This case involves a Federal Tort Claims Act lawsuit brought by Sharon Bethel, as conservator for David Bethel, against the United States for injuries sustained during surgery at a Veterans Administration Medical Center in 2003. The plaintiffs had initially asserted medical negligence claims based on events in the operating room and later moved to amend the complaint to add a claim for negligent credentialing and privileging of one of the anesthesiologists. The court denied the motion to amend, finding it futile because the new claim had not been exhausted through the required administrative tort claim process. Under the FTCA, a plaintiff must present a written statement describing the injury and a sum certain damages claim to the appropriate agency, which allows the government to investigate; the original administrative filing only described the surgery-day events and did not mention any pre-surgery credentialing failures. Because the exhaustion requirement is jurisdictional and strictly construed, the proposed amendment could not proceed.
This case involves a pro se prisoner plaintiff alleging that prison guards used excessive force against him in October 2001, in violation of his Eighth Amendment rights, after he refused to wear orange pants while in segregation. The defendants moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), arguing that the claims were barred by the two-year statute of limitations and that the plaintiff failed to exhaust administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act. The plaintiff responded that his mental incompetence following the incident tolled the limitations period until at least July 2004 and prevented him from filing a timely grievance. The Magistrate Judge recommended denying the motions, noting that allegations must be accepted as true and that dismissal on limitations grounds is inappropriate unless no facts could support tolling. With no objections filed, the District Court adopted the recommendation and denied the motions to dismiss.
The case involved a qui tam lawsuit under the False Claims Act brought by relator Bobby Maxwell against Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corp., alleging the company submitted false records to avoid paying royalties to the government. A jury awarded damages to the United States, but the court subsequently dismissed the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, finding the relator did not qualify as an original source under the FCA's public disclosure bar. The court denied the United States' motion to stay entry of judgment to consider intervention and the relator's motion to enter judgment on behalf of the United States. The core reasoning was that once the court determined it lacked jurisdiction, it had no authority to consider motions to intervene or enter judgment, and unlike in Rockwell, the government had not intervened to provide an independent basis for jurisdiction.
This case was a qui tam action under the False Claims Act in which relator Bobby Maxwell, a federal auditor with the Minerals Management Service, alleged that Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas underpaid royalties on offshore oil leases by selling oil below market value. After a jury verdict for the relator, the court reconsidered subject matter jurisdiction and dismissed the case. The core reasoning was that Maxwell did not qualify as an "original source" because he obtained the underlying information during his official audit duties and disclosed it to superiors involuntarily as part of his employment responsibilities, rather than through a voluntary disclosure to the government as required by the FCA's jurisdictional bar. The court therefore lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the action.
The case was a federal habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 filed by prisoner Glenn Rosenstein challenging Bureau of Prisons regulation 28 C.F.R. § 570.21, which limited community corrections center (CCC) placement to the last ten percent of an inmate's sentence and no more than six months. The district court, bound by the Tenth Circuit's published decision in Wedelstedt v. Wiley, held the regulation invalid because it supplanted the five individualized factors that 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b) requires the BOP to consider for all inmate placement and transfer decisions. The court therefore granted the petition to the extent of ordering the respondent to reconsider Rosenstein's CCC application in good faith without regard to the regulation, while denying the motion for preliminary injunction as moot.
This case involves post-trial and post-appeal motions for attorneys' fees and costs arising from a licensing agreement dispute in which a jury found defendant Heumann liable for breaching a confidentiality provision but found defendant Geerdes not liable. Following a Tenth Circuit decision that affirmed the jury verdict and prevailing-party fee award to Geerdes but reversed and remanded the reduced fee award to the plaintiff, the district court addressed renewed motions from the plaintiff and Geerdes along with related procedural requests. The court granted the plaintiff's motion in part, awarding it $189,000 in fees (allocated jointly and severally or severally among defendants) and $3,870.83 in costs against Heumann and Shidler; granted Geerdes' motion in part, awarding her an additional $116,000 in fees and $4,461.14 in costs against the plaintiff; and resolved ancillary motions for extensions and to strike by finding no prejudice from any timing issues. These awards were determined based on the appellate mandate, prior fee orders, and evidence of reasonable hours and rates after excluding previously decided items.