King v. United States
| Decision Date | 21 September 2022 |
| Docket Number | 17-2101 |
| Citation | 49 F.4th 991 |
| Parties | James KING, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, et al., Defendants, Douglas Brownback; Todd Allen, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
ON BRIEF: Patrick Jaicomo, Anya Bidwell, Keith Neely, INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE, Arlington, Virginia, D. Andrew Portinga, MILLER JOHNSON, Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Appellant. Michael Shih, Mark B. Stern, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellees.
Before: BOGGS, CLAY, and ROGERS, Circuit Judges.
ROGERS, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which BOGGS, J., joined. CLAY, J. (pp. 994–1000), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.
This case dealing with the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) judgment bar is on remand from the Supreme Court, and we must determine whether our published holding in Harris v. United States , 422 F.3d 322 (6th Cir. 2005), should be overruled based on language in three subsequent Supreme Court cases. We squarely held in Harris that the FTCA judgment bar applies to other claims brought in the same action, including claims brought under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics , 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971). Harris has not been overruled by later precedent and, as a binding decision of this court, requires that we affirm the district court's dismissal of the plaintiff's remaining claims.
This case arises from plaintiff James King's erroneous apprehension by plainclothes FBI task force members in July 2014. See King v. United States , 917 F.3d 409, 416-18 (6th Cir. 2019). Defendants Allen and Brownback were searching for a felony home invasion suspect, relying on photographs of the suspect, a physical description, and the knowledge that the suspect bought a soft drink from a specific gas station every afternoon. King, who was a college student at the time, was walking in the area near the specific gas station in the afternoon when Allen and Brownback approached him. The parties dispute whether the defendants identified themselves as law enforcement. King initially answered the defendants’ questions about his identity and complied with their order to put his hands on his head, and Allen removed a pocketknife and wallet from King's pocket. King, who thought he was being mugged, tried to run away, but Allen tackled him and put him in a chokehold. King claims he briefly lost consciousness, and when he came to, he fought with Allen for over sixty seconds. King bit Allen's arm, and Allen repeatedly punched King on his face and head. A witness who called 911 said that Allen and Brownback were going to "kill this man" and that "they're suffocating him." Defendant Morris responded to the scene and told bystanders to delete their videos of the fight. Prosecutors later charged King, and a jury acquitted him on all counts.
King filed suit in federal district court, asserting a Bivens claim against Allen and Brownback for violation of King's Fourth Amendment rights, a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim against Allen, Brownback, and Morris based on Fourth Amendment violations, and an FTCA claim against the United States. The district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss all claims on the merits, and did not address the FTCA judgment bar, which provides that "[t]he judgment in an action under [the FTCA] shall constitute a complete bar to any action by the claimant, by reason of the same subject matter, against the employee of the government whose act or omission gave rise to the claim." 28 U.S.C. § 2676. King appealed. We held that the FTCA judgment bar did not preclude King's Bivens claim "because the district court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over Plaintiff's FTCA claim," so the FTCA claim was not resolved on the merits and the judgment bar was not triggered. King , 917 F.3d at 419. We proceeded to hold that the defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity on the Bivens claim. Id . at 422.
The United States appealed, and the Supreme Court reversed. The Court held that the district court's order dismissing King's FTCA claim "also went to the merits of the claim and thus could trigger the judgment bar." Brownback v. King , ––– U.S. ––––, 141 S. Ct. 740, 745, 209 L.Ed.2d 33 (2021). The Court noted the parties’ mutual understanding that the judgment on the FTCA claim "must have been a final judgment on the merits to trigger the [judgment] bar." Id . at 747. Because the district court's order "hinged" on whether King could establish the elements of an FTCA claim, the court reasoned, the order was on the merits for purposes of the judgment bar. See id . at 748. The Court concluded that its analysis did not change based on the fact that the elements of an FTCA claim also establish whether a district court has subject-matter jurisdiction over that claim. See id . at 749. The Court stated that "where, as here, pleading a claim and pleading jurisdiction entirely overlap, a ruling that the court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction may simultaneously be a judgment on the merits that triggers the judgment bar." Id .
At issue here is a footnote in the opinion that discussed how we should proceed on remand. The Court noted that King had argued "that the judgment bar does not apply to a dismissal of claims raised in the same lawsuit." Id . at 747 n.4. But because we had not addressed that argument, the Court declined to address it as well. The Court stated "[w]e leave it to the Sixth Circuit to address King's alternative arguments on remand." On remand, we requested supplemental briefing from the parties on whether the FTCA judgment bar applies to claims in the same lawsuit, which would require the dismissal of King's remaining Bivens claim.
Our previous decision in Harris compels our affirmance of the district court's dismissal of King's remaining claims. As here, the plaintiff in Harris argued that "the judgment bar does not apply where plaintiff has from the outset alleged his Bivens claims and sought a jury trial in the same lawsuit alleging FTCA causes of action." Harris , 422 F.3d at 334 (internal quotation omitted). We discussed the caselaw, FTCA statutory history, and equitable principles and proceeded to hold squarely that the FTCA judgment bar applies to other claims brought in the same lawsuit. Id . at 334-37. King does not argue that Harris is distinguishable on its facts, that the analysis in Harris was dictum rather than holding, that Harris was somehow inconsistent with previous precedent, or that we are somehow freed from treating our precedent as binding by the fact this case is on remand from the Supreme Court. Instead, King argues solely that three intervening Supreme Court cases warrant our overruling Harris . But the language in those three cases is not directly applicable to the issue in this case, as the United States pointed out, and King's reply brief did not further address the issue.
The three Supreme Court cases cited by plaintiff are Simmons v. Himmelreich, 578 U.S. 621, 136 S.Ct. 1843, 195 L.Ed.2d 106 (2016), Will v. Hallock , 546 U.S. 345, 126 S.Ct. 952, 163 L.Ed.2d 836 (2006), and Brownback , but none of those cases can be considered as having overruled our decision in Harris . First, Brownback is this very case, and nothing in the Court's opinion can be understood to indicate that the judgment bar cannot apply to claims in the same action. Instead, the Court explicitly left the question open for us to address on remand, see 141 S. Ct. at 747 n.4, which it would have been unlikely to have done if it thought its precedent clearly answered the question.
Second, although Simmons ’s holding took policies into account that could arguably support not applying the FTCA judgment bar, the Court was at pains to distinguish cases that are closer to this one than is Simmons . See 578 U.S. at 629-30, 136 S.Ct. 1843. The issue in Simmons was whether the FTCA judgment bar applies to claims that are explicitly exempted from the FTCA due to their inclusion in the "Exceptions" section of the statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2680. Id . at 623, 626, 136 S.Ct. 1843. The Court focused on the plain text of the "Exceptions" section and held that the judgment bar did not apply. See id . at 627, 136 S.Ct. 1843. Unlike Simmons , this case did not involve dismissal under one of the exceptions in § 2680. It is true that the Court noted the "strange result" that would occur if "the viability of a plaintiff's meritorious suit ... should turn on the order in which the suits are filed." Id . at 630-31, 136 S.Ct. 1843. The Court reasoned that a dismissal under one of the § 2680 exceptions had "no logical bearing on whether an employee can be held liable instead" of the Government, but explicitly distinguished other types of cases, like this one, in which the plaintiff otherwise failed to prove his claim. Id. at 629-30, 136 S.Ct. 1843. The Court stated that if the district court had dismissed the FTCA claim on the merits, "it would make little sense to give [the plaintiff] a second bite at the money-damages apple by allowing suit against the employees: [the plaintiff]’s first suit would have given him a fair chance to recover damages for his beating." Id . The Simmons decision thus cannot be read to overrule our holding in Harris , where Simmons applied only to the "Exceptions" provision of the FTCA and explicitly distinguished cases such as this one in which the FTCA claim is adjudicated on the merits.
Finally, Will also does not call into question our Harris decision, because the Court in Will rejected the doctrinally distinct jurisdictional argument that a district court's rejection of the judgment bar was immediately appealable under the collateral-order doctrine. See 546 U.S. at 355, 126 S.Ct. 952. In distinguishing the judgment bar from qualified immunity with respect to interlocutory appealability, the Court indeed noted that "the judgment bar can be raised only after a case under the...
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