Opinion
98 Civ. 1518 (LBS) (HBP)
April 26, 2001
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Plaintiff moves to file an amended complaint. For the reasons stated below, her motion is denied without prejudice.
The nature of plaintiff's claims is set forth in detail in Judge Sand's decision denying defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint. Hou v. New York City Dep't of Envtl. Prot., 98 Civ. 1518 (LBS), 1998 WL 5311829 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 24, 1998). For present purposes, it is sufficient to note that this is an employment discrimination action brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2000e17, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. § 621-34. Plaintiff, a chemist employed by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, alleges that defendants discriminated against her on the basis of age and national origin and that they retaliated against her for filing claims with the EEOC. Defendants have denied all the material allegations of the complaint.
Plaintiff, who has no formal legal training, commenced this action without counsel. Her complaint consists largely of narrative, unnumbered paragraphs, each of which alleges a multitude of facts, including plaintiff's internal and unspoken reactions to certain events. The complaint also asks a number of rhetorical questions concerning the events alleged by plaintiff (Complaint at 4 and 5).
Plaintiff recently retained counsel. As is frequently the case when counsel enters a case that was commenced without counsel, counsel's first motion here was to seek to file an amended complaint. Surprisingly, however, plaintiff's proposed amended complaint does not recast plaintiff's allegations in the form usually seen in this Court. Rather counsel has merely annexed claims under the New York State Executive Law, the New York City Administrative Code and 42 U.S.C. § 1981 to plaintiff's initial pro se complaint, incorporating plaintiff's pro se complaint by reference.
There can be no serious dispute that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure abandoned the rigid rules of pleading that existed 70 years ago. The drafters of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure even went so far as to refrain from using the expression "cause of. action" in order to underscore the intended departure from arcane pleading rules. Collins v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp., 106 F.2d 83, 86 (2d Cir. 1939) (Clark, J., concurring); see Dioguardi v. Durning, 139 F.2d 774, 775 (2d Cir. 1944) (Clark, J.). Where a litigant is proceeding pro se, even "greater latitude" is appropriate. Hou v. New York City Dep't of Envtl. Prot., supra, 1998 WL at *2.
Nevertheless, the fact that liberal rules of pleading are firmly established on federal court does not mean that there are no rules of pleading in federal court. Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2) still requires that the complaint constitute "a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief . . .", and Fed.R.Civ.P. 10(b) still requires that "[a]ll averments of claim or defense 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. . . ." See generally Ames v. Associated Musicians, Local 802, 47 F.R.D. 540, 542 (S.D.N.Y. 1968); Vance v. ASCAP, 13 F.R.D. 109, 112-13 (S.D.N.Y. 1952). In this case, the issue is not merely one of form. As noted by defendants, the style of plaintiff's original complaint gives rise to certain practical problems. For example, paragraphs that consolidate allegations of multiple objective facts with allegations concerning plaintiff's unspoken internal reactions to certain events require defendant to restate virtually all of plaintiff's complaint and to segregate out particular sentences or phrases just to draft an answer. In short, the form of plaintiff's original complaint, although adequate for a pro se litigant, does not comply with Rules and 8 and 10, and its deficiencies make this litigations substantially more burdensome for defendants and the Court.
I note that given the multitude of form books and other resources available to practitioners, redrafting the amended complaint to conform to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure should not be a major undertaking.
Accordingly, plaintiff's motion to amend her complaint is denied without prejudice.
SO ORDERED