Farmer v. Perrill

F I L E D

United States Court of Appeals

Tenth Circuit

PUBLISH December 26, 2001

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS PATRICK FISHER

Clerk

TENTH CIRCUIT

DEE DEIDRE FARMER,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v. No. 00-1396

WILLIAM PERRILL, Warden;

KEVIN UDIS, Psychologist,

Defendants-Appellants,

and

A. F. BEELER, Sr. Deputy Assistant

Director of the Health Services

Division; R. ROSE, Deputy Regional

Director; ROBERT L. KRICK,

Psychologist,

Defendants.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Colorado

(D.C. No. 93-D-1253)

Kathleen L. Torres, Assistant U.S. Attorney (John W. Suthers, United States

Attorney, Michael E. Hegarty, Assistant U.S. Attorney, with her on the briefs) of

the Office of the United States Attorney, Denver, Colorado, for Defendants-

Appellants.

Antony M. Noble of Denver, Colorado (John S. Pfeiffer, of Castle Rock,

Colorado, with him on the brief) for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Before KELLY and HOLLOWAY , Circuit Judges, and SHADUR , District

Judge. *

SHADUR, District Judge.

Dee Farmer (“Farmer”), 1

a transsexual prison inmate, has sued Warden

William Perrill of the Federal Correctional Institution in Englewood, Colorado

(“Englewood”) and Kevin Udis, a psychologist at Englewood, each in his

individual capacity, for $1 million in damages arising out of defendants’ failure to

provide her with any treatment for transsexualism while she was incarcerated. 2

Defendants now take an interlocutory appeal from the district court’s denial of

their motions for summary judgment and for reconsideration. They assert two

*

The Honorable Milton I. Shadur, Senior United States District Judge

for the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by designation.

1

Although a biological male, Farmer considers herself to be female

and uses the feminine pronoun in referring to herself. In deference to her wishes,

this opinion will do the same.

2

Although Farmer has named additional defendants, she has not

served them and they have not appeared in this action. Extending judgment to the

nonappearing defendants is permissible here because 28 U.S.C. §2676 expressly

bars Farmer from pursuing her claims against them as well, as this opinion makes

clear (thus both Smith v. Colorado Dep’t of Corr. , 23 F.3d 339, 340 (10th Cir.

1994) and McKinney v. Oklahoma Dep't of Human Servs. , 925 F.2d 363, 365

(10 Cir. 1991) have upheld comparable sua sponte dismissals).

th

2

grounds for reversal: (1) Farmer’s claims are barred by 28 U.S.C. §2676, 3

and

(2) defendants are entitled to qualified immunity because they did not violate

clearly established law.

Because Farmer had earlier sustained an adverse judgment in an action

brought by her under the Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”) and based on the

same alleged conduct, the Bivens claims that are the subject of this appeal are

barred by Section 2676. We therefore need not address the qualified immunity

issue, and the orders of the district court are REVERSED under the Section 2676

equivalent of claim preclusion.

Background

In November 1993 Farmer filed this action under the auspices of Bivens v.

Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics , 403 U.S. 388 (1971), 4

alleging that numerous prison employees and officials had violated her

constitutional rights by failing to provide her with treatment for transsexualism

between March and June 1993 while she was incarcerated at Englewood. (App.

3

All further references to Title 28's provisions will simply take the form

“Section--.”

4

Bivens , id. at 389 recognized a private right of action in favor of

victims of constitutional violations committed by federal agents in the

performance of their official duties. Such victims are entitled to recover money

damages from the agents in their individual capacities when there is neither a

special factor counseling hesitation nor an explicit statutory prohibition nor an

exclusive statutory alternative remedy ( id. at 396-97; Van Dinh v. Reno , 197 F.3d

427, 432 (10th Cir. 1999)).

3

301-20) Defendants filed a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment, asserting

among other things a qualified immunity defense. (App. 44-47) On January 7,

1994 a magistrate judge recommended that summary judgment be denied. (App.

226-33) Over 5-1/2 years later the district court accepted the recommendation of

the magistrate judge and denied defendants’ motion, finding that under clearly

established law a transsexual is entitled to some form of medical treatment and

that a disputed issue of material fact existed as to whether Farmer was actually

denied treatment. (App. 295-96)

Meanwhile judgment had just been entered in a separate lawsuit brought by

Farmer during the pendency of defendants’ summary judgment motion in this

action ( Farmer v. United States , No. 94-D-1220 (D. Colo. July 15, 1999)).

Farmer had sued under the FTCA (Sections 1346(b) and 2671-2680) , seeking

damages for the same alleged failure to treat her transsexualism during the same

time period in the same correctional facility. 5

(Aplt. App. 346-66) That action

was dismissed with prejudice by the district court on July 15, 1999 for failure to

prosecute. (Aplt. App. 343-44) Defendants then moved for reconsideration of

5

Section 1346(b)(1) allows claims for monetary damages against the

United States for “injury or loss of property, or personal injury or death caused by

the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee of the Government

while acting within the scope of his office or employment.” Section 2674 “makes

the United States liable to the same extent as a private person under like

circumstances” ( Wark v. United States , 269 F.3d 1185, 1187 (10th Cir. 2001)).

4

the order denying their summary judgment motion in this action, invoking Section

2676 and also asking for reconsideration of the denial of qualified immunity.

(Aplt. App. 321-42)

As to the first of those contentions, Section 2676 precludes a claimant from

maintaining any action against an individual federal employee where judgment

has already been entered in an action against the United States involving “the

same subject matter.” As Section 2676 specifies:

The judgment in an action under section 1346(b) of this title 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.

On August 24, 2000 the district court denied defendants’ motion for

reconsideration on the premise that Farmer’s Bivens claims against defendants in

their individual capacities were not foreclosed by the dismissal of her related

FTCA claim because, in the court's view, the FTCA dismissal barred claims

against defendants only in their official capacities. (App. 397) Additionally the

district court rejected the arguments for reconsideration of the denial of qualified

immunity. (App. 399) This appeal followed.

Jurisdiction

We have jurisdiction pursuant to Section 1291 and the collateral order

doctrine to review the district court’s August 24, 2000 order ( Johnson v. Jones ,

515 U.S. 304, 313, 317 (1995); Benefield v. McDowall , 241 F.3d 1267, 1270 (10 th

5

Cir. 2001); Johnson v. Martin , 195 F.3d 1208, 1213-15 (10th Cir. 1999)). To be

appealable under the collateral order doctrine, a district court decision “must

conclusively determine the disputed question, resolve an important issue

completely separate from the merits of the action, and be effectively unreviewable

on appeal from a final judgment” ( Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay , 437 U.S. 463,

468 (1978); Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp. , 337 U.S. 541, 546 (1949)).

We need not decide on which side of the dividing line identified in Johnson

v. Jones , 515 U.S. at 313-17 the district court's qualified immunity ruling

falls--see, e.g., Medina v. Cram , 252 F.3d 1124, 1130 (10th Cir. 2001). That is so

because all three prongs of the collateral order doctrine are plainly satisfied by

the district court's holding that Section 2676 does not bar Farmer’s Bivens claim.

First, the Section 2676 ruling is conclusive. Second, it is both separate

from the merits of Farmer’s claims and vitally important, for if unreversed it will

require defendants to proceed with discovery and trial. Finally and relatedly, it is

effectively unreviewable on appeal. Section 2676 bars “any action” against

federal employees after a judgment in an FTCA case involving “the same subject

matter,” and as such it confers immunity from further suit rather than just from

liability. It has consistently been held in the qualified immunity context that to

require defendants to go through trial effectively destroys the protection to which

they are entitled, even if they are later vindicated at trial, by having forced them

6

to endure the costs of litigation and the burdens of the discovery process

(Mitchell v. Forsyth , 472 U.S. 511, 526 (1985); Holland v. Harrington , 268 F.3d

1179, 1185 (10th Cir. 2001)). And that is why the “effective unreviewability”

standard is met where pure questions of law, rather than mere factual disputes, are

involved ( Johnson v. Jones , 515 U.S. at 317; Benefield , 241 F.3d at 1270). Just

so, the identical analysis applies to the current Section 2676 issue. 6

Standard of Review

We review de novo a district court’s legal conclusions under the FTCA,

such as the Section 2676 holding leading to this appeal ( Engle v. Mecke , 24 F.3d

133, 135 (10th Cir. 1994)). Although Farmer argues that an order denying a

motion for reconsideration is reviewed for an abuse of discretion (see, e.g.,

Matosantos Commercial Corp. v. Applebee’s Int’l, Inc. , 245 F.3d 1203, 1213

(10th Cir. 2001)), even under that standard the district court’s Section 2676

holding must be reversed because it was based on an “erroneous conclusion of

law” ( Shaw v. AAA Eng’g & Drafting, Inc. , 213 F.3d 538, 542 (10th Cir. 2000)).

Effect of Section 2676

6

We recognize that our holding is contrary to the pronouncement

(made without any discussion or analysis) in Brown v. United States , 851 F.2d

615, 618-19 (3d Cir. 1988) that the question whether Section 2676 bars a claim is

effectively reviewable on appeal from final judgment, thus precluding an

interlocutory appeal. We respectfully disagree for the reason just stated in the

text.

7

By its terms Section 2676 makes a final judgment on an FTCA claim

preclusive against any Bivens action based on the same underlying complaint. As

Engle , 24 F.3d at 135 (citations omitted) teaches succinctly:

When a federal law enforcement officer commits an intentional tort, the

victim has two avenues of redress: 1) he may bring a Bivens claim against

the individual officer based on the constitutional violation, or 2) he may

bring a common law tort action against the United States pursuant to the

FTCA. These are separate and distinct causes of action arising out of the

same transaction. A decision to sue the government, however, affects the

availability of a Bivens action against the federal officer. Although the

plaintiff may elect initially to bring his action against either defendant, a

judgment against the United States under the FTCA constitutes “a complete

bar to any action by the claimant, by reason of the same subject matter,

against the employee...whose act or omission gave rise to the claim.”

Here Farmer’s FTCA case clearly involved the “same subject matter” as the

Bivens claims at issue in this appeal: the alleged failure of the prison officials to

provide treatment for transsexualism. Fed. R. Civ. P. (“Rule”) 41(b) deals

explicitly with the dismissal of that FTCA case for failure to prosecute:

For failure of the plaintiff to prosecute...a defendant may move for

dismissal of an action or of any claim against the defendant. Unless the

court in its order for dismissal otherwise specifies, a dismissal under this

subdivision...operates as an adjudication upon the merits.

And the district court's order dismissing Farmer’s FTCA claim on that ground left

no doubt: It expressly stated the dismissal was with prejudice. (Aplt. App. 343)

Hence the FTCA judgment against Farmer bars her Bivens claims as a matter of

law.

Despite the plain language of Section 2676 in that respect, the district court

8

considered that applying the Section 2676 bar to Farmer’s Bivens suit “would

lead the Court to deny the Plaintiff her Bivens claims against the Defendants in

their individual capacities because the FTCA claims in the related case, judgment

of which only bar claims against the Defendants as employees of the United

States in their official capacities, were dismissed” ( Farmer v. Perrill , No. 93-D-

1253 (D. Colo. Aug. 24, 2000)). (Aplt. App. 397) That rationale is fatally flawed

from two perspectives.

First, Engle , 24 F.3d at 135 squarely holds that Section 2676 can bar a

Bivens action based on the same subject matter as a previous FTCA judgment. It

is wholly irrelevant that Engle addressed an FTCA judgment against the United

States while Farmer’s case involves an FTCA judgment in favor of the United

States. Section 2676 makes no distinction between favorable and unfavorable

judgments--it simply refers to “[t]he judgment in an action under section

1346(b).” 7

7

Two other circuits have considered whether Section 2676 bars further

suit where the previous FTCA judgment was favorable to the United States

(Hoosier Bancorp of Ind., Inc. v. Rasmussen , 90 F.3d 180, 184 (7th Cir. 1996);

Gasho v. United States , 39 F.3d 1420, 1437-38 (9th Cir. 1994)). Both those cases

held that the plain language of the section was unambiguous in its application to

judgments generally and that the legislative history reflected congressional intent

to prevent multiple lawsuits as well as multiple recoveries ( Hoosier Bancorp , 90

F.3d at 184; Gasho , 39 F.3d at 1437). Today we join in their conclusion that “ any

FTCA judgment, regardless of its outcome, bars a subsequent Bivens action on

the same conduct that was at issue in the prior judgment” ( Hoosier Bancorp , 90

F.3d at 185, quoting Gasho , 39 F.3d at 1437 (emphasis in original)).

9

Second, any suggestion that prior FTCA judgments bar Bivens claims

against defendants only in their official capacities contradicts the very nature of a

Bivens action. There is no such animal as a Bivens suit against a public official

tortfeasor in his or her official capacity. Instead, any action that charges such an

official with wrongdoing while operating in his or her official capacity as a

United States agent operates as a claim against the United States ( Weaver v.

United States , 98 F.3d 518, 520 (10th Cir. 1996); Atkinson v. O’Neill , 867 F.2d

589, 590 (10th Cir. 1989)). Because a Bivens claim may not be brought directly

against the United States as such, an “official capacity Bivens suit” would be an

oxymoron ( FDIC v. Meyer , 510 U.S. 471, 484-85 (1994); Dahn v. United States ,

127 F.3d 1249, 1254 (10th Cir. 1997)). For that reason as well, the district

court’s statement does not withstand analysis.

Nothing said here is affected by last Term's opinion of the United States

Supreme Court in Semtek Int'l Inc. v. Lockheed Martin Corp. , 531 U.S. 497

(2001). Semtek addressed the proper reading of Rules 41(a) and 41(b) in terms of

the claim-preclusive effect of a federal court's dismissal with

prejudice--amounting to an “adjudication on the merits” under Rule 41(b)--on a

later state court action (or its analytical equivalent, a federal diversity action

governed by state law under Erie v. Tompkins principles). By contrast, what is

posed here is the effect of a prior federal-question judgment of dismissal on a

10

second federal-question case . And on that latter score Semtek , 531 U.S. at 505,

506 (emphasis partly added) confirms:

The primary meaning of “dismissal without prejudice,” we think, is

dismissal without barring the defendant from returning later, to the

same court , with the same underlying claim. That will also ordinarily

(though not always) have the consequence of not barring the claim

from other courts, but its primary meaning relates to the dismissing

court itself.

* * *

We think, then, that the effect of the “adjudication upon the merits”

default provision of Rule 41(b)--and, presumably, of the explicit

order in the present case that used the language of that default

provision--is simply that, unlike a dismissal “without prejudice,” the

dismissal in the present case barred refiling of the same claim in the

United States District Court for the Central District of California.

That is precisely what is at issue here (in this instance, barring the filing of the

Bivens action--involving the same substantive federal-question claim--in the

United States District Court for the District of Colorado). Hence this Court's

already-discussed ruling in Engle (like the other Circuits' rulings in Hoosier

Bancorp and Gasho ) is reinforced rather than in any way vitiated by Semtek .

In sum, the district court’s holding that Section 2676 does not preclude

Farmer’s Bivens claims is plainly incorrect. And that error commands outright

reversal.

Farmer’s Contrary Contentions

Farmer advances two arguments as to why Section 2676 should not apply to

11

bar her Bivens claims under the particular circumstances of this case. Neither is

persuasive.

First, Farmer contends that the district court made a clerical mistake when,

after stating that the magistrate judge's ruling was being affirmed, it dismissed the

FTCA claim with prejudice rather than without prejudice as the magistrate judge

had recommended. Because a dismissal without prejudice would not be an

adjudication on the merits, Farmer maintains that there is no “judgment” for

Section 2676 purposes and thus the statutory bar is not called into play. (Red

Brief 12) But the short answer is that she is attempting to launch an

impermissible collateral attack on a final judgment in another case. Farmer

cannot thus impose on this court the responsibility that she has failed to tender to

the proper court by following either of the prescribed methods for challenging the

FTCA with-prejudice dismissal--either a direct appeal or a Rule 60(a) motion for

relief from that judgment.

It is of no moment that Farmer seeks to invoke In re U.S. Healthcare, Inc. ,

193 F.3d 151, 158 & n.2 (3d Cir. 1999) for the proposition that an appellate court

may correct a merely clerical error that occurred at the district court level. Unlike

the situation in that case, the present appeal is not taken from the FTCA case

judgment that Farmer deems erroneous. Moreover, U.S. Healthcare involved an

acknowledged clerical error, while by contrast the district court in Farmer's

12

Bivens case confirmed the accuracy of the with-prejudice characterization in his

later August 23, 2000 order denying defendants’ motion for reconsideration, in

which the court stated that the FTCA dismissal was an adjudication on the merits

under Rule 41(b). (Aplt. App. 396) Because Rule 60(a) may not be used even “to

correct something that was done deliberately but later discovered to be wrong” ( In

re Craddock , 149 F.3d 1249, 1254 n.4 (10th Cir. 1998)), Farmer's first argument

would fail even if the district court had been wrong in so ruling (as we do not

decide).

Second, Farmer asserts that even if the dismissal with prejudice was indeed

intentional, precedent does not dictate that Section 2676 bars her Bivens action.

But as already discussed, Engle , 24 F.3d at 134-35 clearly holds that an FTCA

judgment bars Bivens actions arising out of the same subject matter. Because

Section 2676 does not distinguish among types of judgments, it is irrelevant that

Farmer’s FTCA judgment involved a dismissal for failure to prosecute while the

FTCA judgment in Engle was a damages award after a bench trial. Farmer’s lack-

of-precedent argument misapprehends the unambiguous terms of Engle and

Section 2676, and it too is patently unpersuasive.

Conclusion

Because Section 2676 operates to bar Farmer’s Bivens claims, the orders of

the district court denying defendants’ motions for summary judgment and for

13

reconsideration are REVERSED. We direct the district court to enter a final

judgment in defendants' favor dismissing this action.

14