GEORGE J. HAZEL, District Judge.
On July 17, 2015, the Court issued a Memorandum Opinion and accompanying Order ("Denial Order") denying Pulte Home Corporation and Shiloh Farm Investments, LLC's (collectively, "Pulte") Motion to Remand to State Court and Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission's (the "Commission") Motion to Dismiss. ECF No. 33. The Commission now asks the Court to reconsider its denial of the Motion to Dismiss. ECF No. 36. A hearing on this motion is unnecessary. See Loc. R. 105.6 (Md.). For the reasons that follow, the Commission's Motion for Reconsideration is DENIED.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not explicitly provide for a motion for reconsideration. Courts considering such requests have noted that it is "improper to use such a motion to `ask the Court to rethink what the Court had already thought through — rightly or wrongly." Potter v. Potter, 199 F.R.D. 550, 552 (D. Md. 2001). Nonetheless, "courts have distilled various grounds for reconsideration of prior rulings into three major grounds justifying reconsideration: (1) an intervening change in controlling law; (2) the availability of new evidence or an expanded factual record and (3) [the] need to correct a clear error or prevent manifest injustice." Kern-Tulare Water Dist. v. City of Bakersfield, 634 F.Supp. 656, 665 (E.D. Ca. 1986), rev'd on other grounds, 828 F.2d 514 (9
In Cargyle Brown Solomon v. Dawson, PWG-13-1953, 2013 U.S. Dist LEXIS 125148 (D. Md. September 3,2013), Judge Grimm explained why motions to reconsider are best limited to those relatively rare occurrences. His words have relevance here: When parties file a motion with the court, they are obligated to ensure it is complete with respect to facts, law and advocacy. Once a court has issued its ruling, unless one of the specific grounds noted above can be shown, that should end the matter, at least until appeal. . . . Hindsight being perfect, any lawyer can construct a new argument to support a position previously rejected by the court, especially once the court has spelled out its reasoning in an order. It is hard to imagine a less efficient means to expedite the resolution of cases than to allow the parties unlimited opportunities to seek the same relief simply by conjuring up a new reason to ask for it.
Id. at *4-5.
The driving force behind the Commission's request for reconsideration is their argument that while the Court analyzed whether the injury alleged by Plaintiffs was "fairly traceable" to the alleged actions of the Commission for the purpose of determining standing, the proper analysis would have been for the Court to evaluate the claim under the standard of proximate causation. ECF No. 36 at 2. While that position is clearly stated in the Motion for Reconsideration, the phrase "proximate cause" did not make its first appearance in the original Motion to Dismiss until the 20
While the Court recognizes that it did not fully appreciate the Commission's legal theory, the outcome remains the same now. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) provides for the dismissal of the complaint if it "fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." This rule's purpose "is to test the sufficiency of a complaint and not to resolve contests surrounding the facts, the merits of a claim, or the applicability of defenses." Presley v. City of Charlottesville, 464 F.3d 480, 483 (4
Plaintiffs have alleged facts that allow the Court to draw the reasonable inference that the Commission's actions were a proximate cause of their injury. Specifically, as noted in the Denial Order, Pulte alleges that:
ECF No. 33 at 11. Given these allegations and in light of the Commission's role in land development plans, see ECF No. 33 at 9-11, the Court finds that Plaintiff has sufficiently alleged that the Commission's actions were a proximate cause of Plaintiffs' injury.
Accordingly, it is, this 29th day of December 2015, by the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, hereby ORDERED that Defendant's Motion for Reconsideration (ECF No. 36) is DENIED.