Ambase Corp. v. United States

61 Fed. Cl. 794, 2004 U.S. Claims LEXIS 229, 2004 WL 1941204
CourtUnited States Court of Federal Claims
DecidedAugust 31, 2004
DocketNo. 93-531C
StatusPublished
Cited by27 cases

This text of 61 Fed. Cl. 794 (Ambase Corp. v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Federal Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ambase Corp. v. United States, 61 Fed. Cl. 794, 2004 U.S. Claims LEXIS 229, 2004 WL 1941204 (uscfc 2004).

Opinion

ORDER AND OPINION

SMITH, Senior Judge.

The Court has before it Plaintiff Ambase Corporation’s Motion to Dismiss the FDIC and to Define the Measure of Carteret’s Contract Damages, filed with this Court on September 17, 2003. The Motion presents a question of the jurisdiction of the United States Court of Federal Claims in Winstar eases, and the Court provides this opinion after extended briefing and an oral argument on the matter. Although the Motion was presented as a single brief, for purposes of clarity the Court will separate the arguments into two separate motions, one to dismiss the FDIC and the other to review the exact value of the Carteret receivership. The factual basis for these claims was outlined extensively in this Court’s previous opinion in this matter, Ambase Corp. v. United States, 58 Fed.Cl. 32 (2003), and will not be repeated here.

I. MOTION TO DISMISS THE FDIC

The first of the two arguments advanced by the Plaintiffs’ Motion is that the FDIC must be dismissed as an Intervenor/Plaintiff. The Plaintiffs argue both that the FDIC does not have standing to seek any recovery of losses suffered by the government insurance fund, and that the FDIC has a conflict of interest preventing it from zealously pursuing the recovery of damages that exceed the value of the receivership deficit. This conflict stems from the FDIC’s administration of the receivership which Plaintiffs allege has created a deficit that far exceeds what it would have been under a more responsible administrator, and threatens to preclude the Plaintiffs from recovering any damages as the result of a recent change in Federal Circuit law. This alleged mismanagement serves as the basis for the second motion, addressed below.

The issue of dismissal was considered fully at a status conference attended by all parties, and need not be addressed at length here. In this case, the FDIC is an indispensable party as the successor to the rights of Carteret, which include the breach of contract claims that the shareholder Plaintiffs seek to pursue derivatively. The claims of Carteret cannot proceed without Carteret or its legal successor (in this case, the FDIC) as a party to the litigation. See, e.g., Ross v. Bernhard, 396 U.S. 531, 538, 90 S.Ct. 733, 24 L.Ed.2d 729 (1970) (In a shareholder’s derivative suit, “[t]he corporation is a necessary party to the action; without it, the case cannot proceed.”). Although counsel for the FDIC and counsel for the shareholder plaintiffs may have differing views of how to proceed in this litigation, such differences are not inherent to Winstar litigation and do not merit a change in the basic law of intervention and representation. The Motion to Dismiss the FDIC is DENIED.

II. MOTION TO DEFINE THE MEASURE OF CARTERET’S CONTRACT DAMAGES

The second argument in the Plaintiffs’ Motion addresses this Court’s jurisdiction to review the FDIC’s administration of the Carteret receivership when determining the value of the damages to be awarded to the Plaintiffs as a result of the breach of contract by the government. See Ambase Corp., 58 Fed.Cl. 32 (finding liability on the part of the Defendant for breach of contract). According to the FDIC, the Carteret receivership is, as of December 31, 2002, operating under a deficit of $229 million. (FDIC Report 3, Projected Receivership Results using Adjusted 12/31/2002 Balances, Ex. A to Ambase’s Reply Brief in Supp. of Its Mot. to Define the Measure of Carteret’s Contract Damages.) Pursuant to the Federal Circuit’s decision in Bailey v. United States, 341 F.3d 1342 (Fed.Cir.2003), discussed in greater detail below, the amount of damages recovered by the Plaintiff must be reduced by the amount of the receivership deficit. Thus, were the Plaintiffs to be awarded the full franchise value of the thrift at the time of the breach ($266 million, according to the Plaintiffs), subtracting the $229 million deficit from that sum would leave the Plaintiffs with a $37 million recovery. Given that the size of the deficit is increasing considerably with every passing year due to the accumulation [796]*796of interest, the deficit might well swallow the amount of possible recovery, rendering this a case without a controversy and requiring the dismissal of the complaint. See Bailey, 341 F.3d at 1347. Plaintiffs argue that fairness demands that this Court review the receivership deficit to ensure that their damages award is not unduly reduced as the result of mismanagement by the FDIC.

Plaintiffs posit several ways in which the FDIC has mismanaged the receivership resulting in an unfair reduction of the amount of their potential damages award. For instance, they claim they can prove that a 1995 tax assessment of $32 million was erroneously assessed. By the end of 2002, this assessment had grown to $76.35 million with interest and penalties for late filing. (Ambase’s Reply Brief at 2.) The bulk of the remaining deficit is the result of compounded interest being charged on the FDIC’s $18.75 million subrogated claim on behalf of Carteret’s depositors as well as its administrative costs incurred as receiver. Id.

The question before the Court at this point is not the evidentiary question of whether these values are accurate or appropriate. Rather the Court is asked to determine, as a matter of law, the threshold issue of whether it may even pursue those evidentiary questions or whether the actions of the FDIC as receiver are immunized from judicial review.

The Court’s jurisdiction in this area is defined by the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1491 (2003). The Tucker Act allows for private parties to sue the United States government in this Court for a breach of contract, and permits the recovery of money damages. The Tucker Act does not grant this Court jurisdiction over tortious claims, nor does it permit this Court to hear claims between private parties. Thus, it must be determined whether these limitations bar the Court from hearing the claims that the Plaintiffs put forth in this case.

A. The Court’s Jurisdiction Over Shareholder Derivative Suits

Plaintiffs first draw on Federal- Circuit easelaw permitting shareholder derivative suits to be brought in the United States Court of Federal Claims, pointing primarily to First Hartford Corp. Pension Plan v. United States, 194 F.3d 1279 (Fed.Cir.1999). In First Hartford, the Federal Circuit recognized that the FDIC had a “manifest conflict of interest” in pursuing damages against the federal government on behalf of a failed bank when the damages were the result of FDIC action, and thus equity required that the shareholders be granted standing to pursue those damage claims. 194 F.3d at 1295. While the act of granting standing to shareholders sounds in equity, the remedy being sought by plaintiffs (money damages against the federal government) clearly falls within the court’s jurisdiction. Thus, the Federal Circuit found that shareholders’ derivative suits were permissible in the Court of Federal Claims.

The Plaintiffs in this case pursue the “conflict of interest” logic of First Hartford and claim that in instances of manifest conflict of interest, the Court should exercise its power to direct pro rata recovery by the shareholders in order to prevent the corporate wrongdoer from recovering the damages.

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Bluebook (online)
61 Fed. Cl. 794, 2004 U.S. Claims LEXIS 229, 2004 WL 1941204, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ambase-corp-v-united-states-uscfc-2004.