Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.” MEMORANDUM OF DECISION & ORDER Much of the complaint here is fictitious, indeed, overtly so. One supposed plaintiff, “XYZ, Inc.” (quotation marks original) is not an entity, but a concept. “Plaintiff, ‘XYZ, Inc.,’” counsel asserts “is a licensed home health care services agency/assisted living provider to be created and intended to represent the operator of Whisper Mills Assisted Living at the Saint James facility to be located on Mills Pond Road….” Complaint, Docket Entry (“DE”) 1 3 (emphasis added). The absence of syntactic unity highlights a patent falsehood: as a placeholder for an entity “to be created” and “intended to represent” an as-yet-nonexistent “operator” of a facility “to be located” in the defendant township, it cannot be true that XYZ “is a licensed home health care services agency.” Id. 4. It isn’t anything. And it certainly can’t hold a license. And that’s not all. The complaint provides for another 86 invented plaintiffs that are nothing more than wishful thinking: “‘John Doe’ and ‘Jane Doe’ Nos. 9 through 97,” the complaint asserts, “are unidentified persons, the names being fictitious but are intended to represent other future residents of Whisper Mills Assisted Living at St. James facility proposed to be located on Mills Pond Road in the Town of Smithtown, New York.”1 Id. 5 (emphasis added). Again, counsel proffers litigants that exist only in the imagination of the complaint’s drafters: a group of unnamed, fictitious persons who, though oddly specific in number, might, one day, if they truly exist, reside in a facility that has yet to be built.2 All of this flagrantly violates “the principal that ‘[f]ederal courts may not decide questions that cannot affect the rights of litigants in the case before them or give opinions advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts.’” United States v. Jimenez, 895 F.3d 228, 232 (2d Cir. 2018) (quoting Chafin v. Chafin, 568 U.S. 165, 172 (2013)). Therefore, none of the conjectural plaintiffs may press claims before this Court. The real, living plaintiffs named in the complaint fare only slightly better than their fictional counterparts. The six identified individuals do have the advantage of being actual people, but their reason for being here mirrors that of Does No. 9 through 97. Those individuals “are intended future residents of the Whisper Mills Assisted Living at St. James facility proposed to be located on Mills Pond Road.” DE 1 4. So the thought is this: these individuals subjectively intend to reside, at some unknown time in the future, at a facility that does not yet exist. Of course, much can happen between now and then, including the possibility that the facility may never be completed, obtain licensure or, if completed and licensed, won’t be to their liking based on the cost, the paint color, or one of a thousand other reasons. Finally, the imaginary XYZ corporation has a putative real world counterpart: plaintiff Mills Pond Group LLC, which the complaint advises “is a New York State limited liability company which develops assisted living residences.” Id. 18. Even here, though, there’s a problem, as the complaint further asserts that, in conducting this activity, “Mills Pond reviews land use regulations, conducts studies and investigations, contracts for the acquisition, either by purchase or by lease, of real property and applies for and obtains land use approvals for assisted living facilities to be operated by ‘XYZ, Inc.‘” Id. (emphasis added). Wait now, that can’t be right: we know that XYZ has been fabricated for the purpose of this litigation. It can’t be that Mills Pond historically “develops assisted living residences” as a regular course of business on behalf of an entity that doesn’t yet exist. Furthermore, a sworn document submitted by plaintiffs on this motion makes clear that Mills Pond has no special affinity for creating assisted living facilities; rather, Mills Pond had an initial plan to build “condominium-type residences” on the parcel, but shifted to its current iteration to avoid zoning hurdles. DE 18-1 15. After eliminating the silliness, what remains of this case is this: plaintiff Mills Pond is a closely-held development company that’s attempting to construct an assisted living facility on property zoned for residential use. In sum, the complaint makes clear that, sometime in 2023, Mills Pond’s application for a zoning exception took a bad turn, and Mills Pond would like this Court to enforce state law on its behalf, acting as an appellate agency in the zoning process. In fact, Mills Pond believes that its likelihood of success in this litigation is so very certain, and the resulting harm sufficiently irremediable, that it is entitled to the extraordinary remedy of a preliminary injunction against the Town and the public officials it has haled before this Court. Defendants seek dismissal. This opinion follows. Background Despite the expansion of page limits upon the parties’ request, see DE 14, neither side opted to provide the Court with statements of fact in their memoranda, instead opting to incorporate the complaint by reference. As such, relevant factual portions of the complaint — devoid of the ceaseless legal arguments and conclusions interwoven therein3 — are briefly summarized here. Mills Pond purchased a nine-acre parcel of land located, unsurprisingly, on Mills Pond Road in Saint James, New York in August 2019, in an area zoned only for residential development. Id.
