Doe v. U.S. Dept. of Labor

• Decision Date: 06 September 2006
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 05-2449 (RBW).
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia
• Parties: John DOE,<SMALL><SUP>1</SUP></SMALL> Plaintiff, v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, et al., Defendants.

Page 156

451 F.Supp.2d 156

John DOE,¹ Plaintiff, v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No. 05-2449 (RBW).

United States District Court, District of Columbia.

September 6, 2006.

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J. Michael Hannon, Hannon Law Group, LLP, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff.

Marcia Berman, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Washington, DC, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

WALTON, District Judge.

The plaintiff, John Doe, brings this action against the United States Department of Labor ("DOL") and Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao,² seeking both injunctive relief and damages for alleged violations of the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a (2000). Complaint ("Compl.") at 1. Plaintiff Doe brings his complaint as a class action on behalf of himself and all similarly-affected federal workers who have had their Federal Employees Compensation Act, 5 U.S.C. § 8101, et. seq. (2000), cases decided by the DOL's Employee Compensation Appeals Board ("ECAB").³ Currently before the Court is the defendants' motion to dismiss or, in the alternative, for summary judgment ("Defs.' Mot.").⁴ For the following reasons, the Court denies the defendants' motion with respect to the injunctive relief sought by the plaintiff but grants the motion with respect to the plaintiffs claim for damages.

I. Background

The facts alleged are as follows. The plaintiff, a former Peace Corps volunteer, Compl. ¶ 3, became ill in 1997 while serving in the Corps in a foreign country, id. ¶ 17. He filed a notice of occupational disease with the DOL's Office of Workers' Compensation Programs ("OWCP"), which the OWCP appears to have accepted, and received medical treatment for his condition. Id. ¶ 17. Two years later, while working for a different government entity, the plaintiff experienced difficulty performing his job-related duties, and consequently filed a second claim with the OWCP on December 2, 1999, for the recurrence of his disability. Id. ¶ 18. The OWCP denied this second claim on February 7, 2001, id., and the plaintiff then appealed to the ECAB, id. ¶ 19.

On August 9, 2001, the ECAB Clerk's Office sent the plaintiff a notice informing him that his appeal had been docketed. Defs.' Mem. at 7 & Ex. A(4). Enclosed with that notice were three documents: (1) the ECAB's official Rules of Procedure, promulgated at 20 C.F.R. § 501 (2006), Defs.' Mem., Ex. A(1); (2) a document entitled "Board Procedures," which explains the ECAB appeals procedures and the methods by which its decisions are made public, Defs.' Mem., Ex. A(2); and (3) a document entitled "Processing an Appeal," which provides a more condensed outline of the ECAB appellate process, Defs.' Mem., Ex. A(3). The ECAB issued its decision in the plaintiffs case on April 23, 2002, identifying him by his actual name and disclosing facts from his medical history pertaining to the claimed recurrence of his disability. Compl. ¶ 20. In addition to being sent to the plaintiff himself,⁵ the decision was made accessible to the public in hard copy at the DOL's headquarters in Washington, D.C., along with copies that were made available to Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis and a copy that was posted on the ECAB's Internet website. Defs.' Mem. at 3 & Ex. B ¶ 6.

When the plaintiff first learned of the posting of his decision on the agency's website in October 2004, Compl. ¶ 21, he wrote to the ECAB's Office of Adjudicatory Services to request that his decision "be removed from the Internet, all publicly accessible databases, and in bound form immediately." Compl., Ex. A. The ECAB replied on October 26, 2004, denying the plaintiffs request and explaining the reasons why the ECAB believed it was both permitted and required to make its decisions public. See Compl., Ex. B. On December 9, 2004, the plaintiff sent a second request by email seeking the removal of his decision from all publicly available sources, to which the ECAB responded on December 22, 2004, again denying his request. See Compl., Ex. C.

The plaintiff then filed his complaint in this case on December 20, 2005. Compl at 1. Counts I and II of the complaint allege violations of the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a, and seek both damages and an injunction compelling the removal of the plaintiffs confidential medical information from all sources available to the public.⁶ ¶¶ 30-37. On March 6, 2006, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the complaint or, in the alternative, for an award of summary judgment. Defs.' Mot. at 1. Specifically, the defendants argue that the plaintiffs claim for injunctive relief should be dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), because he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies before bringing this action. Defs.' Mem. at 18-21. The defendants also seek summary judgment on the plaintiffs injunction claim on the grounds that the publication of the plaintiffs ECAB decision is permitted under an exception to the Privacy Act for "routine uses" of agency records, 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b)(3). Defs.' Mem. at 21. Finally, the defendants seek summary judgment with respect to plaintiffs damages claim on the basis that, inter alia, the alleged violations do not satisfy the standard of "intentional or willful" misconduct required for an award of damages under the Privacy Act.⁷ Defs.' Mem. at 16-18.

II. The Plaintiff's Request for Discovery

As an initial matter, the Court notes that because it looks to matters outside the pleadings to address several of the defendants' arguments, it will treat the defendants' motion, where appropriate, as one for summary judgment pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56. Fed. R.Civ.P. 12(b); see also Flynn v. Tiede-Zoeller, 412 F.Supp.2d 46, 50 (D.D.C.2006) (stating that "[t]he decision to convert a motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment . . . is committed to the sound discretion of the trial court") (citation omitted). In his opposition to the defendants' motion, the plaintiff requests that the Court provide notice if it intends to treat the defendants' motion as a motion for summary judgment, in order to give the parties "an opportunity to invoke the procedures of Rule 56." Pl.'s Opp. at 1. Specifically, the plaintiff contends that the question whether the defendants' conduct was "intentional or willful" under the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a(g)(4), "is a factual issue appropriately resolved by discovery," Pl.'s Opp. at 11. He therefore argues that to the extent the defendants' motion is a motion for summary judgment, it should be denied or, at least, time for discovery should be allowed. Id. at 1, 2, 11. For the reasons that follow, the Court concludes that the plaintiff has been provided with both sufficient notice that the defendants' motion might be treated as a motion for summary judgment and adequate opportunity to produce affidavits and other opposing material in response to such a motion. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c), (e), (f).

"When a district court converts a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to one for summary judgment, it must allow all parties both a reasonable opportunity to present all material made pertinent to such a motion by Rule 56 and a chance to pursue reasonable discovery." Taylor v. FDIC, 132 F.3d 753, 765 (D.C.Cir.1997) (quoting Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6)) (internal quotation marks and other citation omitted); see also Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986) (holding that a grant of summary judgment is mandated "after adequate time for discovery and upon motion, against a party who fails to make a showing sufficient to establish . . . an element essential to that party's case, . . . on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial") (citation omitted). Here, "the Court concludes that both parties have been afforded the opportunity to fully present support for their respective positions." Savage v. Scales, 310 F.Supp.2d 122, 129-30 (D.D.C.2004) (Walton, J.) (citations omitted). Although no discovery has yet taken place in this case, the defendants clearly indicated that they were moving, in the alternative, for summary judgment under Rule 56, Defs.' Mot. at 1, and provided within their motion a list of ostensibly undisputed material facts, Defs.' Mem. at 2-4, as well as multiple affidavits and accompanying exhibits in support of their arguments for summary judgment, Defs.' Mem., Exs. A-B. Indeed, the plaintiffs opposition acknowledges the defendants' "request for summary judgment" and observes that "[the] defendants' motion relies on documents and assertions of fact . . . [which] the Court [may] choose[ ] to accept . . . and thereby to treat [the] defendants' motion as a motion for summary judgment in the manner allowed by Rule 12(b)." Pl.'s Opp. at 1. Accordingly, the plaintiff was afforded adequate notice of the prospect that the Court would treat the defendants' motion as a motion for summary judgment and ample opportunity to respond to the defendants' factual assertions and materials in his opposition with opposing affidavits under Rule 56(c). See Americable Int'l v. Dep't of Navy, 129 F.3d 1271, 1274 n. 5 (D.C.Cir. 1997) (holding that it was "not unfair" to the plaintiff to treat the district court's dismissal as an entry of summary judgment "[g]iven that the motions were in the alternative for summary judgment and that the parties had the opportunity to submit . . . materials in support and in opposition") (citation omitted); Tele-Communications of Key West v. United States, 757 F.2d 1330, 1334 (D.C.Cir.1985) (stating that treating a motion as one for summary judgment is "fair to both parties [when] the procedural requirements of the applicable rules were observed"); Tri-Gen v. Int'l Union of Operating Eng'rs, 433 F.3d 1024, 1029 (7th Cir.2006) (holding that "[a]dequate notice is provided when the moving party frames its motion in the alternative as one...