John Scott Wedemeyer v. Pneudraulics, Inc.

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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No. 12-10825
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 4:11-cv-00135-JRH-GRS
JOHN SCOTT WEDEMEYER,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
versus
PNEUDRAULICS, INC.,
Defendant - Appellee.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Georgia
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(February 26, 2013)
Before MARCUS, WILSON and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
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Plaintiff-Appellant John Scott Wedemeyer appeals from the district court’s
final orders granting Defendant-Appellee Pneudraulics, Inc.’s motion to dismiss
Wedemeyer’s complaint and denying Wedemeyer’s motion for leave to amend the
complaint. In Wedemeyer’s complaint, which Pneudralics had removed to federal
court, Wedemeyer alleged that his employer, Gulfstream Aerospace, terminated his
employment as a test pilot because the aircraft he was piloting “went off the
runway causing extensive damages to the airplane.” He further alleged that
Pneudraulics’s negligent manufacture of a swivel assembly caused the crash, and
that as a result of the crash, he was fired and the “incident has greatly impacted his
career.” The district court denied Wedemeyer’s motion to amend his complaint
due to the amendment’s futility, and thereafter dismissed Wedemeyer’s complaint
for failure to state a claim. On appeal, Wedemeyer challenges both of these
decisions. After thorough review, we affirm.
We review de novo the district court’s grant of a motion to dismiss. Randall
v. Scott, 610 F.3d 701, 705 (11th Cir. 2010). Although the review of the denial of
a motion for leave to amend is typically reviewed for abuse of discretion, “when
the district court denies the plaintiff leave to amend due to futility, we review the
denial de novo because it is concluding that as a matter of law an amended
complaint would necessarily fail.” Hollywood Mobile Estates Ltd. v. Seminole
Tribe of Fla., 641 F.3d 1259, 1264 (11th Cir. 2011).
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Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2), a complaint must contain “a
short and plain statement of the claim showing that the [plaintiff] is entitled to
relief.” The complaint “must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to
‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face’” in order to survive a motion to
dismiss for failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted under
Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell
Atlantic v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). In reviewing a motion to
dismiss, we accept as true all factual allegations contained in the complaint, but we
are “not bound to accept as true a legal conclusion couched as a factual allegation.”
Id. (quotation omitted). Threadbare recitations of the elements of a cause of
action, supported only by conclusory statements, do not suffice. Id. Further, “only
a complaint that states a plausible claim for relief survives a motion to dismiss.”
Id. at 679. “Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for relief
will . . . be a context-specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its
judicial experience and common sense.” Id.
First, we are unpersuaded by Wedemeyer’s argument that the district court
erred in dismissing his original complaint. In that complaint, Wedemeyer alleged
that Pneudraulics’s negligent manufacture of a swivel assembly caused Gulfstream
to terminate him. However, Georgia has long refused to recognize a claim for
negligent interference with business employment. In Byrd v. English, 43 S.E. 419
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(Ga. 1903), the plaintiff operated a printing business, and he had a contract with
the Georgia Electric Light Company (“GELC”) to supply electricity to his
business. Employees of the defendant negligently damaged GELC’s conduit wires
that serviced the plaintiff’s business. The plaintiff sued the defendant, not GELC,
for damages that resulted from the disruption of his business. Id. at 419-420. The
Supreme Court of Georgia held that the plaintiff’s petition did not state a cause of
action. Id. at 421. The court determined that the foundation of plaintiff’s claim
was his contract with GELC and that the defendant was not remotely connected to
that contract; therefore, even though the terms of the contract prevented the
plaintiff from recovering against GELC, the defendant could not be held
responsible for plaintiff’s claims. Id. at 420; see also Robins Dry Dock & Repair
Co. v. Flint, 275 U.S. 303, 309 (1927) (citing Byrd for the proposition that “a tort
to the person or property of one man does not make the tort-feasor liable to another
merely because the injured person was under a contract with that other unknown to
the doer of the wrong”).
Similarly, in Morse v. Piedmont Hotel Co., 139 S.E.2d 133 (Ga. 1964), the
Georgia Court of Appeals said: “Generally, a person is not liable for the
unintentional invasion of the interest of another in his contractual or employment
relationships with third persons.” Id. at 135. There, the plaintiff, a jewelry
salesman who had entrusted his wares to a hotel bell boy, sued the hotel for
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damages stemming from the loss of his jewelry. The jewelry belonged to the
plaintiff’s employer, not to the plaintiff. As a result of the incident, the plaintiff
could not obtain insurance coverage and the employer terminated the plaintiff.
Plaintiff sued the hotel claiming that the theft of the jewelry case resulted from the
hotel’s negligence and caused his termination by the employer. Id. at 134. Morse
aptly applies here:
The rights or interests of [Wedemeyer] which he alleges have been damaged
-- … the interest in his employment -- he had by virtue of relations with
others than [Pneudraulics]. The petition does not show that [Wedemeyer]
had property rights in his relationships with [Gulfstream Aerospace], but
such interests of [Wedemeyer] as were damaged inhered in [that
relationship.] The law does not place upon [Pneudraulics] the duty to protect
these interests of [Wedemeyer] against unintentional invasion.
Id. at 135 (citations omitted).
Wedemeyer claims that Georgia recognizes this kind of negligence claim
where the plaintiff has suffered an injury to his person or property, citing McGill &
Sons, Inc. v. Flood & Assoc., Inc., 248 S.E.2d 23, 24 (Ga. App. 1978) (“There is
no liability for negligence since there was no injury to any person or property as a
result of the alleged delays.”). But even if this is true, there are no allegations of
physical injury in his original complaint. At most, he says that the “incident has
greatly impacted his career.” Under Georgia law, “[a]n at-will employee generally
does not have a reasonable expectation of continued employment to establish a
property right protected by law.” Fink v. Dodd, 649 S.E.2d 359, 362 (Ga. App.
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2007). In other words, Wedemeyer’s alleged loss of his employment was not an
injury to a property right, and he has not alleged a negligence claim cognizable
under Georgia law. The district court, therefore, did not err in dismissing the claim
in Wedemeyer’s original complaint.
We also find no merit to Wedemeyer’s argument that the district court erred
in refusing him leave to amend. Ordinarily, “[i]f the underlying facts or
circumstances relied upon by a plaintiff may be a proper subject of relief,” Foman
v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962), leave to amend should “be freely given,”
Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a). Under Foman, however, a district court may properly deny
leave to amend the complaint under Rule 15(a) when such amendment would be
futile. 371 U.S. at 182. Denial of leave to amend is justified by futility when the
complaint as amended is still subject to dismissal. See Hall v. United Ins. Co. of
America, 367 F.3d 1255, 1262-63 (11th Cir. 2004).
Wedemeyer argues that for purposes of his negligence claim, he alleged
personal injury in his amended complaint, which says that as a result of the
incident, “Plaintiff has also suffered physically, including but not limited to
headaches, sleeplessness, chronic nausea and anxiety.” However, any physical
injury he claims flowed from his loss of employment cannot constitute a
cognizable injury -- it is simply too attenuated. Allowing these sorts of allegations
to satisfy the physical injury requirement would also effectively remove the
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requirement, given that these sorts of injuries presumably flow from most
economic injuries. Thus, viewing the allegations in the amended complaint by, as
we must, drawing on our judicial experience and common sense, Iqbal, 556 U.S. at
679, we cannot say the district court erred in concluding that the vague statements
regarding Wedemeyer’s injuries plausibly allege any sort of physical injury
sufficient to state a claim under Georgia law.1
Because Wedemeyer’s amended complaint failed to allege any cognizable
injury, his other purported claims requiring an injury element -- like product
liability and negligence per se -- also fail. Further, Wedemeyer’s attempts to allege
some sort of intentional conduct fall flat as well, as he has not made any argument
to us about how his allegations of intent or a violation of administrative regulations
are anything more than “[t]hreadbare recitations of the elements of a cause of
action, supported only by conclusory statements.” Id. at 678. Similarly, his
constructive fraud claim fails since there is no allegation whatsoever that
Pneudraulics acted with any malice towards him. In short, the district court did not
err in finding that it would futile to allow Wedemeyer to amend his complaint, nor
did it abuse its discretion in refusing the amendment.
1 Moreover, to the extent Wedemeyer mentioned “whiplash-type injuries” in response to
Pneudralics’s motion to dismiss, there was absolutely no reference to whiplash in the amended
complaint, which he notably filed after his response to the motion to dismiss. Indeed, in his
response to Pneudralics’s motion to stay discovery (filed the same day as his response to the
motion to dismiss), he said, “No one was injured [in the incident] thanks to Scott Wedemeyer’s
quick thinking.”
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AFFIRMED.
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