United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 07-1046
ARCAM PHARMACEUTICAL CORPORATION,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
DANIEL PAGÁN; INGRID LLORÉNS-ORLANDI; CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP PAGÁN-
LLORÉNS; ERNESTO VILANOVA-VÉLEZ; MIRTA MORALES-MATOS; CONJUGAL
PARTNERSHIP VILANOVA-MORALES; CRISTINO AGOSTO-REYES; IRIS
HERNÁNDEZ-GONZÁLEZ; CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP AGOSTO-HERNÁNDEZ; MARTIN
SOUTO; CARMEN DÍAZ-RODRÍGUEZ; CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP SOUTO-DÍAZ;
CHRISTOPHER MOLINA; CARMEN VÁZQUEZ-BERMÚDEZ; CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP
MOLINA-VÁZQUEZ,
Plaintiffs,
v.
ANTONIO FARÍA; VILMA PELLOT; BANCO DE DESARROLLO ECONÓMICO PARA
PUERTO RICO,
Defendants, Appellees,
SILA MARÍA CALDERÓN, in her official capacity as Governor of
Puerto Rico; RAMÓN CANTERO-FRAU; CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP CANTERO-
CALDERON,
Defendants.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Daniel R. Domínguez, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella and Howard, Circuit Judges,
and Smith,* District Judge.
*
Of the District of Rhode Island, sitting by designation.
_________________________
José A. Ocasio-Robles and Ocasio-Robles Law Offices, P.S.C. on
brief for appellant.
Pedro Santiago-Rivera and Reichard & Escalera on brief for
appellees.
December 26, 2007
SMITH, District Judge. When this case was last before
us, we stated unequivocally that the Complaint in this matter
failed to state any viable constitutional claims. Pagán v.
Calderón, 448 F.3d 16, 37 (1st Cir. 2006). Given the holding in
Pagán, dismissal on remand by the District Court of appellant ARCAM
Pharmaceutical Corporation’s (“ARCAM”) claims was inevitable.
Nevertheless, ARCAM now appeals the dismissal of its suit against
appellees Antonio Faría and Vilma Pellot. ARCAM argues that the
Pagán decision was not binding on its claims against Faría and
Pellot, and that the District Court erred in extending Pagán to
dismiss the claims against these Defendants. After reviewing
ARCAM’s arguments and the record, we affirm the District Court’s
dismissal of the suit.
The facts giving rise to the Complaint fully were set
forth by this Court in Pagán, and need not be repeated in detail
here. See Pagán, 448 F.3d at 23-26. To summarize, briefly, “[t]he
underlying action involves multiple plaintiffs and multiple
defendants . . . The plaintiffs’ overarching claim is that
Calderón, then the governor of Puerto Rico, improperly influenced
the decision of a government lender to reject a loan sought by the
main plaintiff, ARCAM.” Id. at 23. All that is necessary for
purposes of this appeal is as follows: Appellees Faría and Pellot
were President and a “high ranking” official, respectively, of the
Banco de Desarrollo Económico para Puerto Rico (“BDE”), the lender
3
which denied ARCAM its sought after commercial loan for $5,000,000.
Plaintiffs alleged that Faría and Pellot were the vehicles through
which Calderón exerted undue influence over BDE’s directors in
order to prevent BDE from granting ARCAM’s loan request.
After this Court’s decision in Pagán, the remaining
claims of the underlying Complaint, if alive at all, were on life
support. In Pagán, we had before us Calderón’s appeal of the
District Court’s denial of her motion to dismiss all claims against
her on the grounds of qualified immunity. We first took up the
issue of justiciability, and concluded that only ARCAM had standing
to pursue its claims against Defendants. We therefore dismissed
the claims of all other Plaintiffs. With all Plaintiffs except
ARCAM out of the picture, and only ARCAM’s equal protection and
substantive due process claims remaining, we turned to Calderón’s
claim of qualified immunity. Id. at 23. Applying the usual
qualified immunity rubric, see, e.g., Limone v. Condon, 372 F.3d
39, 44 (1st Cir. 2004), we conclusively found that ARCAM “failed
adequately to plead a violation of its constitutional rights,”
directed the District Court to grant Calderón’s motion for
dismissal of all claims against her, and remanded for further
consistent proceedings.1 Pagán, 448 F.3d at 23.
1
Because only Calderón appealed the District Court’s Order,
this Court was compelled to return the case to the District Court
for appropriate disposition of ARCAM’s claims against Pellot and
Faría.
4
On remand, the District Court quite predictably ordered
the parties to show cause why the remaining claims should not be
dismissed based on the holding of Pagán. After considering the
parties’ submissions, the Court then incorporated in toto this
Court’s analysis in Pagán, and disposed of all further pending
matters, including supplemental claims raised under Puerto Rican
law.2 Now before us is ARCAM’s last-gasp appeal of the District
Court’s dismissal of its remaining claims against Pellot and Faría.
ARCAM stands on shaky ground when it claims that this Court’s
analysis in Pagán was little more than dicta as to Pellot and
Faría. We have held that “when a statement in a judicial decision
is essential to the result reached in the case, it becomes part of
the court’s holding.” Rossiter v. Potter, 357 F.3d 26, 31 (1st
Cir. 2004). The result, along with those portions of the opinion
necessary to the result, are binding, whereas dicta is not. Id.
“Dictum constitutes neither the law of the case nor the stuff of
binding precedent,” Dedham Water Co. v. Cumberland Farms Dairy,
Inc., 972 F.2d 453, 459 (1st Cir. 1992); rather, it “comprises
observations in a judicial opinion or order that are ‘not
essential’ to the determination of the legal questions then before
the court.” Municipality of San Juan v. Rullán, 318 F.3d 26, 29
n.3 (1st Cir. 2003) (quoting Dedham Water Co., 972 F.2d at 459);
2
These claims, sounding solely in the law of Puerto Rico,
were dismissed without prejudice.
5
see also Pierre N. Leval, Judging Under the Constitution: Dicta
About Dicta, 81 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1249, 1256 (2006) (Dictum is
superfluous content - “an assertion in a court’s opinion of a
proposition of law which does not explain why the court’s judgment
goes in favor of the winner”).
Because Calderón was the sole appellant in Pagán, our
reversal of the District Court’s refusal to dismiss ARCAM’s equal
protection and substantive due process claims technically related
only to those allegations aimed at Calderón. However, the holding
was premised on the essential finding that ARCAM’s allegations “do
not state viable constitutional claims,” a determination that was
by no means uniquely applicable to Calderón, but instead spoke
broadly to the failings of the Complaint as a whole. Pagán, 448
F.3d at 37.
As to ARCAM’s specific allegation that Calderón
transgressed its substantive due process rights when, through
Pellot and Faría, she exerted undue influence over BDE’s directors
so that they would deny ARCAM’s loan request, we concluded that
“the mere withholding of the loan, simplicitor, cannot support a
constitutional claim.” Id. at 33. This conclusion required
dismissal of ARCAM’s substantive due process claim, was not dicta,
and applies with equal force to the identical claims alleged
against Pellot and Faría. We were similarly forthright with regard
to ARCAM’s equal protection claim: “. . . [the claim] does not
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pass constitutional muster.” Id. at 35. Here, the analysis was
two-pronged: first, ARCAM failed to plead facts establishing that
a similarly situated borrower was treated differently than it; and
second, the Complaint offered no allegations indicating that the
disparate treatment of which ARCAM complains resulted from a gross
abuse of power, invidious discrimination, or fundamentally unfair
procedures.3 These flaws doomed ARCAM’s equal protection claims
against all remaining Defendants, not just Calderón.
Though our holding in Pagán was limited to Calderón’s
appeal, it cannot, as ARCAM urges, reasonably be read in isolation
from the case as a whole. Rather, as set forth above, the core
holding of Pagán – that the Complaint in this matter fails to
allege viable constitutional claims - extends with equal, if not
more force to allegations aimed at Pellot and Faría. In sum, with
our holding in Pagán, we sounded the death knell for ARCAM’s
remaining claims against Pellot and Faría, leaving the District
Court no choice but to bring down the axe.
The Order of the District Court dated November 27, 2006
is affirmed.
3
To the extent that ARCAM seeks to rely on its equal
protection and due process claims against Calderón, Pellot, and
Faría to redress what it alleges to have been unconstitutional
political discrimination or retaliation, it cannot do so. Pagán v.
Calderón, 448 F.3d 16, 34, 36-7 (1st Cir. 2006). Rather, the
proper avenue for such assertions is a First Amendment claim, one
which ARCAM brought, and which the District Court below dismissed
as to all Defendants in its March 30, 2005 Opinion and Order. See
id. at 36.
7