“In Its 870 Paragraphs, 269 Pages, and 63 Causes of Action,” the Complaint

From Brown v. Florida Bar, decided today by Judge Anne Leigh Gaylord Moe (M.D. Fla.) (the case I posted about yesterday, see No Pseudonymity for Autistic Ex-Judge-Candidate, Alleging Failure to Accommodate Disability in Bar Investigation):

During his unsuccessful campaign to be elected as a Circuit Judge in the State of Florida, Mr. Brown alleges that he engaged in “protected political speech, including statements on social media and on his campaign website” about his opponent, a sitting Circuit Judge. His conduct and statements during and after the judicial election resulted in seven complaints being filed with the Florida Bar. The complaints against Mr. Brown alleged various violations of rules that govern judicial elections in Florida…. Among other things, the bar complaints alleged that Mr. Brown (1) made disparaging statements on social media about the sitting judge he ran against; (2) made inappropriate comments about another attorney’s paralegal during a court proceeding; (3) alleged that some unnamed person requested a “discreet meeting” (which Mr. Brown alleges is a meeting arranged through a dating site “for purposes other than dating”) with the sitting judge he ran against; (4) “sent emails to opposing counsel that were unprofessional and disparaging”; (5) engaged in improper conduct at a deposition; (6) stared at a complainant during a public campaign event; (7) made statements about the wife of the sitting judge he ran against; (8) publicly announced his personal views on a disputed issue of public policy (while also announcing that he would follow the law regardless of those views); (9) contacted and harassed supporters of his campaign opponent; (10) compared a female’s pose to that “of a popular musician”; (11) announced that “he had lost faith in the court system”; (12) disparaged an Orange County Sheriff’s deputy responding to Mr. Brown’s report that his vehicle had been taken without his permission; (13) violated rules related to posting of campaign signs; and (14) caused an attorney’s Facebook business page to be removed by flagging it.

Mr. Brown then filed two motions seeking temporary restraining orders against the Bar. In the first, he requested that the Bar be restrained from proceeding on any allegations arising from Mr. Brown’s alleged conduct in the judicial election and from filing any formal charges related to those matters because his statements were protected by the First Amendment. In the second, Mr. Brown sought to require the Bar and the grievance committee to allow him to appear in person to make a statement, as an accommodation because he is autistic….

Rules 8 and 10 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provide the basic pleading requirements. Under Rule 8, a pleading must contain the following:

1. a short and plain statement of the grounds for the court’s jurisdiction, unless the court already has jurisdiction and the claim needs no new jurisdictional support;
2. a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief; and
3. a demand for the relief sought, which may include relief in the alternative or different types of relief.

The allegations must be simple, concise, and direct. Rule 10 requires that “[a] party must state its claims … in numbered paragraphs, each limited as far as practicable to a single set of circumstances.” …

The First Amended Complaint clearly violates the pleading requirements of Rules 8 and 10 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In its 870 paragraphs, 269 pages, and 63 causes of action, the First Amended Complaint includes the kind of extraordinary level of extraneous detail that necessitates repleader.

As one example, the First Amended Complaint alleges that his opposing counsel in a divorce case accused him of being on drugs at a deposition. Mr. Brown denies being on drugs, but “owns” that his tone was “dry and sarcastic.” As another example, the First Amended Complaint describes three comic books written and published by Mr. Brown, including one in which Mr. Brown “assists Santa Claus in complying with international flight regulations” and Mr. Brown “and his dog help people resolve disputes.”

As yet another example, the First Amended Complaint includes considerable detail about an event where Mr. Brown found himself as the passenger in his own car with an intoxicated driver who “had been physically violent” toward Mr. Brown in the past, when Mr. Brown had not given the driver permission to drive his car. Mr. Brown alleges that he “had recently learned that [the man] had a prior conviction for deliberately running a man over with a car,” so Mr. Brown “induced the person to stop at a convenience store by telling him that [Mr. Brown] would go inside and buy him a beer” even though Mr. Brown “had no intention of buying a beer.” He explains that he never actually intended to buy the intoxicated driver of his vehicle a beer, but the offer was a “pretext to summon law enforcement” because Mr. Brown was afraid of the driver, yet his phone was dead, so he needed to ask the cashier for a phone.

He then explains that, when deputies arrived, the driver told them that Mr. Brown “was crazy and violent toward him” but “[n]either statement was true.” When the deputies began to question Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown alleges that he called the responding deputies “pigs—deliberately, and not casually—to make unmistakable that [Mr. Brown] was serious, and that [Mr. Brown] would not hesitate to hold the deputies legally accountable for a wrongful arrest.”

In sum, the First Amended Complaint is excessively long, unnecessarily detailed, and contains countless immaterial facts that are not obviously connected to any particular cause of action. Trial courts within the Eleventh Circuit are instructed to intervene and demand repleader when a pleading contains those defects. Mr. Brown’s request for expedited relief only underscores the propriety of that course of action.

Because the First Amended Complaint is dismissed, Mr. Brown’s requests for temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctive relief must also be denied….