United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 04-2277
ANTONIO RIVERA DIAZ, ANTONIO RIVERA MERCADO,
RAQUEL OLGA RIVERA-MERCADO, YELITZA RIVERA ACEVEDO,
AND PATRICIA RIVERA FALCON,
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
v.
AMERICAN AIRLINES, INC. AND AMERICAN AIRLINES
PENSION PLAN ADMINISTRATION,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Héctor M. Laffitte, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Boudin, Chief Circuit Judge,
Cyr, Senior Circuit Judge,
and Howard, Circuit Judge.
Rafael A. Oliveras-López de Victoria for appellant.
Angel Castillo, Jr., with whom Lisa R. Askowitz, Larissa C.
Garriga-Cesaní, and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP were on brief for
appellees.
December 28, 2005
CYR, Senior Circuit Judge. The estate of Antonio Rivera
Diaz appeals from the district court order which dismissed its
claim for decedent’s benefits, pursuant to the Employment
Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 1001-1461, as
a sanction for disobeying a court order. We affirm.
I
BACKGROUND
The decedent had been employed by American Airlines as a
flight attendant, but retired in 1991 for health reasons. Diaz had
been covered by an ERISA retirement plan ("the Plan"). American
Airlines transmitted notification to Diaz that he had the right to
file for pension benefits under the Plan. However, the notice was
addressed to an invalid address, and was never received by Diaz.
In 1998, Diaz filed suit against the Plan in federal district
court, demanding equitable relief as well as compensatory and
punitive damages, and alleging that the Plan willfully failed to
accord him the required notification of his rights under the Plan.
The district court dismissed the complaint, with prejudice, for
failure to exhaust administrative remedies, also noting that only
equitable relief is available under ERISA, thus Diaz could not
recover punitive damages. On appeal, we affirmed regarding the
unavailability of punitive damages, but noted that the dismissal
should be without prejudice to refiling the action after Diaz had
exhausted his administrative remedies. Rivera Diaz v. Am.
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Airlines, No. 99-2282, 2000 WL 1022888, at *1 n.3 (1st Cir. July
25, 2000) (“Should plaintiffs later pursue a claim for punitive
damages, they may subject themselves to sanctions.”).
In due course, Diaz submitted an administrative claim
with the Plan. Some five months passed with no response, and Diaz
submitted a second suit in federal district court, once again
demanding punitive damages. The second suit was dismissed with
prejudice as well, for failure to exhaust administrative remedies,
and plaintiff’s counsel was ordered to remit $1500 as a sanction
for ignoring the court’s earlier admonition that ERISA does not
provide for punitive damages. Diaz appealed once again. We
affirmed, but ordered a dismissal without prejudice, stating that
“Counsel is, however, admonished to research the case law and take
heed of what we said earlier (viz., in his first appeal)” regarding
the unavailability of punitive damages under ERISA.
Diaz died in June 2003. In March 2004, before the Plan
issued any decision on his administrative claim, the Diaz estate
filed a third complaint against the Plan, demanding, inter alia,
punitive damages. The Plan moved to dismiss the complaint for
failure to heed the courts’ admonitions against demanding punitive
damages. The district court ordered plaintiffs to show cause why
the case should not be dismissed as a sanction. Plaintiffs failed
to file a timely response to the show-cause order. In due course,
the district court dismissed the case, with prejudice, and imposed
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an $1800 fine against plaintiffs’ counsel for a “flagrant[]”
violation of the repeated court orders stating that plaintiffs
could not recover punitive damages. Plaintiffs now appeal from the
dismissal order.
II
DISCUSSION
Plaintiffs insist that the district court erred in
dismissing the complaint, given that (in plaintiffs’ view) the Plan
unquestionably violated the ERISA disclosure requirements by
willfully mailing Diaz the notification of his pension rights to
the wrong address, unfairly withholding the pension benefits for
twelve years until Diaz’s death, and maliciously refusing, for four
years, to act on Diaz’s administrative complaint. Given these
extraordinary circumstances, plaintiffs contend, punitive damages
are recoverable under ERISA.
Contrary to the thrust of the plaintiffs’ contentions on
appeal, the district court did not dismiss the complaint on the
merits of the ERISA claim, but due to plaintiffs’ repeated failure
to comply with a court order, which decision we review only for
abuse of discretion. See Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 62
(1991) (stating that court may “dismiss an action or claim of a
party that fails to prosecute, to comply with the Federal Rules, or
to obey an order of the court”) (citing Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(b));
Tower Ventures, Inc. v. City of Westfield, 296 F.3d 43, 46 (1st
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Cir. 2002). In order to thwart non-compliance with its orders, the
court may choose among “a broad universe of possible sanctions,”
including dismissal with prejudice. Id. Although dismissal, with
prejudice, is the harshest of sanctions, its deployment may be
appropriate, even absent consideration of lesser sanctions, where
the offending party has engaged in “extreme conduct,” which by
definition entails the knowing disobedience of a court order. Id.
So drastic a remedy is justified due to the fact that such
disobedience “robs [court orders] of their utility.” Id. Given
these standards, the appellants are confronted with a “heavy
burden”: to demonstrate that the dismissal, with prejudice, for
disobedience of a court order constituted an abuse of discretion.
Id.
Not only have appellants failed to shoulder this heavy
burden, they have not even attempted to do so. The district court,
as well as this court, warned plaintiffs of the dire consequences
were they to persist in their unwarranted demands for punitive
damages under ERISA. See Buffonge v. Prudential Ins. Co. of Am.,
426 F.3d 20, 31 n.15 (1st Cir. 2005) (noting well-settled law that
ERISA does not permit recovery of punitive damages). Nevertheless,
plaintiffs simply ignored the courts’ admonitions. They also
failed to respond, in a timely manner, to the show-cause order, see
Guex v. Allamerica Fin. Life Ins. & Annuity Co., 146 F.3d 40, 42
(1st Cir. 1998), nor do they offer, on appeal, any excuse for their
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noncompliance. Instead, they simply ignore their disobedience, and
request that we address the merits of their complaint, insisting
that they should be entitled to prove punitive damages. After
having warned plaintiffs repeatedly, see Serra-Lugo v. Consortium-
Las Marias, 271 F.3d 5, 6 (1st Cir. 2001) (noting that the district
court warned of consequences for noncompliance, following which the
party repeatedly disobeyed court orders, and that “[c]ounsel who
choose to disregard the orders of the district court place
themselves and their clients at risk”); HMG Prop. Investors, Inc.
v. Parque Industrial Rio Canas, Inc., 847 F.2d 908, 918 (1st Cir.
1988) ("[T]he law is well established in this circuit that where a
noncompliant litigant has manifested a disregard for orders of the
court and been suitably forewarned of the consequences of continued
intransigence, a trial judge need not first exhaust milder
sanctions before resorting to dismissal"), the district court
cannot have abused its discretion in directing dismissal as the
most appropriate sanction for the plaintiffs’ repeated and
unexplained recalcitrance.
Affirmed. Costs assessed against appellants.
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