Doe v. United States

106 Fed. Cl. 118, 2012 U.S. Claims LEXIS 923, 2012 WL 3090021
CourtUnited States Court of Federal Claims
DecidedJuly 30, 2012
DocketNo. 10-617 C
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 106 Fed. Cl. 118 (Doe 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
Doe v. United States, 106 Fed. Cl. 118, 2012 U.S. Claims LEXIS 923, 2012 WL 3090021 (uscfc 2012).

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

BUSH, Judge.

Now pending before the court is defendant’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, which has been fully briefed and is ripe for a decision by the court. Because the court possesses subject matter jurisdiction over all but one of the claims set forth in the third amended complaint, defendant’s motion to dismiss that complaint pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) of the Rules of the United States Court of Federal Claims (RCFC) is granted in part and denied in part.

BACKGROUND1

The initial complaint in this matter was filed by plaintiff John Doe on September 14, 2010. In that complaint, Mr. Doe sought to recover damages for the government’s alleged breach of a contract to make payments to him pursuant to the Conservation Security Program (the CSP), 16 U.S.C. §§ 3838-3838c (2006) (the CSP statute), 7 C.F.R. §§ 1469.1-1469.36 (2012) (the CSP regulations). The CSP is administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) within the United States Department of Agriculture (USD A).

On September 30, 2010, Mr. Doe filed a motion for class certification along with a supporting memorandum. In the motion for class certification, Mr. Doe requests that the court designate him as the representative of a class of similarly situated plaintiffs, and appoint his counsel as attorneys of record for the proposed class. Plaintiff also filed an amended complaint for the purpose of accommodating potential class members in his proposed class action.2

On November 15, 2010, defendant filed an unopposed motion to stay all proceedings in the subject matter. Therein, defendant, on behalf of both parties, requested that the court stay any further proceedings in this case pending the court’s ruling on defendant’s motion to dismiss the complaint in the related case of Meyers, et al. v. United States, No. 09-538C. Because the legal and factual issues in this case were closely related to those involved in Meyers, the court granted the motion to stay this case on November 17, 2010.

On December 23, 2010, the court dismissed the complaint in Meyers in its entirety, see Meyers v. United States, 96 Fed.Cl. 34 (2010), and the plaintiffs in that case filed a Notice of Appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC Appeal No. 2011-5056). Because the court believed the outcome of the Meyers appeal could have a significant impact on the parties’ litigation of this ease, the case remained stayed pending a decision on the appeal. [121]*121The appeal was voluntarily dismissed on May 9, 2011. Meyers v. United States, 420 Fed.Appx. 967 (Fed.Cir.2011).

The court lifted the stay of proceedings in this case on June 29, 2011. Pursuant to the court’s scheduling order entered on that date, Mr. Doe filed his second amended complaint on June 29, 2011, and defendant then filed a motion to dismiss that amended complaint under RCFC 12(b)(1) and RCFC 12(b)(6) on August 29, 2011. In its motion to dismiss, defendant also argued that Mr. Doe had failed to allege the class action criteria required under RCFC 23, and that the second amended complaint was therefore subject to dismissal on that basis as well.

Mr. Doe did not respond to defendant’s motion to dismiss, but instead filed, with the government’s consent, a third amended complaint on September 30, 2011. In that complaint, a new plaintiff — John Earman — was added to the caption, and plaintiffs set forth the RCFC 23 class action requirements that had been omitted from the earlier versions of the complaint. The third amended complaint contains five counts. In the first count, plaintiffs allege that the government underpaid Mr. Earman and other similarly situated plaintiffs in fiscal years (FY) 2005 and 2006, and thus argue that those underpayments breached their CSP contracts in those years. In the second count, plaintiffs argue that the payment rates utilized by NRCS were contrary to the minimum rates imposed by the CSP statute and thus breached all CSP contracts. In the third count, presented as an alternative to Count II, plaintiffs argue that the payment rates utilized by the NRCS in FY 2007 and thereafter were contrary to the minimum rates imposed by the CSP statute and, because the program was not subject to any spending caps after May 25, 2007, the improper payment rates breached all CSP contracts in those years. In the fourth count, plaintiffs contend that they possessed a right to renew their CSP contracts under the CSP statute, and that the subsequent abrogation of that right constituted an anticipatory repudiation and breach of plaintiffs’ CSP contracts. Finally, in the fifth count, plaintiffs argue in the alternative to Count IV that the elimination of plaintiffs’ right to renew their CSP contracts effected a taking of private property requiring just compensation.

On December 2, 2011, defendant filed a motion to dismiss the complaint or, in the alternative, for summary judgment. In its motion, the government seeks dismissal of all counts for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under RCFC 12(b)(1). In that regard, defendant argues that plaintiffs were required to exhaust their administrative remedies before commencing suit in this court and failed to do so. In addition, defendant seeks to dismiss two counts of the third amended complaint— Counts II and III — for failure to state a claim under RCFC 12(b)(6). Finally, defendant concurrently moves for summary judgment on the three counts of the complaint— Counts I, IV, and V — not covered by its RCFC 12(b)(6) motion.

On December 22, 2011, pursuant to RCFC 56(d), plaintiffs moved to stay proceedings in this matter to afford the parties an opportunity to conduct discovery. In that motion, plaintiffs argued that they would be unable to respond to defendant’s motion for summary judgment without conducting discovery on a number of issues set forth in an affidavit attached to plaintiffs’ motion. Because all of plaintiffs’ discovery requests were related to the merits of their claims, and had no relevance to the separate issue of whether this court possessed subject matter jurisdiction over those claims, the court denied the motion to stay proceedings and ordered plaintiffs to respond to defendant’s motion to dismiss under RCFC 12(b)(1).3 Plaintiffs responded to defendant’s motion to dismiss on March 30, 2012, and defendant filed its reply on April 9, 2012.

[122]*122DISCUSSION

I. Standard of Review

In rendering a decision on a motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to RCFC 12(b)(1), this court must presume all undisputed factual allegations to be true and must construe all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff. Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236, 94 S.Ct. 1683, 40 L.Ed.2d 90 (1974), abrogated on other grounds by Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 814-15, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982); Reynolds v. Army & Air Force Exch. Serv., 846 F.2d 746, 747 (Fed.Cir.1988).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
106 Fed. Cl. 118, 2012 U.S. Claims LEXIS 923, 2012 WL 3090021, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/doe-v-united-states-uscfc-2012.