Doe v. T rustees of Dartmouth College

2018 DNH 090

• Court: District Court, D. New Hampshire
• Decided: May 2, 2018
• Docket: 18-cv-040-LM
• Status: Published

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

John Doe

v. Civil No. 18-cv-40-LM Opinion No. 2018 DNH 090 Trustees of Dartmouth College

O R D E R

Before the court is plaintiff John Doe’s motion to strike

(doc. no. 16), in which he asks the court to strike two exhibits

attached to the motion to dismiss filed by defendant Trustees of

Dartmouth College (“Dartmouth”). The first, Exhibit A, is a

532-page investigative report created as part of the underlying

disciplinary proceedings. The second, Exhibit E, is a two-page

summary of the disciplinary investigator’s findings. Plaintiff

argues that it would be inappropriate for the court to consider

the exhibits given the procedural posture of a Rule 12(b)(6)

motion to dismiss. Dartmouth objects and asserts that the court

may consider the documents because they are referenced in and

central to plaintiff’s complaint. For the following reasons,

plaintiff’s motion is granted.

It is well-established that on a motion to dismiss, a court

may not normally “consider any documents that are outside of the

complaint, or not expressly incorporated therein, unless the

motion is converted into one for summary judgment.” Alternative Energy, Inc. v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 267 F.3d 30, 33

(1st Cir. 2001). Instead, “a court must accept as true all the

factual allegations in the complaint and construe all reasonable

inferences in favor of the plaintiffs.” Id.

In submitting these exhibits, Dartmouth attempts to rely on

the narrow exception to this rule “for documents the

authenticity of which are not disputed by the parties; for

official public records; for documents central to plaintiffs'

claim; [and] for documents sufficiently referred to in the

complaint.” Id. That is, “[w]hen the complaint relies upon a

document, whose authenticity is not challenged, such a document

merges into the pleadings and the court may properly consider it

under a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss.” Id. (internal

quotation marks omitted). The exception is often invoked in

cases where the parties’ dispute is premised on a particular

contract or agreement. See, e.g., Beddall v. State Street Bank

& Trust Co., 137 F.3d 12, 17 (1st Cir. 1998) (trust agreement);

Julius v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., No. 16-cv-516-JL, 2017 WL

1592379, at *2 n.5 (D.N.H. Apr. 28, 2017) (mortgage agreement

and note). In such cases, “the court's inquiry into the

viability of [the] allegations should not be hamstrung simply

because the plaintiff fails to append to the complaint the very

document upon which by her own admission the allegations rest.”

Beddall, 137 F.3d at 17.

2 This is not such a case, however. Dartmouth does not

submit these exhibits merely to, for example, clarify the

content of a particular document that plaintiff references in

his complaint. See, e.g., id. at 16-17. Rather, Dartmouth uses

the exhibits to challenge or supplement plaintiff’s allegations,

see doc. no. 14-1 at 2, 5, 11, and it submits the full

investigative report to demonstrate the “thoroughness of the

investigation, the investigator’s detailed findings, and the

substantial evidence on which those findings were based.” Doc.

no. 23 at 6. Put simply, “[t]his is clearly impermissible.”

Douglass v. Penn Hills Borough, No. 07-685, 2007 WL 2907891, at

*4 (W.D. Pa. Oct. 2, 2007) (in excessive-force suit, declining

to consider police investigation reports in order to “contradict

the allegations of the” complaint); accord Doe v. Case W.

Reserve Univ., No. 1:17CV414, 2017 WL 3840418, at *5 n.5 (N.D.

Ohio Sept. 1, 2017) (in suit challenging university disciplinary

process, declining to consider documents filed by university to

prove that it complied with its sexual misconduct policy and to

contradict the plaintiff’s allegations).

Therefore, plaintiff is entitled to the requested relief,

and the court will not consider the two exhibits, or any

argument based on such exhibits, in analyzing Dartmouth’s motion

to dismiss. See Alternative Energy, Inc., 267 F.3d at 33.

3 CONCLUSION

Accordingly, plaintiff’s motion to strike (doc. no. 16) is

granted. The Clerk is directed to remove Exhibit A (doc. no.

14-2) and Exhibit E (doc. no. 14-6) from the docket. Plaintiff

shall file his objection to the motion to dismiss within 14 days

from the issuance of this order.

SO ORDERED.

__________________________ Landya McCafferty United States District Judge

May 2, 2018

cc: Counsel of Record