Romero v. United States

Background

Ludwig Criss Zelaya-Romero proceeded without a lawyer and sued the United States, A.J. Bussanich, Robert Beaudouin, Brian Gerson, and Bruce Bialor. The court interpreted his complaints as asserting two groups of claims:

- Claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a law that permits certain suits against the United States for harm caused by federal employees. These claims alleged negligence and medical malpractice involving treatment at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan and the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. - Claims under Bivens, a legal doctrine permitting certain constitutional claims against individual federal officials. These claims alleged that the individual defendants failed to provide adequate medical care.

Zelaya-Romero alleged that he complained about hernia pain and other medical problems while held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2017 and 2018. He was transferred to the Metropolitan Detention Center on May 14, 2018. He alleged that he continued requesting medical care there, but did not receive the treatment or surgical referral he believed he needed. He later received treatment at another facility, was diagnosed with several hernias in April 2022, and underwent surgery on May 13, 2022.

MCC-Related Tort Claims

The defendants moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which permits dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim, arguing that the Federal Tort Claims Act claims based on treatment at the Metropolitan Correctional Center were time-barred.

The court explained that a claimant generally must first present a Federal Tort Claims Act claim to the appropriate federal agency and must do so within two years after the claim accrues. Zelaya-Romero submitted his first administrative claim on February 8, 2021. The court determined that his claims based on the Metropolitan Correctional Center accrued before February 8, 2019 because his allegations showed that he knew by 2017 that he was not receiving the treatment he believed he needed. His transfer from that facility in May 2018 also meant that the alleged Metropolitan Correctional Center treatment could not have occurred later than that date.

The court rejected equitable tolling, a doctrine that can extend a filing deadline in extraordinary circumstances. It concluded that Zelaya-Romero had not shown the extraordinary circumstances required to extend the deadline. The court therefore granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the Federal Tort Claims Act claims based on medical care at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. It declined to grant leave to amend those claims because amendment would not cure the timing problem.

The court did not dismiss the Federal Tort Claims Act claims based on care at the Metropolitan Detention Center. The defendants’ principal briefs did not argue that those claims were time-barred, and the court declined to consider a one-sentence time-limit argument raised for the first time in the reply brief.

Bivens Claims and Administrative Exhaustion

The defendants initially presented their challenge to the Bivens claims as a motion for summary judgment, which asks the court to rule based on evidence outside the pleadings. They argued that Zelaya-Romero had not exhausted, or completed, the Bureau of Prisons’ administrative grievance process as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

Because discovery had not begun, and because the defendants relied on materials outside the complaints, the court considered whether to convert the motion into a summary-judgment motion. The court declined to do so. It found it unclear whether Zelaya-Romero had received the required notices explaining the consequences of summary judgment, and it concluded that additional discovery focused only on exhaustion would not serve a useful purpose at that stage.

The court instead treated the challenge as a motion to dismiss. Failure to exhaust is an affirmative defense, meaning the defendants generally must establish it rather than require the prisoner to plead exhaustion in the complaint. Dismissal at this stage was appropriate only if the failure to exhaust was clear from the face of the complaint.

Zelaya-Romero alleged that he completed the administrative process and attached documents concerning grievances and appeals. Although the court found his allegations unclear about whether he properly completed every step, it concluded that any failure to exhaust was not directly evident from the complaints. The court therefore denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss the Bivens claims. Those claims survived the motions without a ruling on whether they would ultimately succeed.

Disposition

Judge Dale E. Ho granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss Zelaya-Romero’s Federal Tort Claims Act claims based on medical care at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. The Federal Tort Claims Act claims based on medical care at the Metropolitan Detention Center survived. The court denied the motion to dismiss the Bivens claims. The court also declined to grant leave to amend the Metropolitan Correctional Center claims.