Anaya v. City Hall Miami Beach

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

CASE NO. 24-cv-23995-ALTMAN

PEDRO ANAYA,

Plaintiff,

v.

MIAMI BEACH CITY HALL,

Defendant.

__________________________________/

ORDER DENYING WITHOUT PREJUDICE

MOTION FOR LEAVE TO PROCEED

Our pro se Plaintiff, Pedro Anaya, has moved to proceed in forma pauperis (“IFP”) in this case.

See IFP Motion [ECF No. 3]. Anaya is trying to sue “Miami Beach City Hall” for (among other things)

“false arrest,” “theft,” “racism discrimination[,]” and “fabricating cases[.]” Complaint [ECF No. 1] at

4. But Anaya’s vague and inscrutable Complaint fails to state a claim and falls far short of our pleading

standards. Accordingly, we DENY the IFP Motion without prejudice, DISMISS the Complaint,

and GRANT Anaya leave to redress these issues by filing an amended complaint.

THE LAW

A court may authorize a party to proceed in forma pauperis in any suit so long as that party

complies with the prescriptions of 28 U.S.C. § 1915. Accordingly, the court must screen such cases

and must dismiss a complaint if it concludes that “the action or appeal . . . (i) is frivolous or malicious;

(ii) fails to state a claim on which relief may be granted; or (iii) seeks monetary relief against a defendant

who is immune from such relief.” 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B); see also Mitchell v. Farcass, 112 F.3d 1483,

1486 (11th Cir. 1997) (explaining the grounds for dismissal under § 1915).

To state a claim upon which relief may be granted, a complaint’s factual allegations “must be

enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level”—with “enough facts to state a claim to

relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 570 (2007). Under this

standard, legal conclusions “are not entitled to the assumption of truth” and are insufficient to state a

claim. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 679 (2009). “Where a complaint pleads facts that are merely

consistent with a defendant’s liability, it stops short of the line between possibility and plausibility of

entitlement to relief.” Id. at 678 (cleaned up).

Although “pro se pleadings are held to a more lenient standard than pleadings filed by lawyers,”

Abram-Adams v. Citigroup, Inc., 491 F. App’x 972, 974 (11th Cir. 2012), that “leniency does not give a

court license to serve as de facto counsel for a party or rewrite an otherwise deficient pleading in order

to sustain an action,” Curtiss v. Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 856 F. App’x 276, 276 (11th Cir. 2021) (cleaned up).

Pro se litigants cannot “simply point to some perceived or actual wrongdoing and then have the court

fill in the facts to support their claim. . . . Judges cannot and must not fill in the blanks for pro se

litigants; they may only cut some linguistic slack in what is actually pled.” Hanninen v. Fedoravitch, 2009

WL 10668707, at *3 (S.D. Fla. Feb. 26, 2009) (Altonaga, J.) (cleaned up).

ANALYSIS

Anaya’s Complaint suffers from several salient defects. Specifically, the Complaint “tenders

naked assertions devoid of further factual enhancement” and is made up of “unadorned, the-

defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusations,” in violation of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2).

Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (cleaned up). To illustrate this deficiency, we’ll reproduce the entirety of the

Complaint’s factual allegations below:

68 False Arrest, with police violence, with injuries, theft racism discrimination

fabricating cases with false pretences manslaughter, murder, and 2 kidnaps case to be

investigated.

Never read my rights, or did not advice me that my right weren’t suppost to be read

in every case arrest.

Complaint at 4 (errors in original).

As this reproduction makes plain, the Complaint is an impermissible “shotgun pleading” that

doesn’t comply with the pleading standards set out in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In the

words of the Eleventh Circuit, a complaint is a shotgun pleading if it:

(1) contains multiple counts where each count adopts the allegations of all preceding

counts; (2) is replete with conclusory, vague, and immaterial facts not obviously

connected to any particular cause of action; (3) fails to separate into a different count

each cause of action; or (4) asserts multiple claims against multiple defendants without

specifying which defendant is responsible for which act.

Embree v. Wyndham Worldwide Corp., 779 F. App’x 658, 662 (11th Cir. 2019) (citing Weiland v. Palm Beach

Cnty. Sheriff’s Off., 792 F.3d 1313, 1322–23 (11th Cir. 2015)).

The Complaint easily falls into the second and third categories of shotgun pleading because it

“is replete with conclusory [and] vague . . . facts[,]” and because it “fails to separate into a different

count each cause of action[.]” Ibid. Indeed, Anaya’s Complaint never tells us who violated his rights

or how those rights may have been violated. See Complaint at 4. It’s also impossible for us to say how

many claims Anaya is trying to assert because his allegations are all mashed together in two short, run-

on sentences. See ibid. Because Anaya’s Complaint isn’t composed of “short and plain statement[s] . .

. showing that the pleader is entitled to relief[,]” it is a shotgun pleading which fails to state a claim

upon which relief may be granted. FED. R. CIV. P. 8(a)(2); see also Poole v. Bradshaw, 2024 WL 1675304,

at *3 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 17, 2024) (Altman, J.) (“[B]y definition, a shotgun pleading is a complaint ‘that

violates either Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) or Rule 10(b), or both.’” (quoting Barmapov v.

Amuial, 986 F.3d 1321, 1324 (11th Cir. 2021))).

Anaya is also prohibited from naming “Miami Beach City Hall” as a Defendant. Complaint at

1. A city hall is a building—not a person or entity that’s capable of being sued in federal court. See, e.g.,

Jones v. City of Miami, 2023 WL 5289248, at *3 (S.D. Fla. Aug. 17, 2023) (Altman, J.) (“Jones also cannot

sue [the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center] itself because the jail is a building—not an entity

that’s capable of being sued.”); Longdon v. Cobb Cnty. Adult Det. Ctr., 2022 WL 22380632, at *2 (N.D.

Ga. Mar. 1, 2022) (Anand, Mag. J.) (“The CCADC is a building, not a person, and thus cannot be sued

under § 1983.”). If Anaya was trying to sue individual Miami Beach employees, he must name “the

individual employees and officers . . . who were personally responsible” for the alleged acts. Jones, 2023

WL 5289248, at *3 (citing Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 165 (1985)). If, on the other hand, Anaya

was trying to sue the City of Miami Beach itself, he must show that the City “had a custom or policy

that constituted deliberate indifference to [his] constitutional right[s].” McDowell v. Brown, 392 F.3d

1283, 1289 (11th Cir. 2004). We warn Anaya, however, that he cannot allege the existence of a “custom

or policy” based only on “random acts or isolated incidents.” Depew v. City of St. Marys, Ga., 787 F.2d

1496, 1499 (11th Cir. 1986); see also Craig v. Floyd Cnty., Ga., 643 F.3d 1306, 1310 (11th Cir. 2011)

(“‘Proof of a single incident of unconstitutional activity is not sufficient to impose liability’ against a

municipality.” (quoting City of Okla. City v. Tuttle, 471 U.S. 808, 823–24 (1985))).

Finally, we’ll take this moment to address our subject-matter jurisdiction. We always “have an

obligation to examine sua sponte [our] jurisdiction over a case, notwithstanding the contentions of the

parties.” DeRoy v. Carnival Corp., 963 F.3d 1302, 1311 (11th Cir. 2020) (citing Univ. of S. Ala. v. Am.

Tobacco Co., 168 F.3d 405, 410 (11th Cir. 1999)). Anaya specifically invokes our diversity jurisdiction

under 28 U.S.C. § 1332 by alleging that he’s a citizen of California and that the Defendant is a citizen

of Florida. See Complaint at 3. But Anaya doesn’t appear to be a citizen of California. After all, he’s

twice confirmed—both in another portion of his Complaint and in his IFP Motion—that he resides

in Florida, not California. See id. at 1 (listing address in Miami, FL); IFP Motion at 13 (identifying

“Miami, FL” as “the city and state of your legal residence”). We cannot exercise diversity jurisdiction

under § 1332 when the parties are citizens of the same state. See McCormick v. Aderholt, 293 F.3d 1254,

1257 (11th Cir. 2002) (“Diversity jurisdiction exists over a controversy between citizens of different states.”

(emphasis added)).

Still, Anaya’s inconsistent pleading hasn’t necessarily deprived us of our jurisdiction. Although

we cannot act as a pro se litigant’s lawyer, we still “have an obligation to look behind the label” of a pro

se pleading to determine if it is “cognizable under a different remedial statutory framework.” United

States v. Jordan, 915 F.2d 622, 624–25 (11th Cir. 1990). Performing that task here, we think we might

have federal-question jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 over this action if Anaya is accusing state

actors of violating his constitutional rights in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See Arrington v. Cobb Cnty.,

139 F.3d 865, 872 (11th Cir. 1998) (“To prevail on a claim under § 1983, a plaintiff must demonstrate

both (1) that the defendant deprived her of a right secured under the Constitution or federal law and

(2) that such a deprivation occurred under color of state law.”). At any rate, since Anaya’s Complaint

includes only buzzwords (like “false arrest,” “discrimination,” and “racism”) unmoored from any

salient factual allegations, Complaint at 4, he’s failed to plead that anyone violated his constitutional

rights. In his amended complaint, in other words, Anaya must both state a viable claim and properly

invoke our subject-matter jurisdiction.

***

As we’ve indicated, although Anaya’s Complaint is deficient, we’ll give him one chance to fix

the problems we’ve identified here in an amended complaint. See Woldeab v. DeKalb Cnty. Bd. of Educ.,

885 F.3d 1289, 1291 (11th Cir. 2018) (“When a more carefully drafted complaint might state a claim,

a plaintiff must be given at least one chance to amend the complaint before the district court dismisses

the action with prejudice.” (quoting Bank v. Pitt, 928 F.2d 1108, 1112 (11th Cir. 1991))). When Anaya

files his amended complaint, he must ensure that his factual allegations are properly pled: His “claims

or defenses [should be] in numbered paragraphs, each limited as far as practicable to a single set of

circumstances[,]” FED. R. CIV. P. 10(b), and the facts supporting these claims must also be presented

in a “short and plain statement . . . showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” FED. R. CIV. P. 8(a)(2).

We warn Anaya that, if he fails to file a legally sufficient amended complaint, then we will dismiss the

case without leave to amend.

CONCLUSION

After careful review, therefore, we ORDER and ADJUDGE as follows:

1. The Plaintiff's Complaint [ECF No. 1] is DISMISSED without prejudice. The Plaintiff

is GRANTED leave to file an amended complaint that complies with this Order by

November 22, 2024. Failure to comply with this Order by that date will result in the case

being dismissed without prejudice and without further notice. See FED. R. CIV. P. 41(b).

2. ‘The IFP Motion [ECF No. 3] and the Motion for Referral to the Volunteer Attorney

Program [ECF No. 4] are DENIED without prejudice. ‘The Plaintiff shall re-file both

motions contemporaneously with his amended complaint.

3. The Clerk ts directed to administratively CLOSE this case. The Court will reopen the case

once the Plaintiff has filed his amended complaint and otherwise complied with this

Order.

DONE AND ORDERED in the Southern District a 2024.

ROYK.ALTMAN sis

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

ce: Pedro Anaya, pro se