IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF RIDGEWAY
FOR THE STATE OF RIDGEWAY
HALO4ASIN,
Plaintiff,
v.
RIDGEWAY PARKS SERVICE,
Defendant.
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Case No. RSC-CV-0750
OPPOSITION TO MOTION FOR
LEAVE TO AMEND ANSWER
PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT’S MOTION FOR LEAVE TO AMEND
ANSWER
INTRODUCTION
1. Defendant seeks leave to amend five paragraphs of its Answer. Each contains an
admission or affirmative statement on which Plaintiff’s pending Motion for Summary
Judgment relies. The request comes eleven days after the Answer, seven days after this
Court denied Defendant’s Partial Motion to Dismiss and construed 4 R. Stat. § 122.404
against it, and in the same submission as Defendant’s opposition to summary judgment.
Its purpose and effect are to withdraw binding admissions at the precise moment those
admissions became dispositive.
2. Leave should be denied. What Defendant calls “newly discovered evidence” is its own
institutional knowledge - the identity of its own coordinator, the date of its own
determination, and the contents of its own spreadsheet. Evidence a party already
possesses is not newly discovered. The timing supplies the dilatory motive Foman
forecloses, the amendment would work the prejudice Foman guards against, and it would
not change the outcome on Count I in any event.
STANDARD
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3. Leave to amend should be freely given when justice so requires, but is properly denied on
a showing of “undue delay, bad faith or dilatory motive on the part of the movant, ...
undue prejudice to the opposing party by virtue of allowance of the amendment, [or]
futility of amendment.” Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962). Defendant invokes
Foman but addresses none of its factors beyond asserting their absence. Four are present.
ARGUMENT
A. THE EVIDENCE IS NOT NEWLY DISCOVERED. IT IS DEFENDANT’S OWN.
4. Defendant styles its Motion as one “to conform to newly discovered evidence.” Nothing
offered is newly discovered. Supervisory Park Ranger BobbyBobitheBobbian is
Defendant’s own application commission coordinator. Chief Ranger xXBoomblast339Xx
is Defendant’s own Chief Ranger. The Application Tracker is Defendant’s own
spreadsheet. The internal application commission channel is Defendant’s own channel.
On the day the Answer was filed, every fact now offered sat in the hands of Defendant’s
own personnel and in Defendant’s own records.
5. Evidence within a party’s own possession, custody, or control is not “newly discovered.”
The concept reaches evidence that could not have been located through reasonable
diligence - not evidence a party neglected to request from its own employees. Defendant
does not contend the coordinator was unavailable, that his records were lost, or that any
obstacle prevented counsel from asking the agency who made the decision at issue before
answering a complaint about that decision. Defendant offers one explanation: a 24 hour
deadline.
6. That deadline was of Defendant’s own making. The Court fixed the response deadline at
five days from the point of service - July 6, 2026 - and declined to extend it when the
Department of Justice requested a delay. Defendant let the deadline pass without filing.
The 24 hour window Defendant now invokes as its excuse existed only because the Court
afforded relief from a default Defendant had already incurred. A party may not default on
a deadline, obtain indulgence from that default, and then rely on the compressed schedule
its own default produced as cause to unwind its pleading.
B. THE SEQUENCE SUPPLIES THE DILATORY MOTIVE.
7. The chronology is not neutral. On July 7, Defendant answered, affirmatively pleading
that its Superintendent’s June 25 communication “satisfied any notice obligation arising
under 4 R. Stat. § 122.404,” and that final results were published on June 29, 2026.
Answer ¶¶ 18, 20. The same day, Defendant moved to dismiss Count II on that theory,
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telling this Court that Plaintiff’s Exhibit D “conclusively establishes” compliance. On
July 11, the Court denied the motion, rejected Defendant’s submission that it “had not
chosen their moment by June 25th,” and construed § 122.404 to require that reasoning
accompany the moment of denial. On July 12, Plaintiff advised he sought no discovery;
Defendant said nothing. On July 13, Defendant asked the Court to impose no deadlines.
On July 15, Defendant produced for the first time the theory that the moment of denial
was June 20-21 and that the reasoning accompanied it - the precise theory that would
have won the motion it lost.
8. A pleading is not a working draft to be revised when its admissions become inconvenient.
Where the only intervening events are an adverse construction and a dispositive motion,
the inference of dilatory motive is not speculative. It is the natural reading of the record.
C. AMENDMENT WOULD WORK UNDUE PREJUDICE.
9. Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment was built on Defendant’s admissions and cites
the Answer directly. When this Court asked on July 11 whether either party required time
for discovery, Plaintiff answered that he did not, expressly because the material facts
were established by “the defendant’s admissions in its answer.” Defendant did not
respond to the Court’s inquiry at all. Plaintiff then filed a dispositive motion in reliance
on the pleaded record and on Defendant’s silence.
10. Granting leave now would retroactively remove the foundation of a fully briefed
dispositive motion, and would reward a party that stayed silent when the Court asked
whether the record required development. That is prejudice in its ordinary sense, and it is
undue because it is entirely of Defendant’s own making.
D. AMENDMENT IS FUTILE AS TO COUNT I.
11. Even fully amended, Defendant’s Answer would not reach Count I. Count I presents a
question of law: whether an activity warning issued for failure to submit weekly logs is a
circumstance in which an individual “has been terminated, or has received other adverse
consequence, within a department or agency.” 4 R. Stat. § 122.402(f). The proposed
amendments address who decided, when, and on what record. None addresses whether
the criterion Defendant invoked is one the statute permits. An amendment that cannot
alter the outcome is futile.
12. Nor do the proposed amendments reach the statutory duty at issue in Count II. Sections
122.402 and 122.404 impose their obligation on “an appointing authority.” The
appointing authority is the Ridgeway Parks Service - the Defendant. Which of
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Defendant’s employees held the pen is a matter of internal allocation; it does not change
what the agency was required to do, or what it did.
E. IN THE ALTERNATIVE, ANY LEAVE SHOULD BE CONDITIONED.
13. Should the Court grant leave notwithstanding the foregoing, Plaintiff respectfully
requests that it be conditioned as follows: (a) that Defendant file its Amended Answer
forthwith rather than within three days, so that the summary judgment record is fixed; (b)
that Defendant produce the Application Tracker’s revision history for the period of June
18 through June 30, 2026, which is maintained automatically by the spreadsheet
platform, is within Defendant’s exclusive control, and alone can establish what the
Tracker displayed on the dates Defendant now asserts; and (c) that Plaintiff be permitted
to supplement his Motion for Summary Judgment in light of the amended pleading.
CONCLUSION
14. Plaintiff respectfully requests that the Court deny Defendant’s Motion for Leave to
Amend Answer, or, in the alternative, grant leave only on the conditions set forth above.
Respectfully Submitted,
_________________________
/s/ Halo4asin
HALO4ASIN
Plaintiff, Pro Se
Ridgeway State Bar License No. 18110
Dated: July 16, 2026
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I certify that on July 16, 2026, I served a true copy of the foregoing Opposition on counsel for
the Defendant via the Court’s e-filing system and the case channel.
_________________________
/s/ Halo4asin
HALO4ASIN
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