Amended Complaints
After a plaintiff files a complaint, she may discover additional facts or legal theories that she wants to present to the court. Or she may discover errors in the complaint that she wants to fix. In either case, she may amend her complaint.
Why should you read this post about amended complaints?
It is better than the first version of this post I had previously written.
You saw someone write “2AC” in a legal document and you really want to know what that means.
It’s raining outside and you’re trying to fill the time until the weather improves.
Why Parties Amend Complaints
There are many reasons why a plaintiff may amend her complaint. One reason is that, after filing the complaint, the plaintiff obtains a trove of documents from the defendant through the discovery process. After reading the documents, the plaintiff discovers that the defendant did even more bad things than the plaintiff originally knew about. As a result, the plaintiff may amend the complaint to add the new bad conduct.
Another reason may be that the plaintiff filed the complaint in a hurry to avoid missing a deadline imposed by the statute of limitations. Once the complaint is filed and the deadline clock is stopped, the plaintiff may take her time and draft a fuller complaint.
And still another reason may be that the initial complaint is actually deficient in some way that leaves it vulnerable to a motion to dismiss. For example, if the complaint alleges fraud, the complaint may be vulnerable to a motion to dismiss if it does not allege that the defendant knew her statements were false at the time she made them because that is a necessary component of the claim. If the defendant moves to dismiss on those grounds, the plaintiff may address the deficiency by amending her complaint to include the necessary allegation.
When parties do amend their complaint, they often refer to the complaint in future filings as the “AC” or “1AC” or “2AC.” These abbreviations may mean “Amended Complaint,” “First Amended Complaint,” or “Second Amended Complaint” (in the event the plaintiff filed another amended complaint after amending the complaint the first time).
Amending As of Right or With Leave
Civil procedure rules let plaintiffs know when and how they can amend their complaints. In federal court, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15 says that plaintiffs are allowed to make one amendment without court permission within 21 days of serving the complaint or within 21 days of the defendant answering or moving to dismiss. That rule also says that plaintiffs need to ask the court for permission for other amendments, but that the court should “freely give” that permission “when justice so requires.”
Courts will often grant this permission at the same time it dismisses a complaint. For example, in one recent case, a federal court dismissed a complaint because it lacked a key allegation, but immediately granted the plaintiff permission to amend the complaint to include the allegation.
But courts will often deny this permission when no possible amendment to the complaint will address the reason why the complaint is doomed to fail. Courts call those amendments “futile” and deny motions to make them. As another example, in another recent case, the court denied a motion to amend a complaint because the proposed amendment did not fix the problem the court had identified with the first complaint.
If the plaintiff does amend her complaint, the defendant will have to file another answer or motion to dismiss to respond to it.
The Relation Back Doctrine
When a plaintiff amends her complaint, the law may consider the amended complaint to have been made at the same time as the first complaint was made. This allows plaintiffs to make allegations after the statute of limitations expires, so long as they “relate back” to a complaint that was filed before the statute of limitations expired. This is called the “relation back doctrine.”
Rule 15(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is one civil procedure rule that codifies this doctrine. According to that rule, an allegation may relate back to the date of a previously filed complaint if it meets a qualifying criterion, such as if “the amendment asserts a claim or defense that arose out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out—or attempted to be set out—in the original pleading.” But parties may debate whether an amended complaint’s allegations arose out of the same conduct or whether it describes technically different conduct.