Burdunice v. Mjanger et al

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MINNESOTA
Lannon Lavar Burdunice,
Plaintiff,
v.
Siv Mjanger, Teresa Underwood, Paul Schnell
and William Bolin,
Defendants.
Case No. 25-cv-4276 (JRT/DJF)
ORDER
INTRODUCTION
This matter is before the Court on Plaintiff Lannon Lavar Burdunice’s Motion for Leave to
Amend Complaint Pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 15(a)(2) (“Motion to Amend”)
(ECF No. 21). Defendants oppose the Motion to Amend on the ground that Mr. Burdunice’s
proposed amendment is futile (ECF No. 25). The Court agrees with Defendants and thus denies Mr.
Burdunice’s Motion to Amend.
BACKGROUND
Mr. Burdunice filed his original Complaint (ECF No. 1) on November 7, 2025. He alleged
Defendants violated his civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in connection with a habeas petition he
filed in state court the previous April to challenge his conviction on charges of second-degree
intentional murder and unlawful firearm possession. (See ECF No. 1 ¶ 5; Pet. for Writ of Habeas
Corpus Relief Pursuant to Minn. Stat. § 589.01, Under Minn. Const. Art. I § 7, Burdunice v. Bolin,
No. 82-cv-25-2729 (Minn. Dist. Ct. Apr. 30, 2025).) Defendant Siv Mjanger was the judge assigned
to that matter. (See, e.g., ECF No. 1 ¶ 14.) Mr. Burdunice’s original Complaint alleged that Judge
Mjanger and Teresa Underwood, a court administrator, deprived him of any meaningful opportunity
to challenge his conviction because Judge Mjanger scheduled a hearing on his habeas petition, but
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then canceled it and later denied the petition. (See ECF No. 1 ¶¶ 1, 17.) Mr. Burdunice’s original
Complaint also brought claims against Warden William Bolin and Commissioner Paul Schnell
because they filed the motion that prompted Judge Mjanger to cancel the hearing.1 (ECF No. 1 ¶
15.) He asserted two causes of action, alleging Defendants violated his Fourteenth Amendment right
to procedural due process and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection guarantee. (See id. ¶¶
19–29.) For relief, Mr. Burdunice sought: (1.) a declaratory judgment that Defendants’ actions
violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights; (2.) an injunction compelling Defendants to provide a
full evidentiary hearing on Mr. Burdunice’s challenge to his conviction; (3.) “punitive damages” of
$1,000 against Judge Mjanger under Minn. Stat. § 589.07; (4.) $70,000 in compensatory damages
“from the State”; and (5.) fees and costs.
On December 19, 2025, the undersigned Magistrate Judge issued a Report and
Recommendation recommending that Mr. Burdunice’s Complaint be dismissed on multiple grounds.
(ECF No. 5.) First, the Court recommended denying any official-capacity claims for monetary
damages on the basis that the Eleventh Amendment bars suits for damages against states in federal
court. (ECF No. 5 at 4.) The Court further recommended denying the injunctive relief claims
against Judge Mjanger as statutorily barred under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and against the remaining
defendants as barred by the Rooker–Feldman doctrine, a jurisdictional rule that bars federal district
courts from hearing cases that, as a practical matter, ask the federal court to review or overturn a
final state-court judgment. (ECF No. 5 at 5.)
The Court also recommended denying the individual capacity claims against Judge Mjanger
1 Not. of Mot. and Mot. to Cancel the Hr’g Scheduled for June 20, 2020, Burdunice v. Bolin,
No. 82-cv-25-2729 (Minn. Dist. Ct. June 3, 2025); Mem. In Supp. of Resp’ts’ Mot. to Cancel the
Hr’g Scheduled for June 20, 2020 at 1-2, Burdunice v. Bolin, No. 82-cv-25-2729 (Minn. Dist. Ct.
June 3, 2025).
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and Teresa Underwood as barred by judicial and quasi-judicial immunity (ECF No. 5 at 6), and
dismissing the procedural due process claims against Defendants Schnell and Bolin on the ground
that their motion to cancel Mr. Burdunice’s habeas hearing was a proper exercise of the judicial
process (ECF No. 5 at 7). Finally, the Court recommended dismissing Mr. Burdunice’s equal
protection claims against Defendants Schnell and Bolin because Mr. Burdunice had neither alleged
discrimination based on membership in a protected class nor alleged facts supporting a “class of
one” claim. (ECF No. 5 at 8.) Mr. Burdunice objected to the Report and Recommendation on
January 9, 2026, and his objection remains pending. (ECF No. 8.)
Mr. Burdunice filed his Motion to Amend on February 6, 2026, seeking permission to file a
new, Amended Complaint (ECF No. 21-1) to “respond[] to vulnerabilities” identified in the Court’s
Report and Recommendation. (ECF No. 21 at 2.) Mr. Burdunice identifies these vulnerabilities as
potential: (1.) dismissal on Eleventh Amendment Sovereign Immunity grounds; (2.) misconstruction
as only asserting claims against Defendants in their official capacities; (3.) dismissal based on
judicial, quasi-judicial, and official-capacity doctrines; and (4.) dismissal based on imprecision. (Id.)
Defendants argue the Court should deny Plaintiff’s Motion to Amend based on the Amended
Complaint’s futility. (ECF No. 25 at 1.)
DISCUSSION
I. Legal Standard
Under Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a), leave to amend a pleading “shall be freely given when justice so
requires.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a). But there is no absolute right to amend a pleading, and a motion to
amend may be denied based on a finding of “undue delay, bad faith, or dilatory motive, repeated
failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the nonmoving
party, or futility of the amendment.” Doe v. Cassel, 403 F.3d 986, 990-91 (8th Cir. 2005) (internal
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quotation marks omitted). The decision whether to grant leave to amend is left to the sound
discretion of the district court. Popoalii v. Corr. Med. Servs., 512 F.3d 488, 497 (8th Cir. 2008);
Leftwich ex rel. Leftwich v. Cty. of Dakota, 9 F.4th 966, 976 (8th Cir. 2021).
A motion for leave to amend a complaint is futile when the amended complaint would be
unable to withstand a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Zutz v.
Nelson, 601 F.3d 842, 850 (8th Cir. 2010). “To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must
contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its
face.’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550
U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). Dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) “serves to eliminate actions which are fatally
flawed in their legal premises and designed to fail.” EEOC v. Hibbing Taconite Co., 266
F.R.D. 260, 267 (D. Minn. 2009) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
II. Analysis
Mr. Burdunice’s proposed Amended Complaint adds no new facts and instead seeks to
correct the original Complaint’s deficiencies through legal citations and conclusions. None of these
amendments is sufficient to correct the deficiencies identified in the Court’s Report and
Recommendation (ECF No. 5). Amendment is therefore futile.
Mr. Burdunice argues the proposed Amended Complaint is necessary because the Court
could misconstrue the original Complaint as asserting claims only against the Defendants in their
official capacities and thus dismiss it on Eleventh Amendment Sovereign Immunity grounds. (ECF
No. 21 at 2-3.) To advance this argument, the proposed Amended Complaint adds declarations such
as, “Plaintiff sues all Defendants in both their individual and official capacities” and “sued in their
individual capacity.” (ECF No. 21-1 at 2-3.) But these amendments are of no consequence, because
the Report and Recommendation expressly considered Mr. Burdunice’s claims against each
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Defendant in their individual capacity and recommended any such claims be dismissed. (ECF No. 5
at 3 n.2.)
Mr. Burdunice next argues that the proposed Amended Complaint corrects potential
improper dismissal based on judicial, quasi-judicial, and official-capacity doctrines, and that the
proposed Amended Complaint is less “broad and imprecise” than the original. (ECF No. 21 at 2.)
However, Mr. Burdunice’s proposed Amended Complaint adds no new facts that would change the
Court’s recommendation of dismissal. Indeed, the proposed Amended Complaint adds no new facts
at all. Though unlike the original Complaint, the proposed Amended Complaint asserts that
Defendant Underwood “effectuat[ed] cancelation of the habeas hearing” (ECF No. 21-1 at 9), this
allegation was already effectively present in the original Complaint and considered by the Court in
its Report and Recommendation. (See ECF No. 1 at 3, alleging Defendant Underwood was “the
official responsible for ensuring that orders issued by the district court … are executed in a timely
and proper manner.”) Instead of proffering new facts that might change the Court’s analysis, Mr.
Burdunice’s proposed Amended Complaint adds a series of legal arguments and citations addressing
why, in his view, judicial, quasi-judicial, and official capacity immunities should not bar his claims.
(ECF No. 21-1 at 8-9.) Mr. Burdunice’s legal arguments in response to the Court’s Report and
Recommendation are appropriately advanced in Mr. Burdunice’s Objection to the Report and
Recommendation, but they are not properly asserted in an Amended Complaint.
Mr. Burdunice’s proposed Amended Complaint adds no new facts that would allow it to
sustain a motion to dismiss. The Court therefore denies his Motion to Amend as futile.
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ORDER
Based on the foregoing, and on all the files, records, and proceedings herein, IT IS HEREBY
ORDERED THAT Plaintiff Lannon Lavar Burdunice’s Motion for Leave to Amend Complaint
Pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 15(a)(2) (ECF No. 21) is DENIED.
Dated: February 19, 2026 s/ Dulce J. Foster
DULCE J. FOSTER
United States Magistrate Judge
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