Atamirzayeva v. United States

524 F.3d 1320, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 9724, 2008 WL 1959519
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
DecidedMay 7, 2008
Docket2007-5159
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 524 F.3d 1320 (Atamirzayeva v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Atamirzayeva v. United States, 524 F.3d 1320, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 9724, 2008 WL 1959519 (Fed. Cir. 2008).

Opinion

BRYSON, Circuit Judge.

Zoya Atamirzayeva filed a claim in the Court of Federal Claims seeking compensation under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for an alleged taking of property she owned in Uzbekistan. The Court of Federal Claims dismissed Ms. Atamirzayeva’s claim on the pleadings because she did not plead any connection to the United States that would entitle her to relief under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. Ms. Atamirzayeva appeals on the ground that the Fifth Amendment does not require a person deprived of property to have any connection to the United States in order to be entitled to just compensation for a taking that is attributable to the U.S. government. We affirm.

I

The Court of Federal Claims entered judgment on the pleadings. Therefore, “each of the well-pled allegations in the complaints is assumed to be correct, and the court must indulge all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiffs.” Atlas Corp. v. United States, 895 F.2d 745, 749 (Fed.Cir.1990).

According to her allegations, Ms. Ata-mirzayeva is a citizen of the Republic of Uzbekistan. She resides in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. Prior to the events that are the subject of her claim, she was the sole owner of a cafeteria located on property next to the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent. The property on which her cafeteria was located was owned by the Republic of Uzbekistan, but Ms. Atamirzaye-va owned the buildings on the property.

Ms. Atamirzayeva alleges that in December 1999 officials at the U.S. Embassy made a verbal demand to local authorities in Tashkent that they destroy Ms. Atamir-zayeva’s cafeteria in order to increase the security of the U.S. Embassy. The following day, local authorities forcibly expelled Ms. Atamirzayeva from her cafeteria, then destroyed it while officials from the U.S. Embassy oversaw the demolition. Ms. Atamirzayeva sought compensation from local authorities and from the U.S. Embassy, but those efforts were unsuccessful. She then initiated this takings action in the Court of Federal Claims.

In its motion for judgment on the pleadings, the government argued that Ms. Ata-mirzayeva has no claim under the Fifth Amendment because she is a foreign na *1322 tional whose taken property was in a foreign country. The trial court agreed and dismissed Ms. Atamirzayeva’s claim because she pleaded no connection to the United States that would entitle her to compensation under the Takings Clause.

II

The sole question presented on appeal is whether a foreign citizen with no connection to the United States has a right to just compensation under the Fifth Amendment for a taking of property that occurs in a foreign country. Ms. Atamirzayeva argues that the Court of Claims answered that question affirmatively in Turney v. United States, 126 Ct.Cl. 202, 115 F.Supp. 457, 464 (1953), when it extended the Takings Clause to a claim by a Philippine corporation for property taken in the Philippines. Ms. Atamirzayeva asserts that under the authority of that decision, the trial court’s dismissal order must be reversed. Before we address the scope of the Court of Claims’ decision in Turney, we turn first to the Supreme Court cases involving the extraterritorial application of constitutional provisions.

A

The Supreme Court has long taken the view that the Constitution is subject to territorial limitations. In Ross v. McIntyre, 140 U.S. 453, 11 S.Ct. 897, 35 L.Ed. 581 (1891), the Court rejected a habeas corpus petitioner’s claim that his conviction by a United States consular court in Japan violated the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. The Court stated:

By the constitution a government is ordained and established “for the United States of America,” and not for countries outside their limits. The guaranties it affords against accusation of capital or infamous crimes, except by indictment or presentment by a jury when thus accused, apply only to citizens and others within the United States, or who are brought there for trial for alleged offenses committed elsewhere, and not to residents or temporary sojourners abroad. Cook v. U.S., 138 U.S. 157, 181, 11 S.Ct. 268, 34 L.Ed. 906 [(1891)]. The constitution can have no operation in another country.

Ross, 140 U.S. at 464, 11 S.Ct. 897. The Court further reasoned that giving extraterritorial effect to the right to a jury trial “would be impracticable from the impossibility of obtaining a competent grand or petit jury.” Id.

The Supreme Court reached a similar result in the Insular Cases, a series of cases addressing Congress’s authority under Article IV, § 3, cl. 2, of the Constitution, which grants Congress the “Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.” In those cases, the Supreme Court concluded that specific constitutional provisions did not extend to unincorporated territories of the United States and therefore did not limit Congress’s authority under Article IV. See Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244, 21 S.Ct. 770, 45 L.Ed. 1088 (1901) (revenue clauses); Dorr v. United States, 195 U.S. 138, 24 S.Ct. 808, 49 L.Ed. 128 (1904) (right to trial by jury); Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U.S. 298, 42 S.Ct. 343, 66 L.Ed. 627 (1922) (same); see also Hawaii v. Mankichi, 190 U.S. 197, 23 S.Ct. 787, 47 L.Ed. 1016 (1903) (jury and grand jury provisions of Fifth and Sixth Amendments not given effect after annexation).

In United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304, 57 S.Ct. 216, 81 L.Ed. 255 (1936), the Court expressed a strict territorial view of the Constitution when it addressed the differences between *1323 the federal government’s authority over internal affairs and foreign affairs:

[T]he investment of the federal government with the powers of external sovereignty did not depend upon the affirmative grants of the Constitution. The powers to declare and wage war, to conclude peace, to make treaties, to maintain diplomatic relations with other sovereignties, if they had never been mentioned in the Constitution, would have vested in the federal government as necessary concomitants of nationality. Neither the Constitution nor the laws passed in pursuance of it have any force in foreign territory unless in respect of our own citizens ... and operations of the nation in such territory must be governed by treaties, international understandings and compacts, and the principles of international law.

Id. at 318, 57 S.Ct. 216 (emphasis added).

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524 F.3d 1320, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 9724, 2008 WL 1959519, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/atamirzayeva-v-united-states-cafc-2008.