Patton v. United States ( 2016 )

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
___________________________________
OMARI H. PATTON, )
)
Plaintiff, )
)
v. ) Civ. Action No. 15-0881-ABJ
)
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA et al., )
)
Defendants. )
__________________________________ )
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Plaintiff is a federal prisoner incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in
Bruceton Mills, West Virginia. 1 He claims that the Bureau of Prisons has failed to correct
inaccuracies in his Presentence Investigation Report maintained in his prison file and that failure
has had adverse consequences. Plaintiff seeks correction of the report and $500,000 in monetary
damages. See generally Compl. [Dkt. # 1].
Defendants move to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted and for summary judgment under Rule
56 [Dkt. # 14]. Plaintiff has filed an opposition [Dkt. # 23], and defendants have filed a reply
[Dkt. # 21]. Since BOP’s inmate files are exempt from the Privacy Act’s accuracy and
1
A jury in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania convicted
plaintiff in 2004 of more than twenty-five counts of drug-related felonies. He is serving an
aggregate prison term of 360 months. See United States v. Patton, 619 Fed. App’x 43, 43 (3d Cir.
2015) (per curiam).
1
amendment requirements, the Court will grant defendants’ motion to dismiss in accordance with
well-settled precedent. 2
I. LEGAL STANDARD
In evaluating a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), the court must “treat the complaint's
factual allegations as true . . . and must grant plaintiff ‘the benefit of all inferences that can be
derived from the facts alleged.’ ” Sparrow v. United Air Lines, Inc., 216 F.3d 1111, 1113 (D.C.
Cir. 2000), quoting Schuler v. United States, 617 F.2d 605, 608 (D.C. Cir. 1979) (citations
omitted). Nevertheless, the court need not accept inferences drawn by the plaintiff if those
inferences are unsupported by facts alleged in the complaint, nor must the court accept plaintiff's
legal conclusions. Browning v. Clinton, 292 F.3d 235, 242 (D.C. Cir. 2002); see Warren v.
District of Columbia, 353 F.3d 36, 39-40 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (differentiating unacceptable
conclusions of law from acceptable conclusions of fact).
“To survive a [Rule 12(b)((6)] motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient
factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face . . . . A claim
has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the
reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal,
556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted); see Bell Atlantic Corp.
v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (a plaintiff’s “[f]actual allegations must be enough to raise
2
This action was styled as a “Complaint Under the Federal Tort Claim Act, Pursuant [to] Title
28 U.S.C. § 1346(b)(1) and 5 U.S.C. § 552a(4)(B).” Based on the exclusivity of the Privacy Act,
the court dismissed plaintiff’s FTCA claim pursuant to the screening provisions of the Prison
Litigation Reform Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. See June 10, 2015 Order [Dkt. # 4].
2
a right to relief above the speculative level . . . .”) (citations omitted). While “[a] pro se complaint
. . . must be held to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers . . . even a
pro se complaint must plead factual matter that permits the court to infer more than the mere
possibility of misconduct.” Atherton v. District of Columbia Off. of Mayor, 567 F.3d 672, 681-
82 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (internal quotations marks and citations omitted).
II. ANALYSIS
As the Court of Appeals has explained with regard to BOP records:
Privacy Act § 552a(e)(5) requires agencies to ensure that any records
used in “making any determination about any individual” are “maintain[ed] .
. . with such accuracy, relevance, timeliness, and completeness as is
reasonably necessary to assure fairness to the individual in the
determination.” . . . Section 552a(d) requires agencies to entertain requests
for amendment of records that are not “accurate, relevant, timely, or
complete.” . . . If an agency rejects a request for amendment, the subject
of the contested record can bring suit in federal court and obtain de novo
consideration of whether amendment is warranted. . . . If the court so finds,
it “may order the agency to amend the individual's record.” . . .
But the Privacy Act also permits agencies to exempt certain of their
systems of records from many of the obligations it imposes. 5 U.S.C. §
552a(j). In 1976, BOP exempted its Inmate Central Records System from §
552a(d)'s amendment provision. . . . See 28 C.F.R. § 1.97(a) . . . . As the
district court found, as our precedents make clear, and as amicus
acknowledged at oral argument, that exemption prevents us from ordering
the amendment of an inmate’s records.
Skinner v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice & Bureau of Prisons, 584 F.3d 1093, 1096 (D.C. Cir. 2009)
(citations omitted); see accord Lane v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons, 442 Fed. Appx. 578 (D.C. Cir.
2011) (per curiam), citing Martinez v. Bureau of Prisons, 444 F.3d 620, 624 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (per
curiam); White v. United States Probation Office, 148 F.3d 1124, 1125 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (per
curiam)). In addition, plaintiff’s damages claim fails because it is premised on violations of the
exempting regulations. Donelson v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons, No. 15-5136, 2015 WL 9309944, at
3
*1 (D.C. Cir. Dec. 7, 2015); see Conklin v. U.S. Bureau of Prisons, 514 F. Supp. 2d 1, 6 (D.D.C.
2007) (explaining that the regulations exempting filing systems from § 552a(e)(5) “effectively”
bar a plaintiff “from obtaining any remedy, including damages, under subsection (g), for the
[agency’s] alleged failure to maintain records pertaining to him with the mandated level of
accuracy”) (citing cases)). 3
III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, defendants’ motion to dismiss is granted. A separate order
accompanies this Memorandum Opinion.
AMY BERMAN JACKSON
United States District Judge
DATE: July 19, 2016
3
To the extent that BOP was obligated by its own policy to verify the accuracy of plaintiff’s
presentence investigation report, its staff took reasonable steps to do so by contacting the
appropriate United States Probation Office. See Def.’s Stmt. of Undisputed Material Facts ¶¶ 4-
6. And as an arm of the judiciary, that office is not subject to the Privacy Act’s requirements.
See Morris v. U.S. Prob. Servs., 723 F. Supp. 2d 225, 227 (D.D.C. 2010), quoting Ramirez v. Dep’t
of Justice, 594 F. Supp. 2d 58, 62 (D.D.C. 2009) (“United States Probation Offices are units of the
federal courts [which are not considered agencies under the Privacy Act] and therefore are not
subject to the Privacy Act.”) (alterations in original).
4