Inform Inc. v. Google LLC

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF GEORGIA

ATLANTA DIVISION

INFORM INC.,

Plaintiff,

v. CIVIL ACTION NO.

1:19-CV-05362-JPB

GOOGLE LLC, et al.,

Defendants.

ORDER

This matter is before the Court on Google LLC, Alphabet Inc. and YouTube,

LLC’s (collectively, “Defendants”) Motion to Dismiss the Complaint [Doc. 38].

This Court finds as follows:

BACKGROUND AND FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS

On November 25, 2019, Inform Inc. (“Plaintiff”) filed this action against

Defendants asserting federal anti-trust claims and a state law claim for tortious

interference. [Doc. 1]. Defendants promptly moved for dismissal on January 22,

2020. [Doc. 16]. On September 25, 2020, the Court granted in part and denied in

part Defendants’ motion. [Doc. 33]. Without ruling on the merits of Defendants’

motion, the Court determined that Plaintiff’s Complaint, which was 105 pages, was

a “quintessential ‘shotgun’ pleading of the kind [the Eleventh Circuit has]

condemned repeatedly.” Id. at 3 (quoting Magluta v. Samples, 256 F.3d 1282,

1284 (11th Cir. 2001)). The Court noted that it was “virtually impossible” to know

which allegations of fact were intended to support which claims of relief since each

cause of action incorporated more than 190 paragraphs. Id. Instead of dismissing

Plaintiff’s Complaint, this Court identified the pleading deficiencies and ordered

Plaintiff to file an amended complaint in accordance with the following

instructions:

(1) Inform may not include conclusory, vague and immaterial

facts that do not clearly connect to a particular cause of

action.

(2) Inform may not incorporate every factual paragraph into

each count.

(3) Inform must indicate which of the factual paragraphs

support each individual count alleged.

(4) Inform must identify what precise conduct is attributable to

each individual defendant separately in each count when

asserting a single count against multiple defendants.

(5) Each individual count may only be based on a single legal

claim (i.e., Inform may not assert a violation of § 2 of the

Sherman Act and a violation of § 3 of the Clayton Act

together in the same count).

Id. at 5-6.

Plaintiff filed an eighty-nine page First Amended Complaint (“Amended

Complaint”) on October 9, 2020, and asserted the following causes of action: (1)

Violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act (Unreasonable Restraints on Trade); (2)

Violation of § 2 of the Sherman Act (Monopoly Maintenance); (3) Violation of § 2

of the Sherman Act (Monopoly Leveraging); (4) Violation of § 2 of the Sherman

Act (Attempted Monopolization); (5) Violation of § 2 of the Sherman Act

(Exclusive Dealing); (6) Violation of § 3 of the Clayton Act (Exclusive Dealing

and Tying); and (7) Tortious Interference. [Doc. 35]. Plaintiff primarily relies on

the same set of facts for each cause of action.1 Those facts are discussed

immediately below.

This case primarily involves online advertising. Online advertising consists

of marketing advertisements, which are delivered through the Internet on both

desktop and mobile devices. Id. at 12. Like other advertising media, online

1 In the original Complaint, as already explained herein, Plaintiff incorporated all 194

allegations into each of the enumerated causes of action. The Court explained in its

previous order that this pleading style required the reader to parse through numerous

allegations to identify those that have some relevance to a particular defendant or cause

of action. [Doc. 33, p. 4]. Plaintiff was ordered to replead and specifically directed not

to incorporate each and every factual allegation into the causes of action. In the

Amended Complaint, Plaintiff does not incorporate over 190 paragraphs. Plaintiff

continues, however, to incorporate a vast number of irrelevant facts into each count.

Consider this chart:

Count Paragraphs Incorporated

I (Unreasonable Restraints on Trade) 6-7, 9, 69-78, 102-157

II (Monopoly Maintenance) 6-7, 9, 69-78, 102-157

III (Monopoly Leveraging) 6-7, 9, 69-78, 102-157, 159-165

IV (Attempted Monopolization) 9, 102-157

V (Exclusive Dealing) 6-7, 69-78, 126, 132-157

VI (Exclusive Dealing and Tying) 6-7, 69-78, 126, 131-157

VII (Tortious Interference) 127-130

advertising often includes: (1) a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its

online content; (2) an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed;

and (3) advertising agencies that help create and place the ads. Id.

Plaintiff is a digital media company that provides a platform of services to

online publishers, content creators and online advertisers. Id. at 38. Specifically,

Plaintiff manages the distribution and delivery of video advertisements from

content creators into articles on newspaper, magazine, radio and television

websites. Id. at 38-39. In so doing, Plaintiff works with both publishers (i.e.,

website operators for newspaper, magazine, radio and television sites) and

advertisers. Id. at 39. As to the publishers, Plaintiff’s platform enables them to

pair corresponding video with their original text content to enhance the user’s

experience and understanding of the publisher’s story. Id. As to the advertisers,

Plaintiff’s platform provides brands with an opportunity to deliver video

advertisements to the audience that is most likely to consume their products. Id.

At its peak, Plaintiff had an inventory of ad space from a network of approximately

5,000 publishers. Id. at 42. According to Plaintiff, this “aggregated digital

audience allowed [it] to work with a brand (or the advertising agency representing

a brand) to optimize the placement of its ads to reach that brand’s specific target

demographic.” Id. Plaintiff contends that between 2010 to 2017, it garnered

revenue of more than $180 million. Id. at 43.

Plaintiff asserts that Defendants have engaged in anticompetitive conduct

that has destroyed its business. Id. at 54-55. Very generally, Plaintiff alleges that

because a company’s advertising services must be compatible with Google’s ad

products and Google’s Chrome Browser, Defendants are able to influence industry

standards in its own favor by setting arbitrary and anti-competitive rules by which

video content and video advertisements are enabled, viewable and audible, which

ultimately preference Defendants’ products and services. Id. at 48-49.

According to Plaintiff, one such example of these “arbitrary and anti-

competitive rules” was Google’s decision to transition from Flash to HTML5.

Flash is a proprietary digital software developed by Adobe. Id. at 49. Plaintiff

asserts that Flash was the standard for playing video on websites for more than a

decade, and, as a result, most advertising content was developed in Flash. Id.

Plaintiff contends that in 2014, Google began offering Flash-to-HTML5

conversion tools for the Google Display Network that would create a backup

HTML5 video advertisement to run when Flash was disabled or otherwise not

supported. Id. at 50. On January 27, 2015, YouTube announced that it would no

longer be using Flash by default and would instead be using the HTML5 video

player in Google’s Chrome and other browsers. Id. at 50-51. In February 2015,

Google started to automatically convert both existing and new advertisements that

were supported by Flash to HTML5 but only when the advertiser uploaded their

ads through Google’s AdWords, AdWords Editor or third-party tools that worked

with Google’s ad platform. Id. at 51. Plaintiff asserts that in June 2015, Google

Chrome began to “intelligently pause” ads that were supported by Flash. Id. at 52.

Ultimately, Plaintiff alleges that by 2017, Google disabled Flash entirely in favor

of HTML5.2 Id. at 53. Although HTML5 is not owned by Defendants, as it is an

open-source technology, Plaintiff contends that Google has more control over how,

when and what videos are played with HTML5 than it had with Flash. Id. at 56.

Plaintiff asserts that because of Google’s transition to HTML5, advertisers

that had ads supported by Flash either had to convert their content to HTML5 or

migrate to the Google network to reach target users. Id. at 51. When Flash was

disabled in 2017, Plaintiff contends that it had the “immediate effect” of

foreclosing a very significant portion of online advertisers from reaching users and

target audiences. Id. at 54. As a result of this conduct, Plaintiff asserts that Google

2 By disabling Flash, if an advertisement supported by Flash was presented to a

consumer, a pop-up would appear to the consumer asking if that consumer “wanted to

allow Adobe Flash to run on this site?” [Doc. 35, p. 53]. By clicking allow, a consumer

could still see the advertisement. Id. It is Plaintiff’s contention that most consumers

would not authorize Flash to run, and thus the advertisement would never be seen. Id. at

54.

“syphoned off customers from [Plaintiff] and other competitors and hundreds of

online advertisers and publishers withered and died, while Google and YouTube

plundered valuable video advertisements that had supported publisher’s websites.”

Id. at 51-52. Ultimately, Plaintiff argues that it was “severely impacted overnight,”

and its business was sent “plummeting.” Id. at 55.

Plaintiff additionally asserts that Google engaged in the following

anticompetitive conduct: (1) exclusive dealing and anticompetitive contracts; (2)

illegal tying and bundling of services; (3) unilateral setting and altering of

technological standards; (4) manipulative and technological blocking, exclusion,

downgrading and denial of interoperability; (5) preferential treatment of its own

products and services; (6) denial of interoperability and purposeful incompatibility;

(7) opacity as to function, pricing and data; and (8) predatory pricing. Id. at 60-68.

LEGAL STANDARD

On November 13, 2020, Defendants filed the instant Motion to Dismiss the

Complaint. [Doc. 38]. In evaluating a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of

Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), the court “accept[s] the allegations in the complaint as

true and constru[es] them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Traylor v.

P’ship Title Co., LLC, 491 F. App’x 988, 989 (11th Cir. 2012). Federal Rule of

Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) provides that a pleading must contain “a short and plain

statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Although

detailed factual allegations are not necessarily required, the pleading must contain

more than “labels and conclusions” or a “formulaic recitation of the elements of a

cause of action.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). Importantly, “a

complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim

to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Id. (citation omitted). At bottom, the

complaint must contain more than “an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-

harmed-me accusation,” id., and must “plead[] factual content that allows the court

to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct

alleged.” Traylor, 491 F. App’x at 990 (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678).

ANALYSIS

In their Motion to Dismiss, Defendants argue that Plaintiff’s Amended

Complaint is still a shotgun pleading. [Doc. 38-1, p. 8]. Defendants also argue

that Plaintiff lacks antitrust standing and that the claims suffer from myriad

pleading and legal deficiencies. Id. at 16.

1. Shotgun Pleading

As already explained at length in this Court’s September 25, 2020 Order,

“[c]ourts in the Eleventh Circuit have little tolerance for shotgun pleadings.” Vibe

Micro, Inc. v. Shabanets, 878 F.3d 1291, 1295 (11th Cir. 2018). Typically,

shotgun pleadings are characterized by: (1) multiple counts that each adopt the

allegations of the preceding counts; (2) conclusory, vague and immaterial facts that

do not clearly connect to a particular cause of action; (3) failing to separate each

cause of action into distinct counts; or (4) combining multiple claims against

multiple defendants without specifying which defendant is responsible for which

act. McDonough v. City of Homestead, 771 F. App’x 952, 955 (11th Cir. 2019).

Shotgun pleadings “waste scarce judicial resources, inexorably broaden the

scope of discovery, wreak havoc on appellate court dockets, and undermine the

public’s respect for the courts.” Arrington v. Green, 757 F. App’x 796, 797 (11th

Cir. 2018). Shotgun pleadings,

whether filed by plaintiffs or defendants, exact an intolerable toll

on the trial court's docket, lead to unnecessary and unchannelled

discovery, and impose unwarranted expense on the litigants, the

court and the court's parajudicial personnel and resources.

Moreover, justice is delayed for the litigants who are “standing

in line,” waiting for their cases to be heard. The courts of

appeals and the litigants appearing before them suffer as well.

Jackson v. Bank of Am., N.A., 898 F.3d 1348, 1356-57 (11th Cir. 2018).

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has even stated that tolerating

shotgun pleadings “constitutes toleration of obstruction of justice.” Id. at

1357.

To be sure, Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is cumbersome and suffers from

some of the same deficiencies as the first. While the Amended Complaint no

longer has multiple counts that adopt the allegations of the preceding counts and

does not fail to separate each cause of action into distinct counts, at eighty-nine

pages, the Amended Complaint is in no sense a “short and plain statement of the

claim” required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Particularly concerning

to this Court is Plaintiff’s inclusion of numerous conclusory, vague and immaterial

facts not obviously connected to any particular cause of action. In fact, Plaintiff

still incorporates more than sixty paragraphs into each cause of action. Plaintiff

also never specifies which defendant is responsible for which act or omissions;

instead, Plaintiff simply lumps the conduct of Defendants together. For the

reasons explained below, Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is an impermissible

shotgun pleading subject to dismissal.

A. Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is replete with conclusory, vague and

immaterial facts that do not clearly connect to a particular cause of

action.

In the Court’s first instruction to Plaintiff, Plaintiff was directed not to

include conclusory, vague and immaterial facts that are not clearly connected to a

particular cause of action. [Doc. 33, p. 5]. Although Plaintiff made some changes

to its Complaint, it failed to adequately comply with this instruction. As an initial

matter, in the Amended Complaint, Plaintiff describes at length the growth of

Google’s search engine, which plays no role in any cause of action. [Doc. 35, pp.

17-19]. Plaintiff also describes various acquisitions but does not base any claim on

them. Id. at 26-29. Moreover, Plaintiff asserts that Google improperly influences

the government yet does not state a claim based on this purported influence. Id. at

74-75. These factual assertions, which are not connected to any of the causes of

action, are almost ten pages in length.

As to the causes of actions specifically, this Court recognizes that Plaintiff

no longer incorporates every paragraph into the causes of action. Nevertheless, the

pleading is still improper. By way of example, Count 1 targets unreasonable

restraints on trade. The elements of a § 1 claim are: (1) an agreement between two

or more parties (2) that unreasonably restrains trade. Levine v. Cent. Fla. Med.

Affiliates, Inc., 72 F.3d 1538, 1545 (11th Cir. 1996).

In Count 1, Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint asserts several conclusory

paragraphs, which include allegations that “[i]ndividually and in combination,

[Defendants’] Anticompetitive Restraints constitute illegal restrictions,

agreements, and barriers that are intended to and do in fact prevent, restrict or

interfere with competition in Defendants’ Leveraged Monopolies in violation of

the Sherman Act,” “[t]he Google Defendants are combinations within the meaning

of [§ 1 of the Sherman Act]” and “Plaintiff has suffered, continues to suffer, and

will suffer until the Court enters the relief requested below, an antitrust injury

resulting from [Defendants’] Anticompetitive Restraints as described herein.”

[Doc. 35, p. 76]. In addition to these conclusory paragraphs, Plaintiff then

incorporates by reference more than sixty paragraphs—the same sixty plus

paragraphs incorporated into all the other causes of action.

In violation of this Court’s previous order, most of these paragraphs have

nothing to do with a violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act. For instance, spanning

almost ten pages, Plaintiff discusses Google’s transition from Flash to HTML5. In

these paragraphs, Plaintiff never identifies a conspiracy or an agreement with

another entity which would amount to an antitrust violation. While these

paragraphs are comprehensible and this Court understands that Flash is now

disabled in the Google Chrome Browser, Plaintiff never explains why this

transition violated various antitrust laws or was otherwise illegal. It seems to the

Court that many facts alleged by Plaintiff are simply aimed at creating the

impression that Google is a bad actor.

At bottom, Plaintiff should have specifically directed this Court to an

agreement between two or more parties. In the allegations to support Count 1,

Plaintiff does not identify any specific agreement and instead refers the Court to

paragraphs 9 and 102-157. [Doc. 35, p. 76]. Certainly, most of these allegations

have nothing to do with an agreement between two or more parties. To determine

whether Plaintiff has stated a claim here, Plaintiff expects this Court to comb

through more than sixty paragraphs (and over twenty-five pages) to identify which

agreement between two or more persons or entities unreasonably restrains trade.

The Court is not willing to undergo this type of analysis. “The federal judiciary is

a system of scarce resources,” and “district courts have neither the manpower nor

the time to sift through a morass of irrelevant facts in order to piece together claims

for plaintiff’s counsel.” Barmapov v. Amuial, 986 F.3d 1321, 1327-28 (11th Cir.

2021) (Tjoflat, J., concurring). Importantly, “district courts are flatly forbidden

from scouring shotgun complaints to craft a potentially viable claim for a plaintiff.

By digging through a complaint in search of a valid claim, the courts ‘would give

the appearance of lawyering for one side of the controversy.’” Id. at 1328.

Ultimately, because Plaintiff again chose to incorporate numerous immaterial facts

to support the causes of action, Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint remains a shotgun

pleading.

B. Plaintiff failed to adequately identify the precise conduct that is

attributable to each defendant.

Plaintiff was also specifically instructed by this Court that when a single

count is brought against multiple defendants, Plaintiff must identify what precise

conduct is attributable to each individual defendant. [Doc. 33, p. 5]. Plaintiff

contends that it complied with this directive because Defendants operate as a single

entity. Plaintiff thus added the following allegation to its Amended Complaint:

Collectively, the Google Defendants are operated and controlled

as a single entity, with Sundar Pichai acting as the CEO of both

companies. Not only did Google essentially create Alphabet as a

holding company in 2015, but virtually all of Alphabet’s

revenues comes from Google. YouTube, in turn, is a wholly

owned subsidiary of Google and is controlled and operated as

such. Alphabet filed its 10-K and 10-Q statements with the

Securities and Exchange Commission, reporting consolidated

revenues for all of the Google Defendants. In fact, these

statements expressly define Alphabet as “Alphabet Inc. and its

subsidiaries.”

[Doc. 35, p. 10]. This allegation is not sufficient to comply with the Court’s

directive. Simply put, the allegation does not plausibly show that all the

defendants participated in all the alleged anticompetitive conduct. It is important

to attribute the specific conduct to the specific defendant because liability for both

a subsidiary and parent is not automatic where “there is no evidence that both were

involved in the challenged conduct.” In re Fla. Cement & Concrete Antitrust

Litig., 746 F. Supp. 2d 1291, 1324 (S.D. Fla. 2010) (quoting Mitchael v. Intracorp.,

Inc., 179 F.3d 847, 857 (10th Cir. 1999)). At bottom, even though this Court

ordered Plaintiff to specify which conduct was attributable to which defendant,

Plaintiff did not do so.

Although Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint corrects some of the pleading

deficiencies and does not demonstrate all the previously identified characteristics

of shotgun pleadings, this Court cannot ignore that Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint

undoubtedly continues to exhibit key characteristics of shotgun pleadings. As

explained earlier, Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is rife with immaterial factual

and conclusory allegations. Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint also does not specify

which defendants are responsible for which acts or omissions. For these reasons,

Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint remains a “quintessential ‘shotgun’ pleading of the

kind [the Eleventh Circuit has] condemned repeatedly.” Magluta, 256 F.3d at

1284. Accordingly, dismissal is appropriate in this case.

2. Antitrust Standing

Even though dismissal is appropriate on shotgun pleading grounds, dismissal

is also required because Plaintiff has not shown antitrust standing. “A private

plaintiff seeking damages under the antitrust laws must establish standing to sue.”

Fla. Seed Co. v. Monsanto Co., 105 F.3d 1372, 1374 (11th Cir. 1997). To have

antitrust standing, a plaintiff must do more than satisfy the basic “injury in fact”

and “case or controversy” requirements that would satisfy constitutional standing.

Id. In addition to these constitutional requirements, “the court must find a close

relationship between the plaintiff’s injury and the alleged antitrust violation.”

Amey, Inc. v. Gulf Abstract & Title, Inc., 758 F.2d 1486, 1493 (11th Cir. 1985).

The Eleventh Circuit has established a “two-pronged approach” in deciding

whether a plaintiff has antitrust standing. Id. First, a plaintiff must establish that it

has suffered “antitrust injury.” Fla. Seed, 105 F.3d at 1374. Second, a plaintiff

must establish that it is an “efficient enforcer of the antitrust laws.” Id.

A. Antitrust Injury

Antitrust injury is defined as:

injury of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent and

that flows from that which makes the defendants' acts unlawful.

The injury should reflect the anticompetitive effect either of the

violation or of anticompetitive acts made possible by the

violation. It should, in short, be “the type of loss that the claimed

violations . . . would be likely to cause.”

Todorov v. DCH Healthcare Auth., 921 F.2d 1438, 1449 (11th Cir. 1991) (quoting

Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S. 477, 489 (1977)).

Generally, a plaintiff must prove that there is a public harm that coincides with the

antitrust plaintiff’s private harm. Id. at 1449-50. In fact, “[w]here an antitrust

plaintiff merely alleges harm to an individual competitor not harm to competition

generally, antitrust injury has not been established and dismissal is warranted.”

QSGI, Inc. v. IBM Glob. Fin., No. 11-CV-80880, 2012 WL 13019046, at *3 (S.D.

Fla. July 31, 2012).

As to the alleged antitrust injury, Plaintiff asserts in its Amended Complaint

that “Defendants’ Anticompetitive Restraints have resulted in significant monetary

injury to Plaintiff, as well as higher prices paid by consumers for retail products,

higher prices for advertising and the forcing of Plaintiff and others to use Google

products and services.” [Doc. 35, p. 76]. Plaintiff also alleges that Google has

“effectively put [it] out of business.” Id. at 2. After review, this Court finds that

these allegations are too conclusory to establish an antitrust injury. Here, Plaintiff

provides no factual support to show that Defendants weakened competition beyond

Plaintiff’s claim that Plaintiff was put out of business. Moreover, Plaintiff

provides no factual support to show that prices are higher for retail products or that

prices are higher for advertising. Ultimately, these “naked assertions” devoid of

further factual enhancement are insufficient to survive a motion to dismiss.

B. Efficient Enforcer

A plaintiff must also show that it is an efficient enforcer of antitrust laws.

Courts generally consider the following factors when determining whether a

plaintiff is an efficient enforcer of the antitrust laws:

(1) whether the plaintiff has suffered a direct injury; (2) whether

its injury is remote; (3) whether other plaintiffs are better suited

to bring the suit; (4) whether the plaintiff's injuries are

speculative; (5) whether the calculation of damages would be

complex and run the risk of duplicative recoveries; and (6)

whether the plaintiff could enforce the court's judgment.

Duty Free Ams., Inc, v. Estee Lauder Cos., 797 F.3d 1248, 1273 n.5 (11th Cir.

2015).

As to the first factor, Plaintiff has not suffered a direct injury. Based on the

allegations in the Amended Complaint, Plaintiff would have been injured only if:

(1) a publisher provided video advertising space on its website to Plaintiff; (2)

Plaintiff selected advertisements for the space that were not compatible with

HTML5; (3) a consumer viewed the publisher’s website using Chrome; and (4) the

consumer would have clicked on or viewed the ad but did not do so because of

Chrome’s limitations. Only then, because the publisher and advertiser were

injured, would Plaintiff suffer an injury. Given this chain of events needed to

occur before injury, not only is Plaintiff’s injury not direct, but it is also remote and

speculative. Importantly, given that advertisers, publishers and Adobe suffered a

direct injury, they are better suited to bring this action. After considering the

factors, this Court finds that Plaintiff is not an efficient enforcer of the antitrust

laws.

Ultimately, Plaintiff must do more than satisfy the constitutional minimums

to have standing, and Plaintiff has not done so in this case. First, Plaintiff has not

alleged antitrust injury because the allegations are too conclusory. Second,

Plaintiff has not shown it is an efficient enforcer of the antitrust laws.

Accordingly, dismissal is appropriate on this alternative ground.

CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated above, Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss [Doc. 38] is

GRANTED on shotgun pleading grounds, and alternatively on standing grounds.

The state law tortious interference claim is DISMISSED without prejudice.? The

remaining claims are DISMISSED with prejudice.*- The Clerk is DIRECTED to

close this case.

SO ORDERED this 20th day of September, 2021.

(\ A

- oe el, ———

J.\P. BOULEE

United States District Judge

> Vibe Micro, Inc. v. Shabanets, 878 F.3d 1291, 1296-97 (11th Cir. 2018) (holding that

where the dismissal occurs without any analysis of the merits of the state law claims, the

dismissal of the state law claims should be without prejudice as to refiling in state court).

* Jackson v. Bank of Am., N.A., 898 F.3d 1348, 1358 (11th Cir. 2018) (determining that

a court does not abuse its discretion in dismissing the case with prejudice on shotgun

pleading grounds where the plaintiff had fair notice of the defects and a meaningful

chance to fix them).

19