Eaton v. United States

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
2006-5111
GLEN L. EATON,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
UNITED STATES,
Defendant- Appellee.
___________________________
DECIDED: December 6, 2006
___________________________
Before NEWMAN, LOURIE, and BRYSON, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM.
DECISION
Appellant Glen L. Eaton, a former government contractor, filed this takings action
in the Court of Federal Claims, contending that agents of the government took his
property without compensation by setting out to, and succeeding in, destroying the
value of his company’s contracts with the government, his contracting business, his
prospects for further contracting work in the future, and his “personal intellectual
property and social capital as a government contractor-entrepreneur.” The government
moved to dismiss the complaint on several grounds including the statute of limitations.
The Court of Federal Claims addressed only the limitations issue and granted the
government’s motion to dismiss on that ground. We affirm.
BACKGROUND
Through his company, Eaton Contract Services, Inc., Mr. Eaton entered into
three contracts with the Army Corps of Engineers in 1994 and 1995. Those contracts
resulted in litigation before the Armed Forces Board of Contract Appeals. The Board
granted Mr. Easton recovery for unpaid balances on those contracts, but otherwise
granted the government summary judgment on Mr. Eaton’s claims, which included
claims for the destruction of his business, loss of income, and loss of future profits. In
2004, the parties entered into a settlement agreement reflecting full satisfaction of “any
and all remaining matters” involved in those contracts.
Mr. Eaton also filed an action against the government under the Federal Tort
Claims Act and a “Bivens action” against certain governmental officials based on
asserted governmental misconduct in connection with the Corps of Engineers contracts.
Those actions were dismissed for failure to exhaust administrative remedies and on
statute of limitations grounds. Mr. Eaton subsequently filed this takings action in the
Court of Federal Claims.
The Court of Federal Claims noted that, in order for the March 2006 complaint to
be timely, the takings claim must have accrued no later than March 2000. See 28
U.S.C. § 2501 (any claim over which Court of Federal Claims has jurisdiction “shall be
barred unless the petition thereon is filed within six years after such claim first accrues”).
After analyzing the complaint, the trial court stated that none of the conduct that Mr.
Eaton alleged as a basis for his claim occurred after September 1997. The court then
noted the following: (1) in his district court tort action, Mr. Eaton asserted that the Corps’
actions had resulted in the “destruction of [his] business, the final stages of which began
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about February, 1996, and ended with the complete collapse of the business in mid-
1997 for the lack of bonding and bank financial support”; (2) in his response to the
motion to dismiss the complaint, Mr. Eaton alleged that the government agents’
misconduct “from late 1995 to at least September 1997” rendered his contracts
worthless; and (3) nowhere in the complaint did Mr. Eaton allege any specific actionable
conduct by government officials occurring after September 1997. Under those
circumstances, the court concluded, “there can be no question that the government
actions complained of and the collapse of plaintiff’s business both occurred well before
March 2000.”
The trial court noted that Mr. Eaton contended that the takings action accrued in
January 2004 when the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals issued its final
decision on his appeal. The court rejected that contention, however, on the ground that
the Board’s action on the contract claims was not legally connected to his takings claim
and that the resolution of those contract claims was “not a predicate to this taking
action.”
Finally, the trial court rejected Mr. Eaton’s argument that, even if the takings
action accrued earlier than he claimed, the statute of limitations should be tolled and the
action should therefore be deemed timely. The court observed that there was no
plausible ground offered for tolling the six-year limitations period. Accordingly, the court
found that the complaint was untimely filed, and it directed that the complaint be
dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
2006-5111 3
DISCUSSION
Mr. Eaton contends that the trial court erroneously dismissed the complaint
based on the statute of limitations.1 In neither his complaint nor his pleadings in the trial
court, however, did Mr. Eaton refer to any government conduct postdating January 2000
that could form the basis for the accrual of his takings action. Although he refers to
various administrative and judicial rulings in his several lawsuits during the post-2000
period, those rulings were simply dispositions of his various claims against the
government and did not themselves constitute a taking. So far as the complaint
indicates, the governmental conduct that constituted the alleged effort to destroy his
business all appears to have occurred between 1995 and 1997, culminating in a
September 12, 1997, memorandum that, according to Mr. Eaton, “put the icing on [the
government’s] taking action cake by sealing the destruction of ECS and Plaintiff’s
properties.” The trial court was therefore correct to conclude that Mr. Eaton’s
allegations failed to show that the takings action accrued after March 2000.
With respect to Mr. Eaton’s alternative claim that the limitations period should be
tolled, the trial court correctly concluded that, even assuming the statute of limitations
for a Tucker Act action is subject to tolling, Mr. Eaton has failed to show that his case
presents circumstances in which tolling would be appropriate. He contends in part that
1
Mr. Eaton objects that the trial court dismissed the complaint for lack of
jurisdiction rather than for failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted.
While there is some ground for dispute as to which is the proper basis for a dismissal of
a Tucker Act claim on limitations grounds, see Martinez v. United States, 333 F.3d
1295, 1316 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (en banc) (jurisdiction); Venture Coal Sales Co. v. United
States, 370 F.3d 1102, 1105 n.2 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (failure to state a claim), the distinction
has no practical effect in this case. In either event, the dismissal is final and the action
is disposed of on limitations grounds for res judicata purposes.
2006-5111 4
because he was litigating in other forums, his delay in filing his takings action should be
excused. In fact, however, he has proceeded from one forum to another, pursuing
distinct theories of liability against the government and government officials in an effort
to find some theory on which he could obtain relief, either in contract, in tort, through a
due process claim or, now, through a takings claim. Absent misleading conduct on the
part of the government inducing the litigant to bring suit in the wrong forum, there is no
federal policy that would be served by encouraging such sequential litigation asserting
legally distinct claims in different forums, all relating to the essentially the same
underlying facts. See Arnold v. United States, 816 F.2d 1206, 1312-13 (9th Cir. 1987).
Thus, there is no reason to adopt a general rule tolling the limitations period for
downstream claims as long as the plaintiff has been litigating related claims in other
forums throughout the limitations period.
To the extent that Mr. Eaton contends that the limitations period should be tolled
because he was not aware of the basis for his takings action until after March 2000, the
trial court addressed that contention directly and rejected it, finding that “prior to the
expiration of the limitations period, plaintiff was well aware of the circumstances forming
the background to the alleged taking.” Mr. Eaton has not shown that determination to
be clearly erroneous, and we decline his invitation to overturn it. We therefore sustain
the trial court’s ruling that Mr. Eaton’s takings action is barred by the statute of
limitations.
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