Simpson v. Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, --- F.Supp.2d ----, 2008 WL 90238 (D.D.C. January 10, 2008).In abandoning plaintiff's reliance on the FSIA, the Flatow Amendment, and D.C. common-law and the D.C. Code, the plaintiff essentially concedes that her second amended complaint fails to identify a specific basis in law for her claims. Her request for leave to file a third amended complaint thus attempts to stave off dismissal by dangling before the court the prospect of her finding and ultimately pleading an appropriate basis under the ATS or Pennsylvania law for her claims.
As regards the ATS, that prospect is vanishingly remote. The defendant rightly points out that the plaintiff has had “ample opportunity to research international causes of action” since the Supreme Court ruled in Sosa that the ATS provides no independent cause of action. The plaintiff's demand that she “will need to review the list of international sources of law with an eye to the reduction to the minimal number necessary to sustain a cognizable claim” strikes the court as a dilatory, vague, and indifferent response to the opportunity given two years ago to file a properly amended complaint. In failing to file a proposed amendment and, thereby, violating Local Civil Rule 15. 1, the plaintiff denied the court any notion of what law she proposes to identify in an amendment. In changing her position in the middle of briefing, the plaintiff reveals a lack of preparation and conscientiousness to legal arguments betokening bad faith. And in squandering her prior chance to amend her complaint, the plaintiff demonstrates that granting an additional opportunity to amend would be futile. Because of these deficiencies, the court denies leave to amend the ATS claims and dismisses them.
