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[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 20-13378
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cv-22400-KMW
LAWRENCE WELLS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
ROYAL CARIBBEAN INTERNATIONAL CRUISES LTD,
TONI CAINE-MASTER,
LUKSA MORETIC,
Staff Captain,
COLIN J. CLARKE,
Department Head,
GABRIELA MOEANU,
HR, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
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________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
________________________
(July 20, 2021)
Before JORDAN, JILL PRYOR and GRANT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Lawrence Wells, proceeding pro se, appeals the district court’s dismissal
with prejudice of his second amended complaint as an impermissible shotgun
pleading, in violation of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a). After careful
review, we affirm.
I.
Wells filed a pro se employment discrimination complaint against his former
employer, Royal Caribbean International Cruises Ltd., and six Royal Caribbean
employees. The complaint alleged that the defendants had unlawfully subjected
Wells to unequal terms and conditions of employment on account of his race and
age, retaliated against him for engaging in protected activity, and terminated his
employment, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Age
Discrimination in Employment Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the
International Labor Organization’s regulations. Wells moved to amend his
complaint to add as defendants two union representatives and the union to which
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he belonged, the Norwegian Seafarers’ Union. The district court granted Wells
leave to amend and ordered him to file the appropriate summonses identifying the
parties to be served.
Instead of amending his complaint, Wells re-filed an identical copy of his
original complaint, along with his motion to amend to add three defendants. After
some proceedings regarding improper summonses that are immaterial to this
appeal, two defendants (Yamilet Hurtado and Catalin Tanase) moved to dismiss
this first amended complaint. Among other things, they argued that the amended
complaint failed to plead any facts related to them and thus any claims against
them must be dismissed for failure to state a claim. The district court granted the
motion to dismiss in part and dismissed the amended complaint without prejudice
as an impermissible shotgun pleading. The court found that Wells had failed to
comply with pleading requirements because he had not presented his claims in
separate numbered paragraphs, had failed to articulate the facts supporting each
cause of action, and had not stated which claims related to the various defendants.
The court agreed with Hurtado and Tanase that none of the allegations stated any
facts related to those defendants and thus the complaint had failed to give notice of
the claims against them and the grounds upon which each claim rested. And, the
court found, Wells had not asserted any basis for jurisdiction over any of the
defendants or pled adequate facts to support the claims asserted.
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The court gave Wells an opportunity to file a second amended complaint. It
directed Wells that his second amended complaint must comply with the pleading
requirements set forth in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and that failure to
comply may result in dismissal with prejudice. The court expressly directed that
the second amended complaint set forth allegations in numbered paragraphs, limit
the contents of each paragraph to a single set of circumstances, and base each
count on a separate transaction. The court ordered that the complaint specify
which defendants allegedly were responsible for each alleged act or omission and
which defendants corresponded to each claim. The court directed that conclusory,
vague, or immaterial facts unconnected to the causes of action asserted not be
included in the complaint.
Wells filed a second amended complaint. In it, he named even more
defendants—19 this time. The complaint was replete with factual allegations that
did not seem to correspond to any claims for relief. It contained some numbered
paraphs, but they did not always proceed in numerical order. It did not expressly
list separate counts or explain which claims pertained to which defendants.
Royal Caribbean, Hurtado, and Tanase moved to dismiss, contending that
the second amended complaint was still an impermissible shotgun pleading. They
argued that the deficiencies identified in the first amended complaint persisted in
the second amended complaint: it was full of unnumbered paragraphs, failed to
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articulate facts supporting each cause of action, and did not clearly set forth counts
and to which defendant each count was directed. A magistrate judge prepared a
report and recommendation (“R&R”) recommending that the motion to dismiss be
granted and the second amended complaint be dismissed with prejudice for failing
to comply with the pleading requirements of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
and with the district court’s prior order. Over Wells’s objection, the district court
adopted the R&R and dismissed the second amended complaint with prejudice.
The district court also denied Wells’s motion for reconsideration.
This is Wells’s appeal.
II.
Although pro se pleadings are held to less stringent standards than pleadings
drafted by lawyers, Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007), pro se litigants are
bound by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Moon v. Newsome, 863 F.2d 835,
837 (11th Cir. 1989). A court has inherent authority to control its docket and, in
some circumstances, dismiss pleadings that fail to conform with the Federal Rules.
Weiland v. Palm Beach Cty. Sheriff’s Office, 792 F.3d 1313, 1320 (11th Cir. 2015).
We review the district court’s dismissal of a complaint on the ground that it is a
shotgun pleading for an abuse of discretion. Id.
III.
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Wells argues that the district court erred by dismissing his second amended
complaint because the paragraphs were numbered and it was clear which
defendants were responsible for each claim. We disagree.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 requires a complaint to contain “a short
and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed.
R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). A so-called shotgun complaint violates Rule 8 because it
“fail[s] . . . to give the defendants adequate notice of the claims against them and
the grounds upon which each claim rests” and “waste[s] scarce judicial resources,
inexorably broaden[s] the scope of discovery, wreak[s] havoc on appellate court
dockets, and undermine[s] the public’s respect for the courts.” Vibe Micro, Inc. v.
Shabanets, 878 F.3d 1291, 1295 (11th Cir. 2018) (internal quotation marks
omitted).
We have described four characteristics of shotgun complaints. They (1)
“contain[ ] multiple counts where each count adopts all allegations of all preceding
counts”; (2) are “replete with conclusory, vague, and immaterial facts not
obviously connected to any particular cause of action”; (3) do not separate each
cause of action or claim for relief into different counts; and (4) assert “multiple
claims against multiple defendants without specifying which of the defendants are
responsible for which acts or omissions, or which of the defendants the claim is
brought against.” Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1321–23. The unifying characteristic of
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shotgun pleadings is that they fail to give the defendants adequate notice of the
claims against them and the grounds upon which each claim rests. Id. Litigants
are entitled to at least one chance to remedy the deficiencies that render a
complaint an impermissible shotgun pleading. Shabanets, 878 F.3d at 1296.
The district court was within its discretion to conclude that Wells’s second
amended complaint was an impermissible shotgun pleading. The second amended
complaint exhibited three of the characteristics of shotgun pleadings. It failed to
separate each cause of action or claim for relief into different counts. It contained
conclusory, vague, and immaterial facts not obviously connected to any particular
cause of action, and it contained multiple claims against multiple defendants
without specifying which of the defendants were responsible for which acts or
which of the defendants the claim was brought against. See Weiland, 792 F.3d at
1321–23. Further, although the district court afforded Wells the opportunity to
remedy the defects in the first amended complaint, see Shabanets, 878 F.3d at
1296, the second amended complaint arguably was worse than its predecessor.
True, the second amended complaint contained some numbered paragraphs. But
the numbers often were not sequential, so they did nothing to cure the deficiencies
the district court identified in the first amended complaint.
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For these reasons, the district court did not abuse its discretion when it
dismissed with prejudice the second amended complaint. We affirm the district
court’s judgment.
AFFIRMED.
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