Boyd v. Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton

Decision Date20 July 2017
Docket NumberNos. 15–CV–0692 & 15–CV–1043,s. 15–CV–0692 & 15–CV–1043
Citation164 A.3d 72
Parties John W. BOYD, Jr., Appellant, v. KILPATRICK TOWNSEND & STOCKTON, et al., Appellees.
CourtD.C. Court of Appeals

Keith Lively, for appellant.

Charles Davant IV, with John K. Villa, and Roy S. Awabdeh, Williams & Connolly LLP, for appellee Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, LLP.

Alan L. Balaran for appellee Dennis M. Gingold.

Before Thompson and McLeese, Associate Judges, and Belson, Senior Judge.

Opinion for the court by Senior Judge BELSON.

Opinion by Associate Judge McLeese, concurring in part, and dissenting in part, at page 84.

Belson, Senior Judge:

Appellant John W. Boyd, Jr., seeks reversal of trial court orders granting motions to dismiss brought under Superior Court Rule 12 (b)(6) by appellees Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, LLP (Kilpatrick Townsend) and Dennis M. Gingold (Gingold). Appellant argues that the trial court erred by (1) dismissing his claims for unjust enrichment against both appellees as time-barred; (2) dismissing his claim for quantum meruit (breach of an implied-in-fact contract)1 against Gingold as time-barred; and (3) determining that appellant had failed to state facts sufficient to establish a claim for breach of an implied-in-fact contract against Kilpatrick Townsend.

In concluding that appellant's unjust enrichment claims against both appellees and his breach of an implied-in-fact contract claim against Gingold were time-barred, the trial court applied the "last rendition of services" test, which posits that a claim accrues upon a plaintiff's last rendition of services to a defendant. On appeal, appellant argues that the trial court should not have applied this test, and asserts that the statute of limitations did not begin to run on his claims until the benefit of his services was conferred upon appellees, which, he argues, took place when appellees were awarded attorneys' fees in the underlying case. Under this theory, the aforementioned claims would not be barred by the three-year statutes of limitations for unjust enrichment and breach of an implied-in-fact contract.

We (1) affirm the trial court's dismissal of appellant's claim for breach of an implied-in-fact contract against Gingold as time-barred; (2) affirm the trial court's determination that appellant failed to state a claim for breach of an implied-in-fact contract against Kilpatrick Townsend; (3) vacate the trial court's dismissal of appellant's claims for unjust enrichment against both appellees as time-barred; and (4) remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I.

We summarize the facts as they are stated in appellant's complaint. Appellees Kilpatrick Townsend, an international law firm, and Gingold, a sole practitioner, represented the Native American plaintiffs in Cobell v. Salazar ,2 a class action lawsuit against the United States Department of the Interior for mismanagement of trust funds. In December 2009, the Cobell plaintiffs and the plaintiffs in a separate class action lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture concerning past discrimination against black farmers, Pigford v. Vilsack ,3 reached a joint settlement agreement with the Government. Appellant, who was then President of the National Black Farmers Association, became involved in Pigford by lobbying for minority farmers who had missed an earlier filing deadline to be compensated under a consent decree.4 A second lawsuit was filed on behalf of these late-filers, and through the efforts of appellant and many others, was eventually combined with the other Cobell and Pigford litigants into a joint settlement agreement. The settlement agreement compensating the Cobell and Pigford plaintiffs required funding by a congressional appropriation.

On March 5, 2010, John Loving, a government relations advisor at Kilpatrick Townsend, contacted appellant and requested his assistance in lobbying for the passage of the Claims Resolution Act (CRA), the funding bill for the Cobell and Pigford plaintiffs. Mr. Loving "asked [appellant] to use his extensive contacts ... to drum up the necessary support for the ... legislation." Appellant and Mr. Loving did not discuss appellant's fees or any specific tasks to be performed. Appellant also spoke with Geoffrey Rempel, an accountant the Cobell plaintiffs hired, in order to coordinate lobbying efforts.

Soon thereafter, on June 1, 2010, appellant met Messrs. Rempel and Gingold for lunch at the Laughing Man Tavern, a pub in the District of Columbia. Appellant's complaint states that:

[During that lunch at the Laughing Man Tavern, appellant] specifically told both Defendant Gingold and Mr. Rempel that he expected to be paid for this efforts to secure funding for the Cobell settlement. In response, Defendant Gingold encouraged [appellant] to continue working with and for Defendants. Defendant Gingold never indicated to [appellant] at any time at the restaurant, or at any subsequent time thereafter, that [appellant] would not be compensated for his efforts.... Every time [appellant] raised issues of compensation or the amount of such compensation, Defendant Gingold always indicated to him that compensation should not concern him—clearly indicating to [appellant] that payment would be forthcoming. Indeed, according to Defendant Gingold, the issue of payment was not whether [appellant] would be compensated, but when Eloise Cobell would focus on the amount of compensation for him. (emphasis omitted).

After the lunch meeting, appellant continued to lobby for passage of the CRA, which President Obama signed into law on December 8, 2010. The complaint alleged no further communications between appellant and appellees after the bill was signed.5

II.

After appellant learned that the Pigford litigation team did not plan to pay him for the services he allegedly rendered for them concerning the CRA's passage, he filed a lawsuit against them on November 21, 2012, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.6 On August 2, 2013, the District Court dismissed appellant's lawsuit, having concluded that his allegations of breach of an implied-in-fact contract and quantum meruit failed to state a cause of action, as they consisted largely of "naked allegations of verbal promises"7 and conclusory statements "devoid of factual details."8

On May 6, 2014, well after the District Court had dismissed his complaint against the Pigford counsel, appellant filed his complaint against appellees in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Subsequently, appellees filed motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted under Super. Ct. Civ. R. 12 (b)(6). The trial court granted those motions in separate orders on June 11, 2015.

Regarding Gingold's motion to dismiss, the trial court determined that, assuming appellant's allegations were true, he had sufficiently pled claims for unjust enrichment and breach of an implied-in-fact contract. However, the trial court determined that appellant's claims against Gingold were time-barred under the "last rendition of services" test because appellant's work for Gingold had ended, at the latest, on December 8, 2010, when President Obama signed the CRA into law. The trial court noted that appellant had not "delivered a bill to the defendants during the time period he lobbied for the passage of the CRA" or "within a reasonable time after his services ended." Indeed, the court observed, appellant did not demand payment from appellees until April 28, 2014, when his attorney sent a letter demanding payment accompanied by a draft copy of the complaint that was filed in the Superior Court several days later. The court rejected appellant's argument that his claims accrued when appellees received the "benefit of his services" on the date they were awarded attorneys' fees on July 27, 2011.9

Regarding Kilpatrick Townsend's motion to dismiss, the trial court concluded that appellant had presented, as he had regarding Gingold, sufficient facts to state a claim for unjust enrichment against it; however, unlike appellant's claim against Gingold, had not done so for breach of an implied-in-fact contract because appellant had failed to adequately allege that Gingold or anyone else had acted as an authorized representative of Kilpatrick Townsend with the authority to bind it to an agreement. As with Gingold, the trial court concluded that appellant's claim for unjust enrichment against Kilpatrick Townsend was time-barred under the "last rendition of services" test. Appellant filed a timely notice of appeal.

III.

We address three questions: (1) whether the trial court erred in dismissing appellant's unjust enrichment claims against both appellees as time-barred; (2) whether the trial court erred in dismissing appellant's claim against Gingold for breach of an implied-in-fact contract as time-barred; and (3) whether the trial court erred in dismissing appellant's claim against Kilpatrick Townsend for breach of an implied-in-fact contract, largely on the basis that, contrary to appellant's allegations, appellees did not maintain an agency relationship with one another while working together on Cobell that provided Gingold with the authority to bind Kilpatrick Townsend to an agreement with appellant.

We review a dismissal under Super. Ct. Civ. R. 12 (b)(6)de novo . Poola v. Howard Univ. , 147 A.3d 267, 276 (D.C. 2016). "Like the trial court, this court accepts all of the allegations in the complaint as true, and must construe all facts and inferences in favor of the plaintiff." Murray v. Wells Fargo Home Mortg. , 953 A.2d 308, 316 (D.C. 2008). We "[do] not consider matters outside the pleadings unless [we] treat[ ] the motion as one for summary judgment." Equal Rights Ctr. v. Props. Int'l , 110 A.3d 599, 603 (D.C. 2015) (citing Grimes v. District of Columbia , 89 A.3d 107, 111 (D.C. 2014) ). "[A] complaint must plead ‘enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on...

To continue reading

Request your trial
10 cases
  • Doe v. Lee
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of Columbia
    • February 14, 2020
    ...another to act on his or her behalf subject to his or her control, and the other consents to do so." Boyd v. Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, 164 A.3d 72, 82 (D.C. 2017) (internal quotations omitted and alterations adopted). Relevant factors in assessing the existence of an agency relationsh......
  • George v. The George Wash. Univ.
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — District of Columbia
    • May 27, 2022
    ...for years into the future, no matter the financial circumstances of GW, let alone changing global conditions due to a pandemic. See Boyd, 164 A.3d at 83 dismissal of implied-in-fact contract claim because plaintiff did not show representative possessed “authority to bind” organization “to a......
  • Proulx v. 1400 Pa. Ave., Se, LLC, 16-CV-1200
    • United States
    • D.C. Court of Appeals
    • January 10, 2019
    ...elsewhere." (citation omitted) ). We review the trial court's findings of fact for clear error. See, e.g. , Boyd v. Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton , 164 A.3d 72, 78 (D.C. 2017) ; Ballard v. Dornic , 140 A.3d 1147, 1150 (D.C. 2016). The trial court did not err in its determination that the C......
  • Shaffer v. George Wash. Univ.
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit
    • March 8, 2022
    ...the conduct of the parties.’ " Camara v. Mastro's Rests. LLC , 952 F.3d 372, 375 (D.C. Cir. 2020) (quoting Boyd v. Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton , 164 A.3d 72, 81 (D.C. 2017) )."[T]he relationship between a university and its students is contractual in nature." Basch v. George Washington U......
  • Request a trial to view additional results

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT