that timeframe, nor did she move
to extend the deadline to amend the complaint under Rule 15(a). Accordingly, the Court, in its July
15, 2011 Order correctly determined that the plaintiff’s attempt to amend her complaint on July 6,
2011 violated Rule 15(a).
The plaintiff argues that the Court’s June 7 Minute Order granting the plaintiff an extension
of time in which to file her “opposition” to the defendant’s motion to dismiss did double duty and
extended both “the time for the plaintiff to . . . respond to the motion or file an amended complaint”
until July 6. See Reconsideration Motion at 3. The Court disagrees.
The plaintiff’s Extension Motion, which did not specifically invoke any of the Federal Rules
of Civil Procedure or the Local Civil Rules, requested an extension of the deadline for the plaintiff
to file an “opposition” to the motion to dismiss and did not refer to amending the complaint at all.
The Court construed the Extension Motion in accordance with its plain meaning – as a request to
extend the 14-day period for filing the “memorandum of points and authorities in opposition to the
motion” to dismiss. Local Civil Rule 7(b). While the Court has the authority to extend both the
time period for filing an opposition to a motion and the 21-day time period for filing an amended
complaint as a matter of course under Rule 15, the simple fact that the Court granted an extension of
the former time period does not automatically effect an extension of the latter and fuse these two
separate deadlines into one, as plaintiff contends. See Ramos v. Aurora Loan Servs., No. 09-61938,
2010 WL 966856, at *1 (S.D. Fla. Mar. 15, 2010) (finding that “Plaintiff’s filing of the Amended
Complaint is not a proper response to Defendant’s motion to Dismiss” where the court had extended
the deadline for the plaintiff to respond to the motion to dismiss beyond 21 days after service of the
motion); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(b) (providing that “[w]hen an act may or must be done within a
specified time, the court may, for good cause, extend the time . . . .”).2
2
Rule 15(a) is not one of the rules for which Rule 6(b) bars the granting of extensions by the Court. See Fed. R. Civ. P.
6(b)(2) (barring extensions of time under certain rules).
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The history of Rule 15(a) supports the conclusion that an extension of time to file an
opposition to a motion to dismiss does not automatically also extend the deadline to amend a
complaint under Rule 15(a). Prior to 2009, Rule 15(a) allowed a party to amend a complaint once
as a matter of course at any time before service of a responsive pleading. See Curran v. Holder,
626 F. Supp. 2d 30, 31 (D.D.C. 2009). Since a motion to dismiss is not a responsive pleading, see
id., the filing of a motion to dismiss previously had no effect on the timeframe in which a party
could amend as a matter of course. In 2009, Rule 15(a) was amended so that “the right to amend
once as a matter of course terminates 21 days after service of a motion under Rule 12(b) . . . .” Fed.
R. Civ. P. 15, Advisory Committee’s Note (2009 Amendments). The purpose of this change was to
“force the pleader to consider carefully and promptly the wisdom of amending to meet the
arguments in the motion.” Id. The Report of the Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of
Practice and Procedure, which proposed the 2009 amendment, noted that, under the prior version of
the rule, “[s]ignificant problems can arise when a party files an amended pleading as a matter of
right on the eve of a court’s ruling on a dispositive Rule 12 motion.” Summary of Report of
Judicial Conference Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, at 24 (Sept. 2008). Thus, the
purpose of the amendment was to require pleaders to file amended complaints promptly following
dispositive motions and to increase efficient management of the court’s docket. In addition, by
specifying the timeframe in which an amended complaint may be filed, the 2009 amendment to
Rule 15(a) provided courts and litigants with an enhanced degree of notice of whether a pleader
intends to respond to a motion to dismiss via an amended complaint. These purposes are not
advanced by adopting the plaintiff’s position that an extension of time to file an opposition to a
dispositive motion also automatically extends the time in which to file an amended complaint as a
matter of course.
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The Court finds, therefore, that its July 15, 2011 Order denying the plaintiff leave to file the
amended complaint was in accordance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Local
Rules of this Circuit. Accordingly, the motion for reconsideration is denied.
In the interest of efficient judicial administration, however, the Court will construe the
motion for reconsideration, in the alternative, as a motion nunc pro tunc to extend the period in
which the plaintiff may amend her complaint as a matter of right pursuant to Rule 15(a). See Fed.
R. Civ. P. 6(b)(1)(B) (“When an act may or must be done within a specified time, the court may, for
good cause, extend the time . . . on motion made after the time has expired if the party failed to act
because of excusable neglect.”). In this instance, the Court will treat the plaintiff’s failure properly
to request an extension of the Rule 15(a) deadline in her original Extension Motion as an act of
excusable neglect. Considering the early stage of this litigation, the Court will extend the time
period in which the plaintiff may amend the complaint as a matter of course until the date of this
Memorandum Opinion and the accompanying Order. In light of that decision, the Court will also
deny both the defendant’s pending motions – the motion to dismiss and the motion to treat the
motion to dismiss as conceded – without prejudice to the defendant’s filing renewed dispositive
motions in connection with the amended complaint.
DATED: JULY 29, 2011 /s/ Beryl A. Howell___
BERYL A. HOWELL
United States District Judge
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