Charles v. United States

MEMORANDUM OPINION

COLLEEN KOLLAR-KOTELLY UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

This matter comes before the Court on Plaintiff's [31] Motion for Reconsideration. Plaintiff moves the Court, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b), to vacate its [30] Memorandum Opinion and Order dismissing this case for lack of jurisdiction. Insofar as Plaintiff clarifies his defamation claim to center on alleged conduct the Court did not analyze in its [30] Memorandum Opinion and Order granting Defendant's [3] Motion to Dismiss, the Court will exercise its discretion to revisit its [30] Memorandum Opinion and Order and reanalyze dismissal on Plaintiff's proposed basis. Even doing so, however, the Court concludes it still lacks jurisdiction over this case. Accordingly, upon consideration of the pleadings, ^[1] the relevant

legal authorities, and the entire record, the Court shall DENY Plaintiff's [31] Motion for Reconsideration.

I. BACKGROUND

Before turning to the circumstances underlying Plaintiff's most recent Motion, the Court shall pause to repeat some of the general background in this case. On February 25, 2021, Plaintiff, previously employed as an attorney at the National Security Division (“NSD”) of the United States Department of Justice, filed a complaint for defamation against two of his coworkers in the District of Columbia Superior Court. Notice of Removal at ¶ 2. Plaintiff's operative complaint is threadbare; it characterizes his coworkers' statements as “false” and made to “Plaintiff's direct supervisor and other managerial officials of [NSD].” Compl. at ¶¶ 3-4. The complaint's only other factual allegation is that, “[a]s a result of [his coworkers'] publication of these defamatory statements, [] Plaintiff was suspended from his position as a federal prosecutor, ” resulting in lost wages. See Id. at ¶ 5. On March 31, 2021, Defendant filed their notice of removal, arguing that it was the true party in action as Plaintiff's former coworkers were acting in their official capacity when they uttered the allegedly defamatory statements. Id. at ¶ 5.

A week after removal, Defendant filed its motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. In support thereof, Defendant argued: (1) the Court did not have derivative jurisdiction because federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over claims arising under the FTCA; (2) contrarily, Plaintiff cannot bring an FTCA claim because the FTCA does not waive sovereign immunity for intentional torts; and (3) Plaintiff had yet to effect proper service.

It was not until Plaintiff's opposition^[2] that Plaintiff offered some factual development in

response to Defendant's jurisdictional arguments. Broadly, Plaintiff's conflict with his coworkers seems to have begun when, Plaintiff alleges, they ignored concerns he raised about XXXXX Pl.'s Opp. at 4-6. In its [30] Memorandum Opinion and Order, the Court focused on Plaintiff's allegation that he submitted a draft report on the subject to his supervisor, that she directed him not to share the draft outside of the Department of Justice, and when he did, she reported his actions to upper management within NSD. Charles v. United States, 2022 WL 558181 at *2. The Court focused on that fact mainly because neither Plaintiff's complaint nor proposed amended complaint identified what false statement gave rise to his defamation claim (and his proposed claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress). See Id. Indeed, both Plaintiff's original complaint and proposed amended complaint had very few factual allegations, while Plaintiff's 73-page opposition, as Plaintiff writes in the instant Motion, “was particularly lengthy, ” “included a variety of minimally relevant details of the case, ” and some of which “was mere plot exposition--perhaps even ‘surplusage.'” Mot. at 3.

Considering mainly Plaintiff's failure to follow his supervisor's instructions not to share the draft memorandum, the Court concluded that a superior charging Plaintiff with failure to follow instructions was an “action[] ‘of the kind [they] [were] employed to perform.'” Charles, 2022 WL 558181 at *4 (quoting Council on Am. Islamic Relations v. Ballenger, 444 F.3d 659, 664 (D.C. Cir. 2006)). As a result, the Court held that Plaintiff's complaint fell within the ambit of the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 2671 et seq. (“FTCA”) and dismissed Plaintiff's complaint because the defamation claim, as the Court understood it to be pled, did not fall within

the federal government's waiver of sovereign immunity. Id. at *5. Additionally, the Court denied Plaintiff leave to amend his complaint to add a claim for intentional infliction of emotional district because, as the Court understood it to be pled, the proposed amended complaint failed to state such a claim. Id. at *5.

Plaintiff's present Motion insists that the Court focused on the wrong allegations laid out in his [6] Reply to Defendant's Motion to Dismiss (which, again, were included in neither his original complaint nor proposed amended complaint). In the present Motion, Plaintiff includes a chart--reproduced almost verbatim below--delineating which allegations on which Plaintiff would have had the Court's analysis focus.^[3]

Date	Event	Significance	Citation to the Record of this Case
August 20-September 16, 2019	The Plaintiff authors the aforementioned “draft memo”	[No entry]	ECF No. 6, ¶¶ 7-8, 20-23
September 16, 2019	Julie Edelstein instructs the Plaintiff not to distribute the “draft memo” outside of his immediate office	[No entry]	ECF No. 6, ¶ 24
September 18, 2019	The Plaintiff distributes the “draft memo” outside of his immediate office.	The Plaintiff has never disputed that he disobeyed Julie Edelstein's instructions in this situation. He thought he was justified based on the circumstances. However, his supervisors later counseled him otherwise, the Plaintiff never did it again.	ECF No. 6, ¶¶ 25-27.

October 1, 2019, at 4:30 PM EDT	Jay Bratt, Julie Edelstein, and the Plaintiff's direct supervisor (hereinafter “Direct Supervisor” counsel the Plaintiff that it was inappropriate to send a draft memo outside of his immediate office after being told not to, and that his perceived justification for doing so was insufficient. The counseling session ended with a discussion of several other issues in the office, none of which pertained to substantive legal issues.	[No entry]	[No entry]
October 3, 2019	Direct Supervisor sends the Plaintiff an email to memorialize the counseling session on October 1, 2019. The email included the statement, “We consider constructive conversations, like the one we had on Tuesday, to be the appropriate method to handle confusion, disagreements, and frustration, that we all inevitably experience as we work together to advance CES's [a sub-office within NSD] mission.	The statement from this email, “We consider constructive conversations, like the one we had on Tuesday, to be the appropriate method to handle confusion, disagreements, and frustration, that we all inevitably experience as we work together to advance CES's mission, ” is the “instruction” Jay Bratt and Julie Edelstein would later claim was an instruction not to question...