The courts alternative Rule 12(b)(6) holding also passed on the substance of Kings FTCA claims, as a 12(b)(6) ruling concerns the merits. Id. Specifically, King maintains that Section 2676 codified res judicata because it directly borrowed phrases like same subject matter and complete bar from the common-law principle. From there, police took James to jail, where he stayed until he could make bail. does not permit a plaintiff to recover double payment). Or both. As a threshold question, the Sixth Circuit assessed whether the dismissal of Kings FTCA claims triggered the judgment bar and thus blocked the parallel Bivens claims. at 2728. Brownback contends that allowing the Bivens action to proceed would weaken the judgment bar and strain resources by enabling a future plaintiff to pursue a Bivens claim and then relitigate the same facts in a separate FTCA action if the Bivens claim fails. Brownback asserts that pursuant to Section 2676 of the FTCA, a judgment in an FTCA claim bars the claimant from suing based on the same subject matter the employee of the government whose actions were the basis of the claim. However, a plaintiff must plausibly allege all jurisdictional elements. That means a plaintiff must plausibly allege that the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant under state law both to survive a merits determination under Rule 12(b)(6) and to establish subject-matter jurisdiction. In the alternative, they moved for summary judgment. at 43233. The Court returned to action last week, issuing a unanimous decision in one case: Brownback v. King (No. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously declined to create a new form of legal immunity for law enforcement, allowing James King, who was brutally attacked by law enforcement officers in. Typically, the federal government cant be sued for damages, but the FTCA waives this sovereign immunity if the United States, were it a private individual, could be held liable in the state where the tort occurred. A number of members of Congress, scholars, and advocates urged the High Court not to create a loophole for government officials seeking to escape accountability. In 2014, college student James King is beaten up by FBI agents who had the wrong guy. Whether a final judgment in favor of the United States in an action brought under Section 1346(b)(1) of the Federal Tort Claims Act, on the ground that a private person would not be liable to the claimant under state tort law for the injuries alleged, bars a claim under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics that is brought by the same claimant, based on the same injuries, and against the same governmental employees whose acts gave rise to the claimants FTCA claim. IJ fights for the right to speak freely about the issues that matter most to ordinary people and to defend the free flow of information essential to democratic government and free enterprise. Individual demands for relief within a lawsuit, by contrast, are claims. See Blacks Law Dictionary, at 311 (2019) (defining a claim as the part of a complaint in a civil action specifying what relief the plaintiff asks for); Blacks Law Dictionary, at 333 (1933) (defining a claim as any demand held or asserted as of right or cause ofaction). at 26. By 2001, there were 35. See Restatement of Judgments 49, Comment b, at 195196. I cover criminal justice, entrepreneurship, and offbeat lawsuits. Pfander & Aggarwal, Bivens, the Judgment Bar, and the Perils of Dynamic Textualism, 8 U. St.Thomas L.J. at 25. While waiving sovereign immunity so parties can sue the United States directly for harms caused by its employees, the FTCA made it more difficult to sue the employees themselves by adding a judgment bar provision. If the judgment determines that the plaintiff has no cause of action based on rules of substantive law, then it is on the merits. Restatement of Judgments 49, Comment a, p. 193 (1942). . He also sued the officers individually under the implied cause of action recognized by Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Argued November 9, 2020Decided February 25, 2021. [O]ver the years the meaning of the term judgment on the merits has gradually undergone change and now encompasses some judgments that do not pass upon the substantive merits of a claim and hence do not (in many jurisdictions) entail claim-preclusive effect. Semtek, 531 U.S., at 502. The one complication in this case is that it involves overlapping questions about sovereign immunity and subject-matter jurisdiction. The defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim. Leadership . Brownback v. King | Supreme Court | 02-25-2021 | www.anylaw.com I write separately to emphasize that, while many lower courts have uncritically held that the FTCAs judgment bar applies to claims brought in the same action, there are reasons to question that conclusion. 510. Id. King pursued only the constitutional claims on appeal, but the government, representing the officers, asserted that those claims were . Leadership . Id. 2676 that precludes him from raising separate claims under Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents on appeal. at 2934. But in recent decades, the federal government has found a work around: joint task forces. When triggered, the judgment bar precludes later action[s], not claims in the same suit. The pictures they had proved that the fugitive looked nothing like James. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. This, even though state torts and constitutional claims have different elements and are designed to remedy different rights. The underlying facts of Brownback v. King are straightforward. Importantly, the Court does not today decide whether an order resolving the merits of an FTCA claim precludes other claims arising out of the same subject matter in the same suit. The District Court passed on the substance of Kings FTCA claims and found them implausible. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in a concurrence, the clash of interpretations over the FTCAs judgment bar merits far closer consideration than it has thus far received. Adopting the governments interpretation produces seemingly unfair results by precluding potentially meritorious claims when a plaintiffs FTCA claims fail for unrelated reasons. In this case, Kings failure to show bad faith, which is irrelevant to his constitutional claims, means a jury will never decide whether the officers violated Kings constitutional rights when they stopped, searched, and hospitalized him., This interpretation of FTCA, Sotomayor added, also appears inefficient since it incentivizes plaintiffs to bring separate suits, first against federal employees directly and second against the United States under the FTCA, which would undermine the judgment bars purpose to prevent duplicative litigation., Although todays decision appears at first glance to deal a blow to constitutional accountability, in reality, the Supreme Court teed up the central issue in this case for the federal appeals court to reconsider, said Institute for Justice Attorney Patrick Jaicomo, who argued on behalf of King before the Supreme Court last November. Rather than seriously engaging with the issue, as the Supreme Court asked, the Sixth Circuit unthinkingly applied outdated caselaw, becoming the sixth federal appeals court to do so. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela v. Helmerich & Payne Intl Drilling Co., 581 U.S. ___, ___ (2017) (slip op., at 7). Contact . Id. Here, however, in the unique context of the FTCA, all elements of a meritorious claim are also jurisdictional. Almost seven years ago, King, then a 21-year-old college student, was walking to his internship in Grand Rapids, Michigan when he was mistaken for a fugitive by two plainclothes officers: Grand Rapids Police Detective Todd Allen and FBI Special Agent Douglas Brownback. The officers had a vague description of the fugitive: a 26-year-old white male between 510 and 63 with glasses. Supreme Court Refuses To Create New Legal Shield For Cops Who - Forbes To vindicate his rights, King then filed a lawsuit against the federal government, under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), and against the individual officers under Bivens, a 1971 Supreme Court case that lets individuals sue federal agents for violating their Fourth Amendment rights. After temporarily losing consciousness, King bit Allens arm. 19-546 (U.S. filed Aug. 24, 2020). Petitioners interpretation, by contrast, appears inefficient. Id. Id. 5 The parties disagree about how much the judgment bar expanded on common-law preclusion, but those disagreements are not relevant to our decision. IJ believes that all people have the right to earn an honest living in the occupation of their choice without arbitrary, unnecessary, or protectionist government interference. 6 We use the term on the merits as it was used in 1946, to mean a decision that passed on the substance of a particular claim. . See n.4, supra. If James had been convicted or pleaded guilty, he could have faced decades in prison, and it would have been nearly impossible for him to sue the officers and hold them to account for their actions that violated his constitutional rights. Justin Pulliam, a citizen journalist in Texas, was arrested and prosecuted for his reporting on the activities of the Fort Bend County Sheriff. . DOUGLAS BROWNBACK, etal., PETITIONERS v. JAMES KING. Now, IJ is asking the Supreme Court to weigh in and deny the government one of its many tools to avoid the Constitution. A look at every case we have filed, past and present. A unanimous Supreme Court on Thursday issued a limited ruling on the Federal Tort Claims Act's judgment bar. Thankfully, a jury acquitted James of all charges. Office of the Solicitor General (202) 514-2203. Id. . The case, Brownback v. King, which will be argued on Monday, asks the Supreme Court to decide the scope of the FTCA's judgment bar. See, e.g., G. & C. Merriam Co. v. Saalfield 241 U.S. 22, 29 (1916) (Obviously, the rule for decision applies only when the subsequent action has been brought). through which government officials can escape accountability when they violate someones constitutional rights. at 2634. Task force officers misidentified and hospitalized James King, an innocent college student. King sued the United States under the FTCA, alleging that the officers committed six torts under Michigan law. 9 The District Court did not have the power to issue its summary judgment ruling because that decision was not necessary for the court to determine its own jurisdiction. Ruiz, 536 U.S., at 628. Brownback contends that applying the judgment bar in this case aligns with Congresss goal of avoiding the burden of duplicative litigation and lessening unnecessary burdens on federal resources. This preserves federal resources while allowing tort claimants to decide whether to bring FTCA claims at all. To take one example of how rapidly the use of task forces has expanded, the FBI and NYPD formed their first terrorism joint task force in 1979. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. at 17. This brief video provides an overview of James Kings case: Institute for Justice attorneys Patrick Jaicomo, Anya Bidwell, and Keith Neely represent James King. SCOTUS wades into two law enforcement misconduct cases | AAJ - justice Id. King counters that the judgment bar should be interpreted to incorporate the doctrine of res judicata, which precludes subsequent claims only if a court with jurisdiction has entered a judgment on the merits. George Floyd and Beyond: How Qualified Immunity Enables Bad Policing, U.S. Supreme Court Will Hear Police Accountability Case, Innocent Man Beaten Mercilessly by Police Petitions Supreme Court to Restore Constitutional Accountability, After Police Brutally Beat & Hospitalized James King, The Government Closed Ranks and Is Using a Legal Shell Game To Avoid Accountability, Supreme Court Asked to Strike Down Immunity for Police Task Force Officers Who Brutally Beat Innocent College Student, Group of immigrant nurses ask Supreme Court to hear case against prosecutor who brought bogus claims against them, Arrested and Prosecuted for his Reporting, Citizen Journalist Defends His First Amendment Rights with Federal Lawsuit, An Officers Lies Ruined the Lives of Dozens, Yet The Courts Protect Her from Accountability. King v. Brownback Taking on The Shell Games That Allow Federal/State Task Force Members To Violate Your Rights In 2020, Brownback v. King became the first case in IJ's Project on Immunity and Accountability argued before the United States Supreme Court. We granted certiorari, 589 U.S. ___ (2020), and nowreverse. This issue merits far closer consideration than it has thus far received. at 27. at 420. The court then explained that Michigan law provides qualified immunity for Government employees who commit intentional torts but act in subjective good faith. A claim is actionable if it alleges the six elements of 1346(b), which are that the claim be: [1] against the United States, [2] for money damages, .