UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
_________________________________
)
LON RATLEY, )
)
Plaintiff, )
)
v. ) Civil Action No. 13-CV-0756(KBJ)
)
UNITED STATES )
POSTAL SERVICE, )
)
Defendant. )
)
_________________________________ )
MEMORANDUM OPINION
This federal case begins with a motion. The plaintiff has maintained from the
outset that he is owed $341.99 from the U.S. Postal Service for damage to a package
that he mailed. To pursue this recovery, the plaintiff dutifully sought reimbursement
directly from the Postal Service by invoking the agency’s insured mail policy in the
context of an administrative claim, and when that claim was denied, the plaintiff filed a
pro se complaint in the jurisdiction that is most logically equipped to handle such small
claims: the Small Claims and Conciliation Branch of the District of Columbia Superior
Court. 1 A magistrate judge in the D.C. Superior Court dismissed the plaintiff’s action
for improper service on April 20, 2013, whereupon the plaintiff asked to have his
terminated small claims action reinstated. This simple motion—one that ordinarily
poses a high hurdle and is rarely successfully mounted—would likely have resulted in a
1
The instant action is, in fact, the second complaint that the plaintiff has filed in a small claims court
regarding this postal dispute. The plaintiff initially filed an action in the Small Claims Division of the
Fairfax County General District Court in Virginia, but that case was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
(See ECF No. 2-1 at 4.)
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prompt resolution of the matter. Instead, for reasons that have yet to be adequately
explained, the Postal Service decided to make a federal case out of this. On May 23,
2013, despite having already secured near-final dismissal of this matter, the Postal
Service inexplicably snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by filing a notice of
removal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1), and thereby shifting the plaintiff’s motion
for reinstatement of the complaint—and presumably the entire case—into federal court.
It was clear to this Court almost immediately that the Postal Service’s removal
notice raised at least two concerns. First, the Court wondered whether a matter that a
state court of competent (and certainly, in this case, much better) jurisdiction had
already dismissed truly qualified as a “live” controversy that could be subject to this
Court’s jurisdiction. See Am. Bar Ass’n v. F.T.C., 636 F.3d 641, 647 (D.C. Cir. 2011)
(“The mootness doctrine, deriving from Article III, limits federal courts to deciding
actual, ongoing controversies.”) (citing Clarke v. United States, 915 F.2d 699, 700-01
(D.C. Cir. 1990)). More fundamentally, the Court questioned the rationality of a notice
of removal filed under these circumstances—i.e., not by a potentially aggrieved party,
but by the party that had already won in the jurisdiction that it now sought to flee. Cf.
Watson v. Philip Morris Cos., 551 U.S. 142, 150-51 (2007) (the purpose of removal
includes protection against state court proceedings that may reflect “local prejudice” or
hostility towards the federal government) (collecting cases); Willingham v. Morgan,
395 U.S. 402, 405 (1969) (“Obviously, the removal provision was an attempt to protect
federal officers [and agencies] from interference by hostile state courts.”). When the
Court considered, too, the fact that the Postal Service’s response to the motion to
reinstate (U.S.P.S. Resp., ECF No. 4) plainly states that the agency “takes no position”
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on the merits of the very motion that was the basis for the agency’s invocation of
removal jurisdiction, 2 coupled with the fact that it would have cost plaintiff more in
filing fees to bring this action in federal court in the first instance than he sought to
recover as a result of the lawsuit, 3 the Court quickly reached the inescapable conclusion
that a reevaluation of the agency’s removal determination, or at least some explanation,
was required. Consequently, on June 4, 2013, this Court issued an order to show cause,
ostensibly to ask the Postal Service to explain “why the Court has jurisdiction over this
matter” and “why a motion to reinstate a dismissed complaint is a live controversy for
the purposes of removal,” but primarily to provide the Postal Service with ample
opportunity revisit its decision to remove to federal court a meager-money claim that
the state court had already all-but-resolved in the agency’s favor.
On July 10, 2013, the Postal Service filed its response to the Court’s order show
to cause. (Show Cause Resp., ECF No. 6.) Without a hint of irony, the Postal Service
argues that “Defendant’s removal of Plaintiff’s motion to reinstate Plaintiff’s
[dismissed] complaint was proper.” (Id. at 1.) Without acknowledging in any way the
oddity of a victorious state-court defendant insisting that a plaintiff’s motion to reopen
the dismissed case be litigated in federal court at a cost far greater than the claimed
benefit, the Postal Service vigorously maintains that the agency properly removed the
plaintiff’s reinstatement request in this case for two reasons: first, because “the USPS,
a federal agency, was improperly sued in state court,” and, second, because the
2
The Court found it difficult to fathom how any defendant could “take no position” on a plaintiff’s
motion to reopen a dismissed lawsuit.
3
The plaintiff’s District of Columbia Superior Court Small Claims and Conciliation Statement of Claim
sought a recovery in the amount of $341.99. (See ECF No. 5-1 at 27.) His prior action in the Small
Claims Division of the Fairfax County General District Court included additional shipping costs and
claimed damages in the amount of $353.73. (See ECF No. 2-1 at 4.) By comparison, the filing fee for a
civil action brought directly in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is $350.00.
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plaintiff’s motion for reinstatement “constitutes a removable ‘civil action’ under
28 U.S.C. § 1442(d)(1).” (Id.)
In regard to the first point, the agency has provided no authority for the
contention that it had been “improperly” sued in small claims court, nor is there any
record of the agency having made that argument to the state court judge. Nevertheless,
even assuming that the Postal Service cannot be sued in small claims court as the
agency now suggests, the state court’s dismissal of the case at issue here surely cured
that legal defect. One would think that the Postal Service would have been content to
rest on that purportedly fitting end to the potentially misdirected action, but the agency
here has done precisely the opposite: it eschewed the opportunity to proclaim its
purported immunity and thereby put a stop to this matter once and for all, and instead
singlehandedly resuscitated plaintiff’s near-dead case by giving it new life in a fresh
federal forum through the filing of a notice of removal.
The Postal Service’s second justification for removing this matter to federal
court rests solely on the statutory requirements for federal jurisdiction and removal.
(See Show Cause Resp. at 2.) Without appreciating any distinction between the validity
of a removal notice and its rationality, the agency points squarely to the statutory
framework and mechanically recites the applicable removal analysis. Under 28 U.S.C.
§ 1442(a)(1), it argues, a “civil action” brought against any federal agency “may be
removed by them to the district court of the United States for the district and division
embracing the place wherein it is pending.” (Id. (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)).) And
the plaintiff’s motion to reinstate his dismissed complaint qualifies as a “civil action”
for the purpose of the removal statute, the agency asserts, because the “[p]laintiff’s
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motion is a ‘proceeding’ in which a ‘judicial order’ ‘is sought.’” (Id. at 3 (quoting
28 U.S.C. § 1442(d)(1)).) This may be true, but here it is also largely beside the point.
Like the proverbial scientist who dutifully documents the trees but can’t quite envision
the forest, the Postal Service firmly presses its contention that each of the statutory
requisites for removal, construed broadly as appropriate, are fully satisfied here (id. at
2-3) without providing any clues as to a broader and more fundamental question: why
did the agency determine that removal to federal court (even if valid) was appropriately
invoked under the circumstances presented in this case?
Nevertheless, the Court is persuaded. The Court finds that it does have
jurisdiction to hear this case on the basis of 28 U.S.C. § 1442 and 28 U.S.C. § 1446, as
the Postal Service argues. The Court also finds that the Postal Service has clearly and
unequivocally chosen the federal court path in adjudicating this $341.99 claim, despite
the fact that leaving well enough alone would certainly have been the easier, less-costly,
and more efficient option for resolution of this dispute. Unfortunately for the agency,
there is more. This Court also finds that, in the course of purposely electing to revive
this nearly-extinguished state court action against it, the Postal Service has expressly
conceded the crucial question of whether or not the plaintiff’s case should, in fact, be
reopened. This the agency has done by inserting into its Response to the Motion to
Reinstate the unequivocal (and quite remarkable) statement that the agency “takes no
position” on the matter. (U.S.P.S. Resp. at 1.) See Shankar v. ACS-GSI, 258 Fed.
Appx. 344, 345 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (holding that plaintiff conceded the merits of an issue
when he “did not respond in any way to defendant’s argument” on the issue in his
opposition before the district court); Nat’l Sec. Counselors v. C.I.A., 898 F. Supp. 2d
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233, 268 (D.D.C. 2012) (“[T]he Court may treat the plaintiff’s failure to oppose the
defendant’s . . . arguments as a decision to concede those arguments.”) (internal
citations omitted); see also LCvR 7(b) (when a party fails to oppose a motion, the Court
may treat the motion as conceded). To be sure, this result may have been inevitable—
having relied on the pending motion to reinstate the dismissed complaint as the sole
grounds for bringing what remained of this case into federal court, the agency probably
could not have also been heard to oppose that very motion. But the fact that the Postal
Service here disclaims any opposition to the reopening of the plaintiff’s case against it
renders reinstatement of the dismissed action nearly a foregone conclusion.
Accordingly, and remarkably without opposition, the plaintiff’s motion for
reinstatement of his complaint is granted and his case is reopened, now in federal court.
By operation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the onus is now on the agency to
respond to the revived complaint, which a defendant ordinarily must do within 21 days
of receipt of the complaint—“through service or otherwise”—or within 7 days after
filing the notice of removal, whichever is longer. F ED . R. C IV . P. 81(c). As it happens,
on May 24, 2013, the Postal Service requested an extension of time to file a responsive
pleading as part of its Response to the Motion to Reinstate the Complaint—time the
agency said it needed to “procure the complaint from the Clerk of the DC Superior
Court[.]” (U.S.P.S. Resp. at 2.) Six days later, all of the pleadings from the plaintiff’s
D.C. Superior Court case were filed on the federal docket by virtue of the removal
(Super. Ct. Docs., ECF No. 5), which means that the agency is currently in receipt of
plaintiff’s complaint for the purpose of Rule 81(c). Nevertheless, as set forth in the
accompanying order, the Court will grant defendant’s request for more time to submit
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its answer or otherwise file a responsive pleading to the complaint. With this additional
time, both parties will have an opportunity to assess fully their respective positions
going forward in regard to this matter. A separate Order accompanies this
Memorandum Opinion.
Date: July 18, 2013 Ketanji Brown Jackson
KETANJI BROWN JACKSON
United States District Judge
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