Brownback v. King (19-546)

argument 19-546

Brownback v. King

Supreme Court of the United States 1h 3m 8 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 5 days ago official recording ↗

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: chapters · speakers · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the FTCA judgment bar and how does it affect Bivens claims?

John G. Roberts 0:00

We will hear argument next in case 19-546, Brownback v. King. Mr. Houston?

Unknown 0:07

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court, the text of the FTCA judgment bar resolves this case. The district court entered the judgment in an action under Section 1346B, so that judgment constitutes a complete bar to any action by respondent against the federal employees involved in his FTCA claim. That broad text unambiguously precludes Respondent Bivens' action here, which asserts the same injuries based on the very same subject matter. The Sixth Circuit's refusal to apply the judgment bar in this case rested on two propositions. First, that when the United States prevails in an FTCA action, the district court must necessarily dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. And second, that such a jurisdictional dismissal does not trigger the judgment bar.

Unknown 0:52

Both propositions are wrong. This court rejected the Sixth Circuit's jurisdictional analysis in FDIC v. Meyer. But even more important for present purposes, this court in Simmons v. Himmelreich squarely rejected the Sixth Circuit's conclusion that the judgment bar never applies to an FTCA judgment for the government. The court held instead that the judgment bar does apply where a plaintiff simply fails to prove his claim. And that conclusion follows directly from the text of Section 2676, which makes, quote, the judgment in an FTCA action preclusive without drawing any distinction based on which side prevails. Respondent now concedes that the Sixth Circuit's reasoning cannot be reconciled with Simmons, so he shifts to an alternative argument.

Unknown 1:34

He says he should be able to bring an FTCA action and an individual action together without the judgment bar coming into play. But the statutory text directly refutes that argument, too. Whereas common law res judicata made a judgment preclusive, quote, in a subsequent action, Congress in the judgment bar expressly departed from that rule and prohibited any individual action following an FPCA judgment. That's because Congress wrote the judgment bar to prevent duplicative litigation against the government's employees, and that objective does not depend on whether the plaintiff's individual action is brought with the same case number or a different one. The judgment below should be reversed.

John G. Roberts 2:13

Mr. Houston, I want to ask you about your last point. As you read the statute, the disposition of an FTCA claim bars Bivens claims against the employee. But, of course, the statute speaks of actions, not claims. And it was and is very well established that there's no bar with respect to claims in the same action. If Congress were going to make such a dramatic departure from that rule, the obvious word to use is right there. It's claims. And yet they didn't do that.

Unknown 2:58

If I might make two points about that, Your Honor, the first is that, as I just said, you're right that the common law rule was that a judgment in a subsequent action is preclusive. But I think you can see that Congress made exactly the type of express departure from the common law that Your Honor mentioned because it deleted the word subsequent, which you will find in the first restatement in this court's cases over and over again. Congress removed the word subsequent action and replaced it with a complete bar to any

John G. Roberts 3:28

action. Well, I don't know that that's the clearest way they could go about it. The clearest way to go about it would say a claim. It would be a complete bar to any claim that is raised as opposed to any subsequent action. That's where the real departure is, and it seems to me that that's a much more direct way to eliminate any confusion than to simply say, the subsequent that appeared in some cases.

Unknown 4:01

Your Honor, in 1946, as we explained in our reply brief at page 8, the definition of the term action was a demand for relief in court. And I think you can see that Section 2676 uses the term action to be essentially synonymous with claim because it refers to an action under Section 1346B. And so it's clearly tying the word action to specific causes of action.