Teresa PREWETT, Mother of minor and next friend of J.W.; J.W., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Stanley WEEMS, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 12-6489.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
April 14, 2014.
749 F.3d 454
discussed above, Rouster is unable to prove that Jerry‘s constitutional rights were violated. Therefore, we need not consider whether Secure Care‘s staffing or training policies might have caused such a violation. The district court appropriately granted summary judgment in favor of Secure Care on Rouster‘s claim that the private corporation failed adequately to train and supervise medical staff in the prison.
V. STATE MALPRACTICE AND NEGLIGENCE CLAIMS
Rouster‘s remaining claims arise under state law and implicate complex questions regarding the standard of care for nursing professionals in Michigan. We have held that “a federal court that has dismissed a plaintiff‘s federal-law claims should not ordinarily reach the plaintiff‘s state-law claims.” Moon v. Harrison Piping Supply, 465 F.3d 719, 728 (6th Cir.2006) (citation omitted); see also United Mine Workers of Am. v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 726, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966) (“Certainly, if the federal claims are dismissed before trial ... the state claims should be dismissed as well.“). This rule accords with principles of federalism: “Needless decisions of state law should be avoided both as a matter of comity and to promote justice between the parties, by procuring for them a surer-footed reading of applicable law.” Gibbs, 383 U.S. at 726. Because we have affirmed the grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants on the federal-law claims, we conclude that the district court appropriately declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims. Rouster may pursue his malpractice and negligence claims in the appropriate state court.
VI. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court‘s judgment.
Before: MERRITT, SUTTON and STRANCH, Circuit Judges.
OPINION
SUTTON, Circuit Judge.
Stanley Weems pleaded guilty to one count of producing child pornography. See
I.
From 2007 until 2011, J.W., then a minor, spent time with Weems at his Tennessee home. While there, J.W. frequently had sex with prostitutes hired by Weems. Weems apparently got a kick out of watching the encounters and filming them.
In July 2011, J.W. told the police what had happened. The police searched Weems’ home, where they found a cellular phone containing seven videos of J.W. having sex with the prostitutes as well as some audio tapes recording the voices of Weems, J.W. and various prostitutes. In a three-count indictment, the government charged Weems with producing, possessing and persuading a minor to create child pornography. Weems pleaded guilty to the production count, and the district court sentenced him to 180 months.
Soon after the government filed these charges, J.W. filed an action of his own. Invoking
II.
Before considering the merits of this challenge, we pause to address whether Weems filed an untimely notice of appeal, depriving us of jurisdiction over the case. J.W. reasons that the thirty-day clock for filing an appeal began running the minute the district court issued an opinion on his motion for summary judgment, even though the district court did not enter final judgment against Weems for another month. If the filing deadline ran from the date of the district court‘s opinion, as opposed to the date of judgment, this notice of appeal indeed would be untimely. But that is not how it works. Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure starts the clock upon “entry of the judgment” which, in the case of summary judgment (with an exception not applicable here), requires an order “set forth on a separate document.”
III.
Enacted as part of the Child Abuse Victims’ Rights Act of 1986, § 2255 empowers victims of child sexual abuse to recover money for the harms caused by their abusers. See
Any person who, while a minor, was a victim of a violation of section ... 2251 [among others] ... and who suffers personal injury as a result of such violation ... may sue in any appropriate United States District Court and shall recover the actual damages such person sustains and the cost of the suit, including a reasonable attorney‘s fee. Any person as described in the preceding sentence shall be deemed to have sustained damages of no less than $150,000 in value.
Weems claims that the district court erred on each front: (1) on liability, by holding that he violated a qualifying criminal statute seven times even though just one conviction arose from his conduct, and (2) on damages, by holding that the statute bestows a minimum $150,000 award for
Liability. The first question turns on the meaning of “violation” in § 2255. If a violation requires a criminal conviction, Weems may be held civilly liable only for a single violation, as he was convicted of just one qualifying child-abuse crime. But if a violation requires only proof by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant engaged in prohibited conduct, Weems may be held liable for as many qualifying violations as J.W. proved in his civil case—here seven.
The district court ruled that violations do not require convictions. On the asset side of that decision are three considerations. First, the customary meaning of violation tends toward the broad (any failure to conform to a legal standard) rather than the narrow (a criminal conviction). See, e.g., Oxford English Dictionary Online (3d ed. 2012) (“Infringement or breach, flagrant disregard or non-observance of some principle or standard of conduct or procedure, as an oath, promise, law, etc.; an instance of this.“); Black‘s Law Dictionary (9th ed.2009) (“An infraction or breach of the law; a transgression ... [or t]he act of breaking or dishonoring the law; the contravention of a right or duty.“); Webster‘s Second Int‘l Dictionary 2846 (1953) (“Infringement; transgression; non-observance; as, the violation of law, covenants, promises, etc.“).
Second, terms are known by the company they keep, United States v. Shultz, 733 F.3d 616, 622 (6th Cir.2013), and the neighboring provisions of § 2255 use “violation” and “conviction” distinctively, suggesting that the different words have different meanings. Section 2255 applies when a victim shows a “violation” of the relevant criminal provisions, but the related criminal-forfeiture statute applies only when the government shows the defendant was “convicted of an offense.” Compare
Third, precedent favors this interpretation. Addressing RICO‘s civil-remedies provision, which also contains a “violation” requirement, the Supreme Court held that the statute‘s language gave “no obvious indication that a civil action can proceed only after a criminal conviction.” Sedima, S.P.R.L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U.S. 479, 488, 105 S.Ct. 3275, 87 L.Ed.2d 346 (1985). The Court reasoned that “the term ‘violation’ does not imply a criminal conviction ... [but rather] refers only to a failure to adhere to legal requirements.” Id. at 489. Noting that other sections of RICO, including the criminal-forfeiture provision and the sentencing-enhancement subsections, employed the term “conviction” rather than “violation,” the Court concluded that the two words captured different meanings. Id. at 489 & n. 7. Taken together, these considerations prompted the Court to conclude that “the predicate acts” required for civil liability need not “be established beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. at 491. Just so here.
On the debit side of this interpretation is one consideration—that it will be more burdensome to show violations than convictions. True enough. As this case well shows, there is nothing to debate about the
Even if each predicate violation does not require an associated criminal conviction, Weems argues that J.W. did not present sufficient evidence to establish seven different violations of
Damages. That is just half of the problem presented by this appeal—and the easier half at that. Although J.W. has established seven violations of a child-abuse statute, does that entitle him to seven $150,000 presumed-damages awards or just one such award? Put another way, does § 2255 authorize presumptive damage awards of $150,000 per violation or $150,000 per lawsuit?
In our view, the presumptive-damages provision applies on a per-lawsuit basis. First, the terms of the statute together with the general prohibition against splitting causes of action favor this interpretation. In full, the statute reads:
a) In General.--Any person who, while a minor, was a victim of a violation of section 1589, 1590, 1591, 2241(c), 2242, 2243, 2251, 2251A, 2252, 2252A, 2260, 2421, 2422, or 2423 of this title and who suffers personal injury as a result of such violation, regardless of whether the injury occurred while such person was a minor, may sue in any appropriate United States District Court and shall recover the actual damages such person sustains and the cost of the suit, including a reasonable attorney‘s fee. Any person as described in the preceding sentence shall be deemed to have sustained damages of no less than $150,000 in value. Statute of Limitations.--Any action commenced under this section shall be barred unless the complaint is filed within 10 years after the right of action first accrues or in the case of a person under a legal disability, not later than three years after the disability.
Section 2255(a)‘s two sentences contain two basic thoughts when it comes to this issue. After describing the violations of the relevant statutes that may cause a “personal injury,” the first sentence gives the victim a right of action to “recover the actual damages” caused by the violations. The second sentence gives the victim the option of presumed damages, saying that the victim “shall be deemed to have sustained damages of no less than $150,000.” Missing from the second sentence is any indication that the $150,000 threshold applies on a per-violation basis. That omission is noteworthy because, when the statute was first enacted in 1986, claimants generally were not permitted to “split a cause of action and bring separate suits upon its parts.” Rodman v. Rogers, 109 F.2d 520, 522 (6th Cir.1940); see also Baltimore Steamship Co. v. Phillips, 274 U.S. 316, 319-20, 47 S.Ct. 600, 71 L.Ed. 1069 (1927). The same
Second, Congress well knew how to write a statute awarding damages on a per-violation basis but chose not to do so here. Many federal statutes award damages based on “each violation” shown. See, e.g.,
Omitting a phrase from one statute that Congress has used in another statute with a similar purpose “virtually commands the ... inference” that the two have different meanings. United States v. Ressam, 553 U.S. 272, 276-77, 128 S.Ct. 1858, 170 L.Ed.2d 640 (2008). When Congress opts not to include a well known and frequently used approach in drafting a statute, the courts should hesitate to pencil it back in under the guise of interpretation. See Dean v. United States, 556 U.S. 568, 572, 129 S.Ct. 1849, 173 L.Ed.2d 785 (2009).
Third, Congress‘s decision not to use the familiar “each violation” language in § 2255 is all the more conspicuous when one considers some of the oddities that arise from converting its silence into a statutory directive. If we adopted a per-violation measure of damages, as the government points out in its helpful amicus brief, the differing scopes of the predicate offenses in § 2255 would create anomalous award disparities. Compare a child-sex-trafficking victim who is forced to perform various commercial sex acts over a period of years and a child-pornography victim who is forced to pose for twenty pictures in a day. While the sex-trafficking victim could show just a single violation (and collect only $150,000 in presumed damages), the child-pornography victim could collect $3 million ($150,000 multiplied by twenty violations). Compare United States v. Garcia-Gonzalez, 714 F.3d 306, 311-14 (5th Cir.2013) (measuring the number of violations of
Or compare a defendant who sends 100 pornographic images of a child in a single email with a defendant who sends 100 emails that each contain only one such image. While the former victim‘s presumed damages would be limited to $150,000 for a single child-pornography-transportation offense, the latter victim could collect $15 million for the same harm. See United States v. Gallardo, 915 F.2d 149, 151 (5th Cir.1990) (holding that the number of envelopes mailed determines the number of child-pornography-transportation violations under
No doubt, victims of multiple violations in some instances may suffer greater damages than victims of a single violation. Take the child-pornography victim known as Amy. Widespread dissemination of images depicting Amy‘s childhood abuse has caused her to suffer upwards of $3 million in actual damages. In re Amy Unknown, 701 F.3d 749, 752-53 n. 3 (5th Cir.2012) (en banc), cert. granted sub nom., Paroline v. United States, — U.S. —, 133 S.Ct. 2886, 186 L.Ed.2d 932 (2013). How, one might wonder, will a per-lawsuit interpretation of the presumed-damages portion of § 2255 account for these cases of extreme harm resulting from numerous violations?
The reader might worry that a victim of multiple violations by the same defendant could circumvent our decision by filing a separate complaint for damages for each violation under § 2255. There is no reason to worry for a reason alluded to at the beginning of this analysis: Traditional prohibitions on claim splitting would stand in the way. The doctrine of res judicata or, in modern parlance, claim preclusion prevents a party from re-litigating a cause of action already decided. See Gargallo v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., 918 F.2d 658, 660 (6th Cir.1990). The limitation applies not only to claims and defenses actually raised in the prior proceeding, but also to those claims or defenses “that should have been raised, but w[ere] not.” Id. at 661. The rule prevents a plaintiff from “splitting a cause of action” into separate lawsuits and requires him to litigate all the claims he can raise in one case. Id.; see also Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 24(1) (1982) (“[T]he claim [precluded] includes all rights of the plaintiff to remedies against the defendant with respect to all or any part of the transaction, or series of connected transactions, out of which the action arose.“). The rule of course has exceptions but none that would apply here in light of the arguments made by the parties. See, e.g., Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 26(1)(c) (Claims or theories not raised will not be precluded if the plaintiff “was unable to rely on a certain theory of the case or to seek a certain remedy or form of relief in the first action because of the limitations on the subject matter jurisdiction of the courts.“).
As for J.W., he did not bring separate lawsuits for each alleged federal violation. Nor could he have done so given that all of his federal claims arose out of the same unbroken chain of events from 2007 to 2011. J.W. thus has a single cause of action for damages under § 2255. Since J.W. did not offer any proof of actual damages exceeding the $150,000 floor, that floor became his presumptive award. Accordingly, the district court‘s presumed-damages award for $1 million must be vacated, and the case remanded. On remand, the district court may decide whether J.W. has forfeited any argument that his actual damages exceed $150,000 and, if he has not, whether to allow the parties the opportunity to offer proof of J.W.‘s actual damages.
IV.
For these reasons, we reverse and remand.