Payne v. Government of Dist. of Columbia

• Decision Date: 15 June 1977
• Docket Number: No. 74-1861,74-1861
• Parties: Sheila PAYNE, next best friend of Franklin Payne, a minor, et al., Appellants, v. GOVERNMENT OF the DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 809

559 F.2d 809

182 U.S.App.D.C. 188

Sheila PAYNE, next best friend of Franklin Payne, a minor,

et al., Appellants,

v.

GOVERNMENT OF the DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al.

No. 74-1861.

United States Court of Appeals,

District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued Sept. 8, 1975.

Decided June 7, 1977.

As Amended June 15, 1977.

Richard J. Hopkins, Washington, D.C., with whom Christine Dennis LeFlore, Washington, D.C., was on the brief for appellants.

Leo N. Gorman, Asst. Corp. Counsel for the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C., with whom C. Francis Murphy, Corp. Counsel, Louis P. Robbins, Principal Asst. Corp. Counsel, and Richard W. Barton, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Washington, D.C., were on the brief, for appellees.

Before TAMM, ROBINSON and MacKINNON, Circuit Judges.

Per Curiam Statement.

Opinion filed by Circuit Judge SPOTTSWOOD W. ROBINSON, III.

Concurring Opinion filed by Circuit Judge TAMM.

Opinion filed by Circuit Judge MacKINNON, concurring specially.

PER CURIAM:

Judge Tamm, Judge Robinson and Judge MacKinnon file separate opinions. Judge Tamm concurs in the result reached by Judge Robinson in his opinion. Judge MacKinnon concurs in the result reached by Judge Tamm in his opinion. The judgment appealed from is reversed, and the case is remanded to the District Court for further proceedings.

So ordered.

SPOTTSWOOD W. ROBINSON, III, Circuit Judge:

The gravamen of this litigation is the claim that Officer David Lea, Jr., of the Metropolitan Police Department, wilfully and maliciously aimed and several times discharged a firearm ¹ at appellants ² while they occupied an automobile. Asserting an infringement thereby of rights secured by the Fifth Amendment, ³ appellants filed an action in the District Court seeking damages from Officer Lea and the District of Columbia. ⁴ Jurisdiction of the court was invoked under the general federal-question statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1331(a), ⁵ and the complaint demanded for each appellant $15,000 as compensation for alleged injuries, largely emotional, from the shooting and another $15,000 as a punitive award.

The District of Columbia moved to dismiss the action on the grounds that it presented no federal question and that no judgment exceeding $10,000 for any appellant would be justified. ⁶ The District Court agreed on both counts and granted the motion. The court held that "to a legal certainty . . . no (appellant) is entitled to or could properly recover a judgment in excess of $10,000. . . ." ⁷ The court further held "that the present case is a tort action for assault and that (appellants) have failed to allege or indicate any circumstances which raise their claims to a constitutional dimension sufficient to confer jurisdiction on this Court," ⁸ and "that (appellants') constitutional claims are immaterial, insubstantial, and made solely for the purpose of invoking the jurisdiction of this Court. . . ." ⁹ For these reasons, the court dismissed the action "for lack of jurisdiction," ¹⁰ after which this appeal was taken.

Appellate review thus summoned is quite narrow. Since the dismissal was predicated upon an absence of federal-court jurisdiction, the single question before the District Court was whether jurisdiction was to be found. ¹¹ And since jurisdiction rested solely on Section 1331(a), the answer to the question depended upon the ability of appellants' claims to survive each of the two tests which that section erected. ¹² Did the action "arise under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States"? ¹³ Did the matter in controversy exceed "the sum or value of $10,000"? ¹⁴ In the view that both of these requirements were satisfied, I join in reversal of the District Court's judgment of dismissal and remand of the case for further proceedings.

I

The leading precedent on the first component of general federal-question jurisdiction is Bell v. Hood. ¹⁵ There parties sued agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the District Court for the Southern District of California ¹⁶ for damages on the theory that Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights had been invaded. ¹⁷ The District Court dismissed the suit for want of federal jurisdiction and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. ¹⁸ On further review, however, the Supreme Court reversed. Because of its controlling importance in the case at bar, I pause to analyze the Bell decision in some depth.

The Court began by rejecting the argument that because the complaint charged a trespass actionable under state law, it did not raise a federal question:

Whether or not the complaint as drafted states a common law action in trespass made actionable by state law, it is clear from the way it was drawn that petitioners seek recovery squarely on the ground that respondents violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. It charges that the respondents conspired to do acts prohibited by these amendments and alleges that respondents' conduct pursuant to the conspiracy resulted in damages in excess of $3,000. ¹⁹ It cannot be doubted therefore that it was the pleaders' purpose to make violation of these constitutional provisions the basis of this suit. Before deciding that there is no jurisdiction, the District Court must look to the way the complaint is drawn to see if it is drawn so as to claim a right to recover under the Constitution and laws of the United States. For to that extent "the party who brings a suit is master to decide what law he will rely upon and . . . does determine whether he will bring a 'suit arising under' the . . . (Constitution or laws) of the United States by his declaration or bill." . . . Though the mere failure to set out the federal or constitutional claims as specifically as petitioners have done would not always be conclusive against the party bringing the suit, where the complaint, as here, is so drawn as to seek recovery directly under the Constitution or laws of the United States, the federal court, but for two possible exceptions . . ., must entertain the suit. ²⁰

These exceptions, the Court said, "are that a suit may sometimes be dismissed for want of jurisdiction where the alleged claim under the Constitution or federal statutes clearly appears to be immaterial and made solely for the purpose of obtaining jurisdiction or where such a claim is wholly insubstantial and frivolous." ²¹ The Court found, however, that the federal claims there involved were neither immaterial ²² nor insubstantial. ²³ And, critically for present purposes the Court sharply distinguished the jurisdictional question presented for immediate resolution from the merits questions unavoidably pretermitted for determination at later stages of the litigation:

Jurisdiction, therefore, is not defeated as respondents seem to contend, by the possibility that the averments might fail to state a cause of action on which petitioners could actually recover. For it is well settled that the failure to state a proper cause of action calls for a judgment on the merits and not for a dismissal for want of jurisdiction. Whether the complaint states a cause of action on which relief could be granted is a question of law and just as issues of fact it must be decided after and not before the court has assumed jurisdiction over the controversy. If the court does later exercise its jurisdiction to determine that the allegations in the complaint do not state a ground for relief, then dismissal of the case would be on the merits, not for want of jurisdiction. ²⁴

Applying these principles, then, the Court concluded that there was jurisdiction:

Whether the petitioners are entitled to recover depends upon an interpretation of 28 U.S.C. § 41(1) ²⁵ and on a determination of the scope of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments' protection from unreasonable searches and deprivations of liberty without due process of law. Thus, the right of the petitioners to recover under their complaint will be sustained if the Constitution and laws of the United States are given one construction and will be defeated if they are given another. For this reason the District Court has jurisdiction. ²⁶

The instant case is not essentially different from Bell. The core issues germinated by appellants' complaint are whether the alleged attack by Officer Lea impinged on rights secured by the Fifth Amendment and, if so, whether there is a federal remedy by which those transgressions can be vindicated by awards of damages. Appellants invoke constitutional protection as a matter of Fifth Amendment liberty against malicious ruptures of bodily and mental integrity by police officers; ²⁷ they also insist that a cause of action for redress of such invasions springs from the same constitutional source. As was the situation in Bell, "the right of (appellants) to recover under their complaint will be sustained if the Constitution . . . of the United States (is) given one construction and will be defeated if (it is) given another." ²⁸ Unless appellants' action falls within one of the two exceptions delineated in Bell, the federal-question component of Section 1331(a) is present.

The District Court believed that appellants' Fifth Amendment claims fell within Bell's first exception as constitutional supplications " clearly appear(ing) to be immaterial and made solely for the purpose of obtaining jurisdiction." ²⁹ Since the judgment reciting that conclusion is unaccompanied by an explanatory opinion or memorandum, I am unable to discern why the court felt so. The District of Columbia argues that this is a simple tort case the outcome of which will turn exclusively on common law principles, and that it is "inconceivable that appellants might prevail on their constitutional claims and lose on their common law tort claims." ³⁰ By this approach, it is said that the constitutional cast of appellants' complaint is immaterial to the action and was imparted only in an endeavor to get into the District Court. I find this argument unimpressive. It may be that, in situations where the...