# Opinion

> District Court, S.D. Florida · November 5, 2025

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11198119

## Case

- **Full name:** Tablemation Studios, LLC v. Celebrity Cruises, Inc.
- **Court:** District Court, S.D. Florida
- **Decided:** November 5, 2025
- **Opinion:** 100trialcourt
- **Cited by:** 0 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11198119

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- reaffirming the Eleventh Circuit has “little tolerance” for shotgun pleadings

## Opinion text

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

Case No. 24-cv-25064-BLOOM/Elfenbein

TABLEMATION STUDIOS, LLC,

Plaintiff,

v.

CELEBRITY CRUISES, INC.,

Defendant.
_________________________/

ORDER ON MOTION TO DISMISS COMPLAINT & MOTION TO STRIKE
THIS CAUSE is before the Court upon Defendant Celebrity Cruises, Inc.’s (“Celebrity”)
Motion to Dismiss the Amended Complaint and Motion to Strike, ECF No. [44] (“Motion”).
Plaintiff Tablemation Studios, LLC (“Tablemation”) filed a Response in Opposition to Celebrity’s
Motion (“Response”), ECF No. [50], to which Celebrity filed a Reply, ECF No. [58]. The Court
has reviewed the Amended Complaint, the Motion, the Response, the Reply, the record in this
case, the applicable law, and is otherwise fully advised. For the reasons set forth below, the Motion
is granted in part and denied in part.
I. BACKGROUND
This action arises from a dispute over the use of certain intellectual property. According to
the First Amended Complaint (“Complaint”), Tablemation and Skullmapping are “the creator[s]
of an innovative, one-of-a-kind dining experience [called, Le Petit Chef (hereinafter ‘LPC’),] for
guests aboard Celebrity Cruise ships.” ECF No. [35] at ¶ 7-8. Tablemation and Skullmapping
“developed and conceived of [LPC together] in or around 2018 with exclusive rights belonging to
Tablemation to operate on cruise ships.” Id. at ¶ 9. While “Skullmapping was responsible for much
of the storyline, animation, and script,” Tablemation improved upon those features and “conceived
the idea of turning the animation into a unique dining experience that would be displayed on tables
and plates on cruise ships.” Id. at ¶ 10. Consequently, Tablemation “still holds the trade secrets
that make the LPC Dining Experience work on Celebrity cruises.” Id. at ¶ 11.

Not only does Tablemation hold trade secrets regarding the LPC experience on cruise
ships, but around December 2016, “Tablemation entered into an Exclusive Copyright License and
Service Agreement with Skullmapping that granted Tablemation exclusive rights to exhibit the
LPC Dining Experience throughout the entire United States, all major cruise lines[,] and Caribbean
resorts.” Id. at ¶ 12.
On March 23, 2018, “Tablemation and Skullmapping entered into an Animation
Development and License Agreement (“AD&L Agreement”) with Celebrity . . . to display the
LPC dining experience on its vessels[.]” Id. at ¶ 16. The AD&L Agreement “referred to
Tablemation as the Licensor” of the LPC dining experience and stated that Celebrity was only
permitted to display the LPC Dining Experience videos using “Tablemation’s electronic

equipment and proprietary technology.” Id. at ¶¶ 16, 17, 21. The AD&L Agreement further
provided that “Tablemation retained all right, title, and interest in and to the animated videos used
in the LPC Dining Experience, and that the licenses Celebrity obtained under the AD&L
Agreement expired upon the expiration or termination of the AD&L Agreement.” Id. at ¶ 32. The
AD&L Agreement was to take effect on “March 1, 2018, and culminated on December 31, 202[1],
unless renewal terms were entered into by the parties in writing[.]” Id. at ¶ 35.
Around September of 2021, the parties renewed the AD&L Agreement for the following
calendar year, “running from January 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022.” Id. at ¶ 39. The terms of
the renewed Agreement were identical to the original AD&L Agreement. Id.
In the Spring of 2022, the parties began negotiating a potential second renewal, which was
to take effect on January 1, 2023. At the same time, Tablemation was also “negotiating with
Skullmapping,” but negotiations eventually “stalled due to a dispute regarding the LPC Dining
Experience.” Id. at ¶¶ 42, 44. Shortly thereafter, “Celebrity terminated negotiations with

Tablemation . . . despite Tablemation’s [previous] agreement to Celebrity’s terms.” Id. at ¶ 45.
Due to Celebrity’s spontaneous termination of the negotiations, the AD&L Agreement was not
renewed, and the Agreement was terminated on December 31, 2022. Id. at ¶ 46.
Although the AD&L Agreement had been terminated, “Celebrity failed to return the LPC
Dining Experience Equipment to Tablemation and continued to run the LPC Dining Experience
with Tablemation’s Equipment and trade secrets without providing Tablemation any royalties or
compensation.” Id. at ¶ 47.
Tablemation alleges that Celebrity conspired with Skullmapping and Tablemation’s
exclusive third-party vendor, Illuminating Magic, to have them assist Celebrity in maintaining and
using Tablemation’s equipment without Tablemation’s approval “in contravention of specific

contractual agreements,” Tablemation has with both of those entities. Id. at ¶ 49. “As of the date
of this First Amended Complaint, Celebrity has not returned any of Tablemation’s Equipment and
trade secrets despite Tablemation’s numerous demands.” Id. at ¶ 54.
In light of Celebrity’s alleged misconduct, Tablemation filed its First Amended Complaint
asserting the following claims: Trade Secret Misappropriation Under Florida’s Uniform Trade
Secret Act (Count I); Trade Secret Misappropriation Under 18 U.S.C. § 1836 (Count II);
Conversion (Count III); Unjust Enrichment (Count IV); Tortious Interference with Business as to
Tablemation’s Business with Illuminating Magic (Count V); Tortious Interference with Business
as to Tablemation’s Business with Skullmapping (Count VI); Common Law Fraud (Count VII);
Non-Fraudulent Misrepresentation (Count VIII); Promissory Estoppel (Count IX); and Breach of
Contract (X). ECF No. [35]. Celebrity thereafter filed the instant Motion seeking to dismiss the
Complaint, arguing that the First Amended Complaint is a shotgun pleading and fails to state a
claim upon which relief can be granted as to each of the ten counts alleged. See ECF No. [44].

Additionally, Celebrity seeks to strike Tablemation’s request for a constructive trust in its
Conversion, Unjust Enrichment, Common Law Fraud, Non-Fraudulent Misrepresentation, and
Promissory Estoppel claims because those claims also seek to recover money damages. Id.
Tablemation responds that the Complaint is well-pled and properly states a cause of action
for all ten counts. ECF No. [50] at 2-3. Regarding the constructive trust, Plaintiff contends that the
availability of such relief is not determined by the availability of a remedy at law, and in any event,
a plaintiff may seek such relief in the alternative. See id. at 19-20.
II. LEGAL STANDARD
A. Shotgun Pleadings
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require a pleading 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).
Complaints that violate either Rule 8(a)(2) or Rule 10(b), or both, are often disparagingly referred
to as “shotgun pleadings.” Weiland v. Palm Beach Cnty. Sheriff’s Off., 792 F.3d 1313, 1320 (11th
Cir. 2015). In Weiland, the Eleventh Circuit identified four common shotgun pleading archetypes:
(1) “a complaint containing multiple counts where each count adopts the allegations of all
preceding counts,” (2) a complaint guilty of “being replete with conclusory, vague, and immaterial
facts[,]” (3) a complaint that commits the sin of “not separating into a different count each cause
of action or claim for relief,” and (4) a complaint that asserts “multiple claims against multiple
defendants without identifying which of the defendants are responsible for which acts or
omissions, or which of the defendants the claim is brought against.” Id. at 1321-23. The “unifying
characteristic” of shotgun pleadings is that they fail “to give defendants adequate notice of the
claims against them and the grounds upon which each claim rests.” Id.
The Eleventh Circuit has repeatedly and unequivocally condemned shotgun pleadings as a
waste of judicial resources warranting dismissal.1 See Barmapov v. Amuial, 986 F.3d 1321, 1324

(11th Cir. 2021) (reaffirming the Eleventh Circuit has “little tolerance” for shotgun pleadings)
(quoting Vibe Micro, Inc. v. Shabanets, 878 F.3d 1291, (11th Cir. 20218)). “Shotgun pleadings,
whether filed by plaintiffs or defendants, exact an intolerable toll on the trial court’s docket, lead
to unnecessary and unchanneled discovery, and impose unwarranted expense on the litigants, the
court and the court’s para-judicial personnel and resources. Moreover, justice is delayed for the
litigants who are ‘standing in line,’ waiting for their cases to be heard.” Jackson v. Bank of Am.,
N.A., 898 F.3d 1348, 1356-57 (11th Cir. 2018) (quoting Cramer v. Fla., 117 F.3d 1258, 1263 (11th
Cir. 1997)); Finch v. Carnival Corp., 701 F. Supp. 3d 1272, 1279 (S.D. Fla. 2023).
III. DISCUSSION

Celebrity contends that Tablemation’s Amended Complaint should be dismissed as “an
impermissible shotgun pleading.” ECF No. [44] at 2. According to Celebrity, the Amended
Complaint constitutes a shotgun pleading because “many counts adopt the material allegations of
the preceding counts or paragraph such that some counts appear to state more than one cause of
action.” Id. (quoting Ambrosia Coal & Constr. Co. v. Pagés Morales, 368 F.3d 1320, 1330 n. 22
(11th Cir. 2004)). Indeed, Celebrity contends that “each of Tablemation’s counts—with the

1 “Shotgun pleadings ‘are flatly forbidden by the spirit, if not the letter of [Rule 8(a) and 10(b)]’ because
they are ‘calculated to confuse the enemy and the court, so that theories for relief not provided by the law
and which can prejudice an opponent’s case, especially before the jury, can be masked.’” Barmapov v.
Amuial, 986 F.3d 1321, 1324 (11th Cir. 2021) (quoting Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1320) (additional level of
citations and quotations omitted).
exception of counts IV (unjust enrichment) and XI (breach of contract)—incorporates the
allegations of all preceding counts in each successive count.” Id.
Tablemation responds that the First Amended Complaint is well-pled and that a complaint
only constitutes a shotgun pleading where one of its pleadings “fails ‘to give the defendant

adequate notice of the claim against it and the grounds upon which the claim rests.”’ ECF No. [50]
at 3 (quoting Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1323). Tablemation argues that while the First Amended
Complaint may incorporate paragraphs from previous sections and claims, it does not fail to
adequately identify which allegations are relevant to the elements of each claim. According to
Tablemation, Celebrity “cannot identify a single claim for which the predicate facts that comprise
each element of the claim are not present in the individual count describing the claim or referred
to specifically distinct paragraphs.” Id. Accordingly, Tablemation maintains that its First Amended
Complaint should not be dismissed on shotgun pleading grounds.
The Court finds that Tablemation’s First Amended Complaint constitutes an improper
shotgun pleading. As Celebrity correctly points out, Tablemation incorporates the preceding

allegations, including allegations in preceding counts, into every subsequent count (except for the
unjust enrichment claim and breach of contract claim), thereby causing confusion as to what
allegations support which claims. See United States ex rel. Musachia v. Pernix Therapeutics, LLC,
No. 2:18-CV-01445-RDP, 2020 WL 13564486, at *3 (N.D. Ala. Sept. 30, 2020) (“[I]ncorporating
large swaths of allegations and ‘rolling’ counts into other counts ‘down the line’ is a shotgun
pleading.”) (citing Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1324). The challenges associated with this form of
pleadings are not just well-established by the case law2 but bear themselves out in the parties’

2 See e.g., Consejo Regulador Del Tequila A.C. v. S2F Online, Inc., No. 3:25-CV-1129-MMH-LLL, 2025
WL 2770469, at *1 (M.D. Fla. Sept. 29, 2025) (explaining that when ruling on the sufficiency of claims in
a complaint that “contains ‘multiple counts where each count adopts the allegations of all preceding
counts,’” courts are “faced with the onerous task of sifting out irrelevancies in order to decided for itself
arguments. For instance, Celebrity challenges the sufficiency of Tablemation’s Non-Fraudulent
Misrepresentation claim, arguing that the claim is not a recognized cause of action, and to the
extent it is a valid claim, it is eviscerated by Plaintiff’s Common Law Fraud claim, given that the
fraud allegations are completely incorporated into the non-fraudulent misrepresentation

allegations. See ECF No. [44].
Rather than directly addressing Celebrity’s argument, Tablemation contends that it
establishes a valid “negligent misrepresentation claim” by pointing to a mishmash of allegations
in the Fraud and the Non-Fraudulent Misrepresentation claims, presumably because the allegations
in support of the Non-Fraudulent Misrepresentation claim are insufficient on their own. See ECF
No. [50] at 12. While Tablemation may indeed be able to properly set out a negligent
misrepresentation claim based on its own selection of allegations, Tablemation explicitly
incorporated all of the previous allegations in the First Amended Complaint, thereby making it
exceptionally difficult task to determine which previous allegations support the Non-Fraudulent
Misrepresentation claim in Count VIII, and which do not.

Celebrity points out other instances where the wholesale incorporation of prior allegations
causes confusion as well. With respect to its Tortious Inference and Promissory Estoppel claims,
Tablemation incorporates all its prior allegations, including its prior trade secrets allegations, into
those counts. See ECF No. [58] at 2; ECF No. [35] at ¶¶ 82, 103. Notwithstanding the incorporation
of those previous trade secret allegations, Tablemation argues that its TortiousInterference claims

which facts are relevant to a particular cause of action asserted”) (quoting Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1321);
United States ex rel. Musachia v. Pernix Therapeutics, LLC, No. 2:18-CV-01445-RDP, 2020 WL
13564486, at *3 (N.D. Ala. Sept. 30, 2020) (“The problem with a complaint like this is that it forces the
court and defendants to guess what conduct the counts are referring to because the answer is always
‘everything that the plaintiff has previously mentioned anywhere in the complaint.”’) (quoting United States
ex rel. Wallace v. Exactech, Inc., 2020 WL 4500493, at *8 (N.D. Ala. Aug. 5, 2020) (additional level of
quotation omitted)).
and Promissory Estoppel claims are distinct and do not have “much if anything to do with [its]
misappropriation of trade secrets claim.” ECF No. [50] at 18-19. Tablemation also runs into a
similar issue with its Conversion claim, as Tablemation argues in its Response that the trade secret
allegations have nothing to do with the Conversion claim in Count III, even though Tablemation

explicitly incorporated its trade secret allegations in its claim for Conversion. See ECF No. [35] at
¶ 69; ECF No. [50] at 17. This confusion with the incorporation of previous counts and allegations
is the precise problem the prohibition against shotgun pleadings seeks to avoid, and as such,
dismissal of the First Amended Complaint is warranted. Anderson v. District Board of Trustees of
Central Florida Community College, 77 F.3d 364, 366-67 (11th Cir. 1996) (“Experience teaches
that, unless cases are pled clearly and precisely, issues are not joined, discovery is not controlled,
the trial court’s docket becomes unmanageable, the litigants suffer, and society loses confidence
in the court’s ability to administer justice.”).3
IV. CONCLUSION
Accordingly, it is ORDERED AND ADJUDGED as follows:
1. Celebrity’s Motion, ECF No. [44], is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part.

2. The Motion is GRANTED to the extent Celebrity seeks to dismiss the First
Amended Complaint on shotgun pleading grounds. However, Celebrity’s request
to strike Tablemation’s request for constructive trusts is DENIED as moot.
3. Tablemation’s First Amended Complaint, ECF No. [35], is DISMISSED
WITHOUT PREJUDICE and with leave to amend.4

3 Because the Court dismisses Tablemation’s First Amended Complaint in its entirety on shotgun pleading
grounds, the Court will not address Celebrity’s additional arguments for dismissal at this time.

4 “In the special circumstance of non-merits dismissals on shotgun pleading grounds, we have required
district courts to sua sponte allow a litigant one chance to remedy such deficiencies. In these cases, even if
the parties do not request it, the district court ‘should strike the complaint and instruct counsel to replead
Case No. 24-cv-25064-BLOOM/Elfenbein

4. If Tablemation seeks to file a Second Amended Complaint, it shall do so no later
than November 12, 2025.
DONE AND ORDERED in Chambers at Miami, Florida, on November 4, 2025.

BETH BLOOM
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Copies to: Counsel of Record

the case[.]’” Vibe Micro, Inc., 878 F.3d at 1295 (internal citations omitted) (quoting Byrne v. Nezhat, 261
F.3d 1075, 1133 (11th Cir. 2006), abrogated on other grounds by Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indem. Co.,
553 U.S. 639 (2008)).

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11198119. Public record. Not legal advice.