S.Y. v. Seasonal Investments, Inc.

CourtDistrict Court, M.D. Florida
DecidedMarch 4, 2021
Docket2:20-cv-00603
StatusUnknown

This text of S.Y. v. Seasonal Investments, Inc. (S.Y. v. Seasonal Investments, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
S.Y. v. Seasonal Investments, Inc., (M.D. Fla. 2021).

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT MIDDLE DISTRICT OF FLORIDA FORT MYERS DIVISION

S.Y.,

Plaintiff,

v. Case No: 2:20-cv-603-JES-MRM

SEASONAL INVESTMENTS, INC.,

Defendant.

OPINION and ORDER This matter comes before the Court on defendant’s Motion to Dismiss, Motion to Strike, or For a More Definite Statement and Memorandum of Law in Support Thereof (Doc. #10) filed on September 28, 2020. Plaintiff filed a Response (Doc. #20) on November 2, 2020. For the reasons set forth below, the motion is denied. I. The origins of this case began on October 30, 2019, when plaintiff and another alleged victim of sex trafficking filed a case in the Circuit Court of the Twentieth Judicial Circuit in and for Collier County, Florida. See S.Y. et al v. Naples Hotel Co.et al, Case No. 2:20-cv-118 (Doc. #1, p. 3). On December 31, 2019, the plaintiffs filed a First Amended Complaint which asserted ten claims against over forty defendants. Id. at (Doc. #1, pp. 2-4). The case was removed to federal court in February 2020. Id. at (Doc. #1). On April 15, 2020, the plaintiffs filed a Second Amended Complaint. Id. at (Doc. #85). On August 5, 2020, the undersigned denied various motions to dismiss, but determined severance of the parties was appropriate. S.Y. v. Naples Hotel Co., 476 F. Supp. 3d 1251, 1258-59 (M.D. Fla. 2020). Following the Court’s severance order, plaintiff and the other alleged victim filed nearly thirty new actions against various defendants, including this case.

The Complaint1 (Doc. #1) in this case was filed on August 19, 2020, alleging that plaintiff S.Y. was a resident of Collier County, Florida, and was a victim of ongoing sex trafficking at the Fairways Inn in Naples, Florida (the Fairways Inn) between 2013 and February 2016. (Id. at ¶¶ 13-14, 22-23.) The Complaint further alleges that Seasonal Investments (Defendant or Seasonal) is a hotel owner, operator, manager, supervisor, controller, and/or entity responsible for hotels, including the Fairways Inn. (Id. at ¶ 2.) The Complaint sets forth six claims against Defendant: violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization

Act of 2008 (TVPRA), 18 U.S.C. § 1595 (Count I); violation of the Florida RICO statute, § 772.104, Florida Statutes (Count II); premise liability (Count III); negligent hiring, supervision, and retention (Count IV); negligent rescue (Count V); and aiding and

1 The Complaint is mistakenly titled “Third Amended Complaint” although it is the only such pleading filed in this case. See (Doc. #1.) abetting, harboring, confining, coercion, and criminal enterprise (Count VI). (Id., pp. 29-44.) II. Defendant argues that the Court should dismiss Plaintiff’s Complaint as it contains irrelevant matter, the state law claims are time-barred, and it fails to allege claims for which relief

can granted concerning the state-based causes of action. (Doc. #10, p. 3.) While Plaintiff adamantly disagrees, she has consented to the withdrawal of three of the four state law claims for premise liability, negligent hiring, supervision and retention, and negligent rescue. (Doc. #20, pp. 1-2.) The Court will address the arguments for the remaining claims below. A. Redundant, Irrelevant, and Scandalous Factual Allegations In its Motion, Defendant notes that this Court previously ordered Plaintiff to remove those allegations “regarding sex trafficking in general and its relationship to the hospitality industry.” S.Y., 476 F. Supp. 3d at 1259. Defendant, however,

argues that contrary to the Court’s prior directive, Plaintiff has included redundant, irrelevant, and scandalous allegations in her Complaint that should be struck. (Doc. #10, pp. 4-6.) Pursuant to Rule 12(f), a party may move to strike "any redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous matter" within the pleadings. The Court enjoys broad discretion in determining whether to grant or deny a motion to strike. Anchor Hocking Corp. v. Jacksonville Elec. Auth., 419 F. Supp. 992, 1000 (M.D. Fla. 1976). "The purpose of a motion to strike is to clean up the pleadings, streamline litigation, and avoid unnecessary forays into immaterial matters." Hutchings v. Fed. Ins. Co., No. 6:08- cv-305-Orl-19KRS, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 75334, 2008 WL 4186994, *2 (M.D. Fla. Sept. 8, 2008) (marks and citation omitted). It is not

intended to "procure the dismissal of all or part of a complaint." Id. A motion to strike is a drastic remedy and is disfavored by the courts. Schmidt v. Life Ins. Co. of N. Am., 289 F.R.D. 357, 358 (M.D. Fla. 2012). Therefore, a motion to strike should be granted only if "the matter sought to be omitted has no possible relationship to the controversy, may confuse the issues, or otherwise prejudice a party." Id. Defendant urges the Court to strike ten paragraphs in the Complaint (Doc. #1, ¶¶ 3-5, 39-41, 62-64, 125) that it maintains contain “puffing” about sex trafficking and its alleged relationship to the hotel industry, scandalous matter about

Seasonal’s knowledge of the tactics of sex traffickers, and that such tactics are used against children. (Doc. #10, pp. 6-7.) Upon review of these allegations, the Court finds the majority of them relate to Defendant’s knowledge of sex trafficking, its failure to prevent the alleged criminal conduct, and Defendant’s profiting from the sex trafficking industry. Such allegations are relevant to the type of claims plaintiff asserts, S.Y., 476 F. Supp. 3d at 1259 n.5, and the Court does not find any to be overly redundant or unduly prejudicial. See Schmidt, 289 F.R.D. at 358. Admittedly, general allegations of sex trafficking in paragraph three and tactics of sex traffickers implemented against children in paragraph five may be immaterial, but the Court cannot say that these allegations are unduly prejudicial to justify the “drastic”

remedy sought. Schmidt, 289 F.R.D. at 358. The Court therefore denies Defendant’s request to strike the aforementioned allegations. B. Failure To State a Claim Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) requires that a complaint contain a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). This obligation "requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 127 S. Ct. 1955, 167 L. Ed. 2d 929 (2007) (citation omitted). To survive

dismissal, the factual allegations must be "plausible" and "must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level." Id. at 555; see also Edwards v. Prime Inc., 602 F.3d 1276, 1291 (11th Cir. 2010). This requires "more than an unadorned, the- defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 173 L. Ed. 2d 868 (2009) (citations omitted). In deciding a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the Court must accept all factual allegations in a complaint as true and take them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94, 127 S. Ct. 2197, 167 L. Ed. 2d 1081 (2007), but "[l]egal conclusions without adequate factual support are entitled to no assumption of truth." Mamani v. Berzaín, 654

F.3d 1148, 1153 (11th Cir. 2011) (citations omitted).

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

Related

Edwards v. Prime, Inc.
602 F.3d 1276 (Eleventh Circuit, 2010)
Green Leaf Nursery v. E.I. DuPont De Nemours & Co.
341 F.3d 1292 (Eleventh Circuit, 2003)
United States v. Turkette
452 U.S. 576 (Supreme Court, 1981)
Erickson v. Pardus
551 U.S. 89 (Supreme Court, 2007)
Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly
550 U.S. 544 (Supreme Court, 2007)
Boyle v. United States
556 U.S. 938 (Supreme Court, 2009)
Ashcroft v. Iqbal
556 U.S. 662 (Supreme Court, 2009)
United States v. Frank Church, Carl Louis Coppola
955 F.2d 688 (Eleventh Circuit, 1992)
Eloy Rojas Mamani v. Jose Carlos Sanchez Berzain
654 F.3d 1148 (Eleventh Circuit, 2011)
Rita Lawrence v. Bank of America, N.A.
455 F. App'x 904 (Eleventh Circuit, 2012)
Nerline Horace-Manasse v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.
521 F. App'x 782 (Eleventh Circuit, 2013)
Bortell v. White Mountains Insurance Group, Ltd.
2 So. 3d 1041 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2009)
Lugo v. State
845 So. 2d 74 (Supreme Court of Florida, 2003)
O'MALLEY v. St. Thomas University, Inc.
599 So. 2d 999 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 1992)
Anchor Hocking Corp. v. Jacksonville Electric Authority
419 F. Supp. 992 (M.D. Florida, 1976)
Eye Care International, Inc. v. Underhill
92 F. Supp. 2d 1310 (M.D. Florida, 2000)
Veldora Arthur v. JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A.
569 F. App'x 669 (Eleventh Circuit, 2014)
Julian Almanza v. United Airlines, Inc.
851 F.3d 1060 (Eleventh Circuit, 2017)
Rosalba Cisneros v. Petland, Inc.
972 F.3d 1204 (Eleventh Circuit, 2020)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
S.Y. v. Seasonal Investments, Inc., Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sy-v-seasonal-investments-inc-flmd-2021.