Opinion
98 Civ. 2579 (RPP).
October 2, 2000.
Eliot L. Spitzer, Attorney General State of New York, Department of Law, Tiffany M. Foo, Assistant Attorney General, New York, N.Y. for defendants.
OPINION AND ORDER
By motion dated July 12, 2000, plaintiff Cesar A. Espinal, pro se, moves for leave to file an amended complaint pursuant to Rule 15(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
This action was commenced by Plaintiff against Thomas A. Coughlin, the New York State Commissioner of Correctional Services, and a number of defendant employees of Green Haven Correctional Facility at Stormville, New York, for deliberate indifference to his knee injury. Defendants moved for summary judgment and the Court granted that motion as to all defendants other than Lester S. Silver, M.D., and Donna Zaken, a nurse at the facility.
The proposed amended complaint or supplemental complaint does not name either defendant Silver or defendant Zaken. Instead, Plaintiff alleges violation of his constitutional rights under the First, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, specifically charging: (1) a corrections officer with sexual assault on August 7, 1998, in retaliation for Plaintiff's filing lawsuits; (2) nine named corrections officers with filing false misbehavior reports motivated solely by Plaintiff's exercise of his First Amendment right of freedom of speech and to justify the sexual assault on Plaintiff and their interference with plaintiffs medical treatment; (2) two named corrections officers and four unnamed corrections officers with cruel and unusual punishment for committing an assault and battery on December 17, 1999; (3) two sergeants with failure to stop that cruel and unusual punishment on December 17, 1999; and (4) the present superintendent of Green Haven, Christopher Artuz, and the present Commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections with failing to intervene in the assaults on Plaintiff and with permitting the pattern of illegal behavior by the other added defendants.
Discussion
Although leave to amend a complaint should be freely given,Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962); Zahra v. Town of Southhold, 48 F.3d 674, 685 (2d Cir. 1995), undue delay and undue prejudice to the non-moving party are proper grounds for denying leave to appeal. Foman, 371 U.S. at 182; Zahra, 48 F.3d at 685.
Here, Plaintiff's amendment is insufficiently linked to the present action which was brought in early 1998. Plaintiffs action is currently pending as to two defendants, Silver and Zaken, who are not the subject of the proposed amended complaint and who are entitled to a prompt trial of the charges against them.
The proposed amended complaint would add nineteen new defendants who are charged with violations of Plaintiff's rights other than deliberate indifference to Plaintiff's knee injury, which is Plaintiff's claim in the presently pending action. Discovery in the pending action has been completed. Discovery of the various claims against each of the new defendants will further delay trial of Plaintiff's claims against Silver and Zaken.
Accordingly, Plaintiff's motion to file an amended or "supplemental" complaint is denied, without prejudice to Plaintiff's filing a new lawsuit against the defendants named in his proposed amended complaint, should Plaintiff choose to do so.
IT IS SO ORDERED.