[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FILED
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
________________________ ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
MAY 18, 2007
No. 06-13041 THOMAS K. KAHN
Non-Argument Calendar CLERK
________________________
D. C. Docket No. 05-21495-CV-FAM
AISHA GOODISON,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
WASHINGTON MUTUAL BANK,
LAW OFFICES OF MARSHALL C. WATSON, P.A.,
MICHELLE E. OLENN,
SCOTT R. WEISS,
LAURA M. CARBO,
FABY VARGAS, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
_________________________
(May 18, 2007)
Before BLACK, WILSON and PRYOR, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Aisha Goodison appeals the district court’s order dismissing, with prejudice,
her third amended civil complaint against Washington Mutual Bank, the Law
Offices of Marshall C. Watson, the Village of Miami Shores, the law firm of
Genovese, Joblove and Battista, and several individual defendants, pursuant to Fed.
R. Civ. P. 41(b), because she failed to comply with the district court’s order to
conform her amended complaint to the requirements of Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a) and
10(b). We affirm the district court.
The district court dismissed Goodison’s third complaint because: (1) she
failed to make meaningful modifications to her complaint in order to comply with
Rule 8(a)(2); and (2) she continued to employ a “shotgun approach” to pleading,
making it virtually impossible for the defendants to answer. The district court did
not abuse its discretion in dismissing Goodison’s complaint. Goforth v. Owens,
766 F.2d 1533, 1535 (11th Cir. 1985) (stating we review orders dismissing
complaints based on non-compliance for an abuse of discretion). A district court
may dismiss an action sua sponte under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(b) for failure to
prosecute or failure to obey a court order. Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(b); Hildebrand v.
Honeywell, Inc., 622 F.2d 179, 181 (5th Cir. 1980).1 “The legal standard to be
1
In Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206, 1209 (11th Cir. 1981) (en banc), this
Court adopted as binding precedent all decisions of the former Fifth Circuit handed down prior
to close of business on September 30, 1981.
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applied under Rule 41(b) is whether there is a ‘clear record of delay or willful
contempt and a finding that lesser sanctions would not suffice.’ Dismissal of a
case with prejudice is considered a sanction of last resort, applicable only in
extreme circumstances.” Goforth, 766 F.2d at 1535 (internal citation omitted).
Even though the district court instructed Goodison to re-draft her complaint in
order to make it more concise, her third amended complaint was approximately
eight pages longer than her original 57-page complaint. Furthermore, her third
amended complaint, like her original complaint, contained multiple pages of
irrelevant factual allegations and redundant narratives. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2)
(requiring a pleading contain “a short and plain statement of the claim” showing
that the pleader is entitled to relief”).
In addition, as the district court correctly noted, it was impossible to discern
how the defendants could answer Goodison’s complaint because she repeatedly
failed to comply with Rule 10(b) by ensuring that each count stated a legal basis
for the claim it set forth. Rule 10(b) requires the averments of a claim “shall be
made in numbered paragraphs, the contents of each of which shall be limited as far
as practicable to a statement of a single set of circumstances . . . [and][e]ach claim
founded upon a separate transaction or occurrence . . . shall be stated in a separate
count.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 10(b). Moreover, Goodison continued to employ a
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“shotgun” approach in her third amended complaint by including approximately 60
legal and non-legal subheadings/counts, and, in several instances, she did not even
designate which “defendants” she was accusing. We have determined that
“shotgun” complaints are not sufficient pleadings, stating that:
The typical shotgun complaint contains several counts, each one
incorporating by reference the allegations of its predecessors, leading
to a situation where most of the counts (i.e., all but the first) contain
irrelevant factual allegations and legal conclusions. Consequently, in
ruling on the sufficiency of a claim, the trial court must sift out the
irrelevancies, a task that can be quite onerous.
Strategic Income Fund, L.L.C. v. Spear, Leeds & Kellogg Corp., 305 F.3d 1293,
1295 (11th Cir. 2002). In such cases, it is important for a court to “narrow and
define the issues from the earliest stages of the litigation.” Ebrahimi v. City of
Huntsville Bd. of Educ., 114 F.3d 162, 165 (11th Cir. 1997). “Absent such efforts,
shotgun notice pleadings . . . would impede the orderly, efficient, and economic
disposition of disputes.” Id.
The district court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing Goodison’s third
amended complaint, pursuant to Rule 41(b), because Goodison made no
meaningful attempt to comply with the district court’s orders despite being given
multiple opportunities to file amended complaints. Accordingly, we affirm.
AFFIRMED.
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