Edward Hulvey Meyers

In Ricks v. United States, a plaintiff incarcerated for Louisiana rape convictions sued in the Court of Federal Claims, alleging that his convictions were invalid because the grand jury accusations were not made under oath and seeking expungement of the charges from his records in Florida and Louisiana along with related injunctive relief. The court granted the government's motion to dismiss, holding that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction under the Tucker Act because the claims did not seek money damages based on a money-mandating source of law, involved non-federal defendants, were time-barred by the six-year statute of limitations in 28 U.S.C. § 2501, and asked the court to review the validity of state criminal convictions, which it has no authority to do. The court also declined to transfer the case to another court because similar claims were already pending in federal district court.

criminal lawprocedurefederal power

This case is a bid protest brought by Dutch Ridge Consulting Group, LLC against the United States in the Court of Federal Claims challenging the Department of Defense's cancellation of a solicitation for contractor support of background investigations for security clearances. After determining that significant additional work needed to be incorporated, the agency canceled the original solicitation and issued a new one; Dutch Ridge, which had been in the competitive range, argued the cancellation was unnecessary and sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the agency from accepting proposals on the new solicitation until its protest was resolved. The court denied the motion for a preliminary injunction, concluding that Dutch Ridge was unlikely to succeed on the merits because the agency's decision to cancel was not arbitrary or capricious and that Dutch Ridge had not demonstrated irreparable harm from allowing the new solicitation process to proceed.

business & regulatoryprocedure

Antoine Ford, a former Navy and Navy Reserve human resources officer, sued the United States in the Court of Federal Claims seeking compensation for alleged service-related injuries to his back and shoulder as well as PTSD, including claims for improper release from active duty, incapacitation pay, disability retirement benefits, and due process violations from the denial of an in-person hearing and discovery. The court reviewed the Board of Correction of Naval Records' latest decision after a prior remand and found that the Navy had properly applied fitness standards, considered the evidence, and provided reasoned explanations for denying the claims, including that Ford had not supplied adequate documentation for lost income and that his conditions were not shown to have rendered him unfit for duty. The court rejected the due process arguments, holding that no in-person hearing was required and that supplementation of the record was not warranted. It therefore denied Ford's motion for judgment on the administrative record, denied his discovery motion, and granted the government's cross-motion. The topics are federal power, civil rights, and procedure.

federal powercivil rightsprocedure

This case involved a bid protest by Joerns Healthcare, LLC challenging its exclusion from a Department of Veterans Affairs procurement for hospital beds for home use. The solicitation required beds with a minimum width of 36 inches and others that could extend to at least 42 inches, with compliance verified by tape measure and non-responsive bids excluded for failing to meet the minimums. Joerns argued that industry practice allowed for roughly one inch of variation below the stated dimensions and that the selected products did not qualify as commercial items under FAR Part 12, but the court rejected these claims. The court held that the solicitation language was unambiguous, Joerns' interpretation was unreasonable and waived by failing to protest before proposals were due, and Joerns could not show prejudice. The court denied Joerns' motion for judgment on the administrative record and granted the government's cross-motion.

business & regulatoryprocedure

Joshua Schulz filed a petition seeking compensation under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, claiming that an influenza vaccine caused him to develop transverse myelitis. The Special Master denied the off-table claim, finding that Schulz failed to meet his burden under all three Althen prongs by not causally linking the vaccine to the condition, providing evidence of a logical cause-and-effect sequence, or showing timely manifestation of the injury. Schulz moved for review, arguing errors including the denial of subpoena requests for additional records. The court sustained the Special Master's decision, holding that the evidence was reasonably weighed under the applicable framework and that the conclusions were neither arbitrary nor capricious, with additional records unlikely to change the result.

healthcareproceduretorts & liability

Khalif Quran, proceeding pro se, filed this action in the Court of Federal Claims seeking review of his state criminal conviction and incarceration, along with monetary damages based on criminal statutes, equity principles, maritime law, and alleged trust relationships arising from birth certificates or driver’s licenses. The court dismissed the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction under the Tucker Act, holding that the claims did not arise from any money-mandating source of law. The core reasoning was that the court has no authority to adjudicate criminal matters, collaterally review state court decisions, hear admiralty claims (reserved exclusively for district courts), or grant equitable relief absent a valid monetary claim.

criminal lawprocedure

James Dean Nagy sued the United States in the Court of Federal Claims after losing an employment-related case in district court and having his appeal dismissed as frivolous by the Ninth Circuit, alleging that the circuit court violated his rights by labeling the claim frivolous. The court dismissed the complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Tucker Act limits the court's jurisdiction to claims based on the Constitution, statutes, regulations, or contracts with the United States that mandate money damages, and the plaintiff failed to identify any such money-mandating source. The court also lacks authority to review decisions by district or circuit courts or to hear claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which is vested exclusively in district courts. Constitutional provisions like the Sixth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments do not provide jurisdiction here because they do not require payment of money.

procedurecivil rights

This case involves a bid protest by Active Deployment Systems, LLC against the United States after the company was not selected for a contract to provide temporary housing and facilities for training new Customs and Border Patrol agents at a facility in New Mexico. The agency overrode the automatic stay triggered by ADS's protest at the Government Accountability Office, prompting ADS to seek a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction to prevent contract performance. The court denied the motion, finding that the factors for injunctive relief—including likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable harm to the plaintiff, balance of harms, and public interest—weighed against granting relief, particularly due to the urgent need for the facilities to support national security efforts.

immigrationbusiness & regulatoryprocedure

David Toney sued the United States in the Court of Federal Claims seeking a tax refund for overpayment of his 2016 taxes, claiming he was a non-statutory employee who earned no taxable wages and that the IRS had improperly recalculated his liability and denied his claim as frivolous. The IRS had disallowed the refund request in a December 2022 letter after determining Toney's position lacked legal support. The court dismissed the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, holding that Toney failed to file suit within the two-year statutory deadline following the IRS's denial of his administrative claim. The decision rested solely on this timing requirement rather than the underlying merits of the tax arguments.

taxesprocedure

The case involved a subcontractor, Sabrina Dunbar-Brown, who owned a childcare company that had a short-lived subcontract with a prime contractor providing services to the Army. She sought contract damages, declaratory relief, and other remedies from the United States under the Contract Disputes Act after the prime contractor terminated the subcontract. The court dismissed the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. It reasoned that subcontractors generally lack privity with the United States and thus cannot sue directly, and that the plaintiff had not first presented her claim to the contracting officer as required before filing suit in court.

business & regulatoryprocedure

Gayle George sued the United States in the Court of Federal Claims, claiming that the U.S. Marshals Service violated the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause by evicting her from her home after a foreclosure sale to U.S. Bank. The D.C. Superior Court had authorized the foreclosure and later issued a writ of restitution for eviction, which was carried out in 2025, and George sought damages for the alleged uncompensated taking. The court granted the government's motion to dismiss, holding that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction under the Tucker Act because the claim necessarily required collateral attacks on the final orders of the D.C. Superior Court and D.C. Court of Appeals regarding the foreclosure and eviction. The court explained that it cannot review or set aside judgments of other tribunals and that any challenge to those orders must proceed through the appellate process rather than a new action here.

propertyprocedure

Peanut Wagon, Inc. operated the Cliff House restaurant under a concession contract with the United States until 2020, and after the contract ended, the parties disputed which costs from installing a new HVAC system were recoverable as the system's "original cost." Following an earlier partial dismissal, the parties filed cross-motions for partial summary judgment limited to the HVAC damages claims. The court denied the plaintiff's motion and granted the government's, holding that the contract's plain language excluded certain claimed expenses such as entrepreneurial incentives and legal costs from the definition of original cost. The court noted that financing costs up to the system's November 2020 in-service date might still be recoverable pending further discovery.

business & regulatoryprocedure

In Kim v. United States, a pro se plaintiff sued in the Court of Federal Claims an Administrative Law Judge who denied his application for additional Social Security benefits, claiming the denial constituted fraud and violated a Michigan civil rights statute. The court dismissed the complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, noting that Congress assigned Social Security benefit claims to district courts and that the Court of Federal Claims cannot hear tort claims or state-law claims against individuals. The court further declined to transfer the case to the Eastern District of Michigan under 28 U.S.C. § 1631 because the plaintiff could not have filed the action there at the outset, given the Federal Tort Claims Act's bar on fraud claims, the absence of a prior administrative claim, and the expiration of the 60-day deadline for appealing the benefits denial.

federal powerhealthcaretorts & liabilityprocedure

In this case, Fort Sam Acquisition, LLC sued the United States under the Contract Disputes Act alleging breach of four ground leases for property on Joint Base San Antonio, claiming the right to deduct certain expenses from rent owed to the Department of the Air Force. The leases originated in 2001 and 2007, were amended in 2017 to tie rent calculations to terms from related subleases using a Net Rental Rate methodology, and the dispute arose after Fort Sam sought offsets not explicitly allowed post-amendment. The Court of Federal Claims granted the government's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The court held that the amended ground leases, read together with the incorporated sublease terms, do not permit the claimed deductions and that Fort Sam's proposed interpretation was facially unreasonable because it required altering the contractual rent template and improperly deducting expenses from already-adjusted rates.

business & regulatoryproperty

The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation sued the United States in the Court of Federal Claims under the Indian Tucker Act, alleging breaches of fiduciary duties in the federal government's management of tribal water rights and the Uintah Indian Irrigation Project infrastructure on the reservation. After a partial remand from the Federal Circuit, the court considered the government's partial motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim. The court granted the motion in part, dismissing claims barred by the statute of limitations, a prior 2012 settlement agreement, or improper parens patriae standing for harms to individual tribal members, and denied it in part to allow claims for inadequate maintenance and repair of the irrigation system, failures to use water quality controls, and unauthorized water rights transfers under the 1941 Act to proceed to the extent they allege harm to the Tribe itself.

civil rightsfederal powerpropertyenvironment

This case involves Siemens Government Technologies, Inc.'s attempt to obtain a task order under an existing IDIQ energy savings performance contract for measures at Goodfellow Air Force Base, after the Department of Energy awarded the umbrella contract and the Defense Logistics Agency handled the ordering process. The government altered project requirements and ultimately declined to issue any task order, prompting Siemens to sue under the Contract Disputes Act for breach of the IDIQ contract and under the court's bid protest jurisdiction for breach of an implied duty to treat offerors fairly, seeking reimbursement of proposal and audit costs. The government moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim. The court deferred ruling on Count I but denied the motion as to Counts II and III, holding that the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act bar on protests does not apply where no task order was awarded and that the implied-in-fact contract claim remains viable as an alternative theory even if the express IDIQ contract does not bind the ordering agency.

business & regulatoryprocedure

Tribal Health, LLC, the incumbent contractor providing emergency department staffing at Rosebud Hospital under a task order from the Indian Health Service, filed suit after losing a follow-on award to Prime Physicians, PLLC. The company protested the award at the GAO and sought a preliminary injunction in the Court of Federal Claims, claiming that IHS violated the Competition in Contracting Act’s automatic stay by allowing performance under the new task order and a related bridge contract. The court dismissed two of the three counts as moot because IHS had already issued a stop work order, found that Tribal Health had not shown entitlement to injunctive relief on the remaining claim, and denied the motion for a preliminary injunction. The decision rested on the absence of ongoing or threatened harm redressable by injunction and on the public interest in uninterrupted emergency medical services at the rural hospital.

business & regulatoryprocedurehealthcare

Marcus Deshawn Wright, an incarcerated plaintiff appearing pro se, filed a civil action against the United States in the Court of Federal Claims. Because he had previously filed three or more complaints that were dismissed as frivolous, malicious, or for failure to state a claim, the court determined under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g) that he could not proceed in forma pauperis and ordered him to pay the filing fee; when he did not, the court dismissed the case for failure to prosecute under RCFC 41. Wright moved for reconsideration under RCFC 59, raising arguments about the age of his prior cases, his incarceration in state facilities, his youth and inexperience, equal protection, and fairness, but the court denied the motion, holding that the statute contains no temporal or other limitations matching his claims and that mere disagreement with Congress’s policy choices does not constitute clear error or manifest injustice.

criminal lawprocedure

Gilead Mutava sued the United States in the Court of Federal Claims seeking more than $500 billion, asserting that the US had defaulted in cases he filed against it in Kenyan courts and the International Court of Justice. He had also filed materially identical complaints in the District of Columbia and Southern District of New York federal courts, both of which remained pending when this case was filed. The court held that 28 U.S.C. § 1500 divested it of jurisdiction because earlier-filed suits in other courts asserted the same claims based on the same operative facts, and therefore dismissed the action for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction while granting the plaintiff's motion to proceed in forma pauperis.

procedure

In this case from the United States Court of Federal Claims, pro se plaintiff Marcus Deshawn Wright sued the United States but was repeatedly ordered to pay the $405 filing fee after being notified that he could not proceed in forma pauperis due to at least three prior dismissals of his complaints as frivolous or for failure to state a claim. The court warned that failure to pay by September 18, 2025, would lead to dismissal under RCFC 41 for failure to prosecute. Wright did not pay the fee. The court therefore dismissed the action pursuant to RCFC 41(b), citing precedent that dismissal is appropriate when a party fails to pay the filing fee after notice and opportunity.

procedure