Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Plaintiff P.M.Q., a minor, alleges that the Marysville Joint Unified School District violated their rights and caused them emotional harm through a pattern of verbal abuse. The suit was filed in June 2025 against the District and one of its employees, and the parties consented to magistrate judge jurisdiction. In March 2026 the court dismissed the original complaint with leave to amend. In June 2026, after the first amended complaint was filed, it dismissed all claims against the employee, leaving the District as the only defendant.
The District's answer to the first amended complaint was due April 24, 2026. It was filed June 12, 2026, after the court issued and then discharged an order to show cause about entering default. Plaintiff moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f) to strike eight of the District's affirmative defenses. The District's opposition was also six days late, with no extension request. The court considered it anyway and cautioned the District to follow the rules.
The court noted that a defense may be stricken for inadequate pleading if it does not give fair notice. It may be stricken as a matter of law only if there are no questions of fact, the law is clear, and the defense could not succeed under any circumstances. It also observed that motions to strike are disfavored because they can be dilatory. The District withdrew some challenged defenses and defended others, and the court took them one at a time.
The Court’s Holding
The court granted the motion in full, but the relief differs by defense. Five defenses were stricken with prejudice. The District withdrew the second (waiver and estoppel), the third (a 2022 settlement agreement, which it said was included by mistake) and the seventh (qualified immunity for the dismissed employee). The twelfth, seeking attorney's fees, was conceded to be a prayer for relief rather than an affirmative defense. It is stricken with prejudice only as an affirmative defense, and the District may still request fees in its prayer for relief. The fifteenth, a reservation of the right to assert additional defenses, was stricken because, citing district court decisions, the court held that such a reservation is not itself an affirmative defense.
Three defenses were stricken with leave to amend. The fourth, limitations, cited federal provisions in Title 42 that do not exist, apparently meaning Title 20. It also did not say which limitations period governs which claim or when each began to run. Any amended version must identify the correct federal statutes and give at least some detail on the periods and triggering date. The District's unchallenged fourteenth defense already raises noncompliance with the California Government Claims Act. The District may therefore replead its reference to Government Code section 945.6 only if it explains how that reference is not duplicative.
The fifth defense, exhaustion, did not identify the remedy, the claim or the relief involved. The thirteenth, immunity, listed federal and California immunities and twelve Government Code sections without tying any to a claim or supporting facts. In each instance the District's opposition offered some of the missing detail, but the court still struck the defense with leave to amend. The District may file an amended answer within fourteen days. If it does not, the case proceeds on its existing answer. The order does not decide whether any defense will succeed on the merits, and the unchallenged defenses remain.
Key Takeaways
- An affirmative defense must give the plaintiff fair notice of what is asserted, so one-line assertions of exhaustion or immunity, or a bare list of statutes, are vulnerable to being stricken.
- Citing nonexistent statutory provisions, or omitting the claim, limitations period and triggering date, makes a limitations defense insufficient, although the remedy here was leave to amend.
- Supplying detail in an opposition brief did not save the deficient defenses, because the court required that detail to be repleaded in an amended answer.
- A reservation of the right to add defenses later is not an affirmative defense, and a request for attorney's fees belongs in the prayer for relief.
- Defendants should avoid duplicative defenses, such as raising Government Claims Act arguments under both limitations and claim-presentation headings.
Why It Matters
This is a short order by a magistrate judge in a single case, not a published decision, so it carries persuasive rather than binding weight. It applies familiar Rule 12(f) principles and shows that courts in the Eastern District of California will scrutinize boilerplate defenses despite the disfavor of motions to strike. They usually allow repleading when the problem is lack of detail rather than legal invalidity.
The practical effect is limited. Nothing about the merits of plaintiff's claims was decided, the District keeps its unchallenged defenses, and it can restore the three defenses in more specific form. The order also shows the cost of sloppy procedure: the court noted both the untimely answer and the untimely opposition but did not penalize either here.