W. A. Griffin, M.D. v. Emory Healthcare, Inc., et al.

Whether the Eleventh Circuit’s affirmation of a judge-manufactured Rule 16(b) trap directly defied binding Supreme Court precedent in Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178 (1962), Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519 (1972), and Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89 (2007), by elevating boilerplate local scheduling constraints over Rule 15(a)’s absolute mandate that leave to amend be “freely given” to pro se civil rights litigants absent proven bad faith or prejudice.

Whether a District Court abandons judicial neutrality and acts as an adversarial surrogate for institutional respondents when it silently strips a pro se litigant’s explicit, unobjected-to amendment timeline from a scheduling order, pre-judges the litigation before discovery closes, and leverages its own manufactured, deadline to lock out sworn evidence of executive fraud, defamation, and Title VII retaliation uncovered during active depositions.

Whether an appellate panel violates Fifth Amendment Due Process and Article III mandates by relying on demonstrable factual falsehoods—errone­ ously holding that a litigant possessed key deposition evidence months before the depositions actually took place—and weaponizing hyper-technical local waiver rules to insulate a mega-health system from answering for unlawful conduct on the merits.