CHRISTINE M. ARGUELLO, District Judge.
This matter is before the Court on Defendant David Archuleta's Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings, filed on April 9, 2012. (Doc. # 71.) In this motion, Defendant Archuleta requests that the Court dismiss the claims pending against him as time-barred.
In this § 1983 action, Plaintiff Gema Martinez alleges that, on August 27, 2008, Denver police officers conducted an unlawful entry and search of her home in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Exactly two years later, Plaintiff filed her original Complaint. (Doc. # 1.) In her original Complaint, Plaintiff named as defendants the City & County of Denver, Denver Police Officer Michael Gabriel, two John Doe Denver Police Officers, and two John Doe Animal Control Officers.
On January 21, 2011, Plaintiff amended her complaint to add four defendants in place of the four John Does, including Defendant Archuleta.
A motion for judgment on the pleadings under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c) is governed by the same standard of review applicable to a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). Nelson v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 419 F.3d 1117, 1119 (10th Cir. 2005). Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) provides that a party may move to dismiss a claim for relief in any pleading for "failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. The Court accepts all well-pleaded allegations in the complaint as true and views them in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. Id. Dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) should only be granted when it appears that the non-moving party can prove no set of facts in support of the claims that would entitle the plaintiff to relief. Id.
It is not disputed that Plaintiff added Mr. Archuleta as a defendant after the two-year statute of limitations had run. Plaintiff contends, however, that her claims against Defendant Archuleta should not be dismissed as time-barred because her amended complaint "relates back to the date of the original pleading" under Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c).
An amended complaint relates back to the filing of the original complaint when:
Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c)(1)(C).
Plaintiff says that she satisfied the requirements of Rule 15(c) because Defendant Archuleta had both actual and constructive knowledge of Plaintiff's lawsuit within the Rule 4(m) time period. This may be true. However, Plaintiff ignores another requirement of Rule 15(c) — that she made "a mistake concerning the proper party's identity." The Tenth Circuit holds that "a plaintiff's lack of knowledge of the intended defendant's identity is not a `mistake concerning the identity of the proper party.'" Garrett v. Fleming, 362 F.3d 692, 696 (10th Cir. 2004) (quoting Wayne v. Jarvis, 197 F.3d 1098, 1103-04 (11th Cir. 1999)). Thus, as a matter of law, Plaintiff did not make a "mistake" within the meaning of Rule 15(c) regarding the identities of the parties she intended to sue.
In attempting to bypass the Tenth Circuit's decision in Garrett, Plaintiff contends that the Supreme Court's recent decision in Krupski v. Costa Crociere S.P.A. renders Garrett obsolete. The Court disagrees. In Krupski, the plaintiff knew of two potential parties when she filed her lawsuit, but she sued the wrong party and corrected the mistake only after the statute of limitations had expired. See 130 S.Ct. 2485, 2490-92 (2010). Although the plaintiff knew the identity of the proper party when she filed her original complaint, the Supreme Court held that this constituted a mistake because the defendant "knew or should have known that it would have been named as a defendant
Filing a complaint against nameless defendants is not a mechanism by which the plaintiff receives extra time to discover the John Doe identities. Even after Krupski, Plaintiff's amended complaint does not relate back to her original complaint because her original complaint did not contain a "mistake." See Smith v. City of Akron, 2012 WL 1139003, at *2 (6th Cir. Apr. 6, 2012) (unpublished) (holding that Krupski does not affect rule that relation back does not apply when the plaintiff seeks to substitute named defendants for John Doe defendants). Thus, the claims against Defendant Archuleta are time-barred and must be dismissed.
Accordingly, it is ORDERED THAT Defendant Archuleta's Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings (Doc. # 71) is GRANTED. It is
FURTHER ORDERED that all claims against Defendant Archuleta are DISMISSED AS TIME-BARRED.