S. Y. v. Choice Hotels Int'l, Inc.

S. Y., Plaintiff, v. CHOICE HOTELS INTERNATIONAL, INC. and ROBERT VOCISANO, Defendants.

Case No: 2:20-cv-118-JES-MRM

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT MIDDLE DISTRICT OF FLORIDA FORT MYERS DIVISION

April 29, 2021

OPINION AND ORDER

This matter comes before the Court on review of defendant Choice Hotels International, Inc.'s Motion to Dismiss Plaintiff's Third Amended Complaint with Prejudice (Doc. #303) filed on October 8, 2020, and defendant Robert Vocisano's Motion to Dismiss with Prejudice Plaintiff's Third Amended Complaint and Incorporated Memorandum of Law (Doc. #304) filed on October 9, 2020. Plaintiff filed an Opposition (Doc. #317) and a Memorandum in Opposition (Doc. #318) on November 5, 2020, to which the defendants each filed a Reply (Doc. #323; Doc. #324) on November 19, 2020. For the reasons set forth below, the motions are denied.

I.

The origins of this case began on October 30, 2019, when plaintiff and another alleged victim of sex trafficking filed a case in the Circuit Court of the Twentieth Judicial Circuit in and for Collier County, Florida. (Doc. #1, p. 3.) On December 31, 2019, the plaintiffs filed a First Amended Complaint which asserted ten claims against over forty defendants. (Id. pp. 2-4.) The case was removed to federal court in February 2020. (Id. p. 2.) On April 15, 2020, the plaintiffs filed a Second Amended Complaint. (Doc. #85.) On August 5, 2020, the undersigned denied various motions to dismiss, but determined severance of the parties was appropriate. S.Y. v. Naples Hotel Co., 476 F. Supp. 3d 1251, 1258-59 (M.D. Fla. 2020). Following the Court's severance order, plaintiff and the other alleged victim filed nearly thirty new actions against various defendants.

The operative pleading in this case is the Third Amended Complaint filed on August 19, 2020, which alleges that plaintiff S.Y., a resident of Collier County, Florida, was a victim of continuous sex trafficking at a certain Quality Inn & Suites Golf Resort (the Quality Inn Hotel) in Naples, Florida between 2013 and February 2016. (Doc. #295, ¶¶ 2, 13, 22-24.) The Third Amended Complaint alleges that during this time period the Quality Inn Hotel was owned and operated by defendant Robert Vocisano (Vocisano) as a franchisee of defendant Choice Hotels International, Inc. (Choice). (Id. ¶¶ 25-28, 50.)

The Third Amended Complaint alleges the following six claims: (1) violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA), 18 U.S.C. § 1595; (2)violation of the Florida RICO statute, § 772.104, Florida Statutes; (3) premise liability; (4) negligent hiring, supervision, and retention; (5) negligent rescue; and (6) aiding and abetting, harboring, confining, coercion, and criminal enterprise. (Id. pp. 33-49.) Counts One through Four are asserted against each defendant, while Counts Five and Six are asserted against Vocisano. (Id.)

II.

The motions to dismiss raise numerous arguments as to why the Third Amended Complaint as whole, and each individual claim, should be dismissed. The Court will address each of these arguments in turn.

A. Shotgun Pleading

The Third Amended Complaint identifies the defendants collectively as the "Quality Inn Defendants." (Doc. #295, p. 1 introductory paragraph.) Both motions argue that because the Third Amended Complaint groups them together, it should be dismissed as a shotgun pleading. (Doc. #303, pp. 12-13; Doc. #304, p. 5.)¹

One way in which a complaint may constitute an impermissible shotgun pleading is if it "assert[s] multiple claims againstmultiple defendants without specifying which of the defendants are responsible for which acts or omissions, or which of the defendants the claim is brought against." Weiland v. Palm Beach Cty. Sheriff's Office, 792 F.3d 1313, 1323 (11th Cir. 2015); see also Barmapov v. Amuial, 986 F.3d 1321, 1324-25 (11th Cir. 2021). Such a pleading fails "to give the defendants adequate notice of the claims against them and the grounds upon which each claim rests," Weiland, 792 F.3d at 1323, and violates the requirement that a plaintiff provide "a short and plain statement of the claim," Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2).

The Third Amended Complaint does indeed repeatedly refer to the defendants collectively as the "Quality Inn Defendants." The failure to specify a particular defendant is not fatal, however, when "[t]he complaint can be fairly read to aver that all defendants are responsible for the alleged conduct." Kyle K. v. Chapman, 208 F.3d 940, 944 (11th Cir. 2000). The Third Amended Complaint typically (but not always) alleges that "each and every" such defendant was involved in the activity described in the particular paragraph of the Third Amended Complaint. A fair reading of the Third Amended Complaint is that each of these defendants was involved in the identified conduct attributed to the "Quality Inn Defendants." While defendants may disagree that such allegations are accurate, that dispute is for another day. The group allegations do not fail to state a claim, Auto. Alignment& Body Serv., Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 953 F.3d 707, 732-33 (11th Cir. 2020), and the Third Amended Complaint does not constitute a shotgun pleading.²

B. Failure to State a Claim

The motions argue certain claims should be dismissed due to plaintiff's failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) requires that a complaint contain a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). This obligation "requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (citation omitted). To survive dismissal, the factual allegations must be "plausible" and "must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level." Id. at 555; see also Edwards v.Prime Inc., 602 F.3d 1276, 1291 (11th Cir. 2010). This requires "more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (citations omitted).

In deciding a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the Court must accept all factual allegations in a complaint as true and take them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007), but "[l]egal conclusions without adequate factual support are entitled to no assumption of truth," Mamani v. Berzain, 654 F.3d 1148, 1153 (11th Cir. 2011) (citations omitted). "Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory statements, do not suffice." Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. Factual allegations that are merely consistent with a defendant's liability fall short of being facially plausible. Chaparro v. Carnival Corp., 693 F.3d 1333, 1337 (11th Cir. 2012) (citations omitted). Thus, the Court engages in a two-step approach: "When there are well-pleaded factual allegations, a court should assume their veracity and then determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief." Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679.

(1) Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act

Both motions challenge the one federal claim, the alleged violation of the TVPRA set forth in Count One. The TVPRA providesa civil remedy to victims of certain types of human trafficking. The civil remedy portion of the Act provides:

(a) An individual who is a victim of a violation of this chapter may bring a civil action against the perpetrator (or whoever knowingly benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value from participation in a venture which that person knew or should have known has engaged in an act in violation of this chapter) in an appropriate district court of the United States and may recover damages and reasonable attorneys fees.

18 U.S.C. § 1595(a). The phrase "a violation of this chapter" refers to Chapter 77 of Title 18 of the United States Code. The only violation of Chapter 77 relevant to this case is contained in 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a), which provides in relevant part:

(a) Whoever knowingly -

(1) in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce . . . recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, obtains, advertises, maintains, patronizes, or solicits by any means a person; or

(2) benefits, financially or by receiving anything of value, from participation in a venture which has engaged in an act described in violation of paragraph (1),

knowing, or except where the act constituting the violation of paragraph (1) is advertising, in reckless disregard of the fact, that means of force, threats of force, fraud, coercion described in subsection (e)(2), or any combination of such means will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, or that the person has not attained the age of 18 years and will be caused to engage in a commercial sex act, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b).

18 U.S.C. § 1591(a). To state a section 1595(a) claim in this case, plaintiff must plausibly allege that she was a victim of acriminal offense under section 1591(a), and then must plausibly allege that defendant (1)"knowingly benefit[ted] financially or by receiving anything of value," (2) from participation in a venture, (3) which defendant "knew or should have known has engaged in" sex trafficking under section 1591(a). S.Y., 476 F. Supp. 3d at 1255-56 (citing A.B. v. Marriott Int'l, Inc., 455 F. Supp. 3d 171, 181 (E.D. Pa. 2020)).

(a) Plausible Allegations Re: § 1591 Violation

Choice first argues that plaintiff fails to allege an underlying section 1591 violation by failing "to set out any facts describing any criminal investigation, indictment, prosecution, or conviction." (Doc. #303, p. 15.) The Third Amended Complaint alleges:

84. From approximately 2013 through February 2016, Plaintiff S.Y. was recruited to, enticed to, solicited to, held at, harbored as captive at and/or transported to various hotels in Naples, Florida by her sex traffickers to engage in

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