Indelicato v. Shipman & Goodwin LLP

CourtDistrict Court, D. Connecticut
DecidedOctober 4, 2024
Docket3:22-cv-00318
StatusUnknown

This text of Indelicato v. Shipman & Goodwin LLP (Indelicato v. Shipman & Goodwin LLP) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Connecticut primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Indelicato v. Shipman & Goodwin LLP, (D. Conn. 2024).

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT JOSEPH JOHN INDELICATO, III, ) 3:22-CV-00318 (KAD) Plaintiff, ) ) v. ) ) SHIPMAN & GOODWIN LLP and ) OCTOBER 4, 2024 NEHA PARIKH, ) Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION RE: MOTION TO DISMISS THE SECOND AMENDED COMPLAINT (ECF NO. 25)

Kari A. Dooley, United States District Judge: Pro se Plaintiff Joseph Indelicato1 filed this employment discrimination complaint against Defendant Shipman & Goodwin LLP (“Shipman”), in which he claims both religious and race- based discrimination in connection with the termination of his employment as an attorney at the Shipman law firm. Plaintiff, who is a white Christian, alleges that he was terminated as a result of a manufactured harassment complaint by a co-worker of South Asian national origin.2 Plaintiff named as additional defendants the United States of America, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Wray (Director of the FBI), Georgetown University, Feng K. An, District Judge Sarala Nagala, Tanya Hughes, Jason Thody, Frank Blando, 30 Arbor Street LLC, Matthew Berger, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.3 These defendants are alleged to be co-

1 Although proceeding pro se, the Court observes that Plaintiff is a licensed attorney in the State of Connecticut, currently on administrative suspension for failure to pay certain funds in accordance with the Connecticut Practice Book. See State of Connecticut Judicial Branch website, attorney lookup at https://www.jud.ct.gov/attorneyfirminquiry/JurisDetail.aspx.

2 This co-worker, Attorney Neha Parikh (“Parikh”), is a named Defendant.

3 The Court dismissed claims against these defendants without prejudice insofar as they were never served. See ECF No. 32. Although Plaintiff appealed the dismissal, the Second Circuit dismissed the appeal. Mandate of USCA, ECF No. 41. conspirators with Shipman in a multi-year, overarching conspiracy to destroy Plaintiff’s life and the lives of other white Christian people. Plaintiff filed his original complaint on February 28, 2022, an Amended Complaint on July 13, 2022, and a Second Amended Complaint (“SAC”) on August 5, 2022. See ECF Nos. 1, 12, 20. Shipman and Parikh (collectively, “Defendants”) have moved to dismiss the claims against

them pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6). Defendants’ primary argument is that Plaintiff’s allegations are so bizarre, fantastical, and delusional that there is no controversy suitable for or appropriately decided in a federal court. Alternatively, Defendants assert that the claims are inadequately supported by factual allegations and must be dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6). Plaintiff opposes Defendants’ motion and requests leave to file a Third Amended Complaint to address any identified deficiencies with respect to the factual allegations. See ECF No. 28. Because the Court agrees that it lacks subject-matter jurisdiction to adjudicate the claims set forth in the SAC, the motion to dismiss is GRANTED, and Plaintiff’s request for leave to file a Third Amended Complaint is DENIED.

Facts and Procedural History The SAC is a sprawling, 643-paragraph document detailing Plaintiff’s many grievances against the Defendants and others. It contains Plaintiff’s own interpretations of religious texts and world events. Rather than reiterate each allegation, many of which may fairly be characterized as racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic, the Court condenses Plaintiff’s allegations into four broad categories. State-Sponsored “Wokeness” Conspiracy Plaintiff alleges a grand conspiracy comprised of members of the U.S. government and judiciary; Shipman and Parikh; Georgetown University (“Georgetown”), where Plaintiff attended law school; persons associated with an apartment building in Hartford, Connecticut, where Plaintiff lives; and others, the object of which was to ensure he would never succeed in his legal career and to bring about the end of his career. Plaintiff asserts that this conspiracy targeted him specifically because of his alleged superior intelligence and possession of a law license that they believed posed a threat to the conspiracy’s goal of eliminating white conservative Christians.4

Plaintiff identifies this conspiracy as “Wokeness,” a movement that he alleges is religious in nature, SAC, ECF No. 20, ¶¶ 12, 25–30, and is engineered by the Democratic Party to “promote ‘antiracism’” and “evangelize people of color into Judaism.” Id. ¶¶ 8, 55. Plaintiff asserts that “Wokeness” seeks to “allocate economic benefits to people in society on the basis of race and religion, with, in effect, Black Jews being the primary beneficiaries, compensated by Satan for turning their back on Christ,” id. ¶ 17, and is designed to “secure the long-held Jewish objective of implementing global socialism and exterminating Christians, particularly white, European ones.” Id. ¶ 58. Plaintiff specifies that this conspiracy entered the workplace in 2020, when “employees at

all employers of any size or significance were required to sit through mandatory trainings about ‘racism’ which were generally tape recorded.” Id. ¶ 17. Plaintiff alleges that these trainings, and

4 See SAC, ECF No. 20, ¶ 104 (“On information and belief, Georgetown evaluated Plaintiff as a high- potential Christian and/or political conservative attorney (a ‘subversive’). Because such people are the greatest danger to Marxist organizers, Georgetown engaged in efforts to sabotage Plaintiff’s career and placed him in both governmental and quasi-governmental surveillance programs, from which he has never escaped.”); id. ¶ 396 (“In reality, on information and belief, [Shipman] knew all along that the complaint was a bogus lie, and were merely covering up for Ms. Parikh, because Ms. Parikh is a Woke activist and was just doing a piece of work for her co- conspirators by wasting a high-potential white, European, Christian person.”); id. ¶ 553 (“The enterprise in this case involves both the wanton destruction of Plaintiff’s legal career and obfuscation of same, being as it is that the facts of this case might alert the average Joe that something bigger really is happening. The purges always start in the key industries and then ripple outward as more institutions are captured, so Plaintiff is a canary in a coal mine. The ongoing efforts to exclude Plaintiff from the legal industry and silence his protests of same constitute a racketeering enterprise.”). “Wokeness” as a whole, force “American employees to choose between the cross and their paycheck and expressly discriminate[] against Christians.” Id. ¶ 19.5 The “Wokeness” Conspiracy Targets Plaintiff Plaintiff alleges that the “Wokeness” conspiracy began to target him during his time as a law student at Georgetown University Law Center. See supra at n.4. According to Plaintiff,

Georgetown is considered “a center of Woke legal thought and activism” due to its curriculum and faculty. SAC, ECF No. 20, ¶¶ 78–80. Plaintiff alleges that “Woke activists” at Georgetown flagged him as a “subversive” because of his intelligence, and political and religious beliefs. Id. ¶¶ 81, 104–05. He describes his involvement in moot court competitions at Georgetown that were allegedly rife with discrimination against him as a conservative Christian. Id. ¶¶ 81, 84, 86–87, 90. After he graduated from Georgetown, Plaintiff interviewed for a position at Shipman in July 2019 and began working there on August 11, 2019. Id. ¶¶ 140–43. The SAC claims that Shipman was a member of the “Wokeness” conspiracy with Georgetown because Shipman engaged in “far-left” political activities. Id. ¶¶ 138, 153, 166.6 The goal of this alleged conspiracy

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Hagans v. Lavine
415 U.S. 528 (Supreme Court, 1974)
Neitzke v. Williams
490 U.S. 319 (Supreme Court, 1989)
Denton v. Hernandez
504 U.S. 25 (Supreme Court, 1992)
Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly
550 U.S. 544 (Supreme Court, 2007)
Ashcroft v. Iqbal
556 U.S. 662 (Supreme Court, 2009)
Tony Best v. Sharon Pratt Kelly, Mayor
39 F.3d 328 (D.C. Circuit, 1994)
Abbas v. Dixon
480 F.3d 636 (Second Circuit, 2007)
Interworks Systems Inc. v. Merchant Financial Corp.
604 F.3d 692 (Second Circuit, 2010)
Carter v. HealthPort Technologies, LLC
822 F.3d 47 (Second Circuit, 2016)
Green v. Dep't of Educ.
16 F.4th 1070 (Second Circuit, 2021)
Gallop v. Cheney
642 F.3d 364 (Second Circuit, 2011)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
Indelicato v. Shipman & Goodwin LLP, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/indelicato-v-shipman-goodwin-llp-ctd-2024.