Amy v. Curtis

Background

Fifteen plaintiffs proceeding under pseudonyms sued Randall Steven Curtis under 18 U.S.C. § 2255(a). That statute allows a person who was a child victim of a violation of certain listed federal criminal statutes, including 18 U.S.C. § 2252, to recover actual damages or $150,000 in liquidated damages, along with litigation costs and reasonable attorney’s fees. The plaintiffs alleged that the Child Victim Identification Program matched images on Curtis’s computer with images depicting them in a database maintained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Curtis had been prosecuted for possessing and transporting child pornography. The opinion states that his criminal judgment required him to pay restitution to each plaintiff. After the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint and Curtis filed an amended answer, the plaintiffs moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f) to strike portions of that answer. They later filed a second motion to strike Curtis’s supplemental declaration.

First Motion to Strike

The court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that § 2255 categorically bars affirmative defenses. Because Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(c) generally requires parties to state affirmative defenses, the court held that such defenses are available unless Congress clearly displaced that rule. The court also explained that, in this district, affirmative defenses generally must include enough factual content to provide fair notice and cannot consist only of bare legal conclusions.

The court struck each of Curtis’s first through ninth affirmative defenses:

- First defense—failure to state a claim: Struck because failure to state a claim challenges whether the plaintiffs have proved their basic case; it is not an affirmative defense. - Second defense—third-party liability: Struck. The court agreed with the reasoning of a cited appellate decision that a plaintiff seeking liquidated damages under § 2255 need only show victim status and need not separately prove personal injury. On that reasoning, the acts of third parties were irrelevant if the plaintiffs could establish that they were victims of Curtis’s predicate crime. - Third defense—causation: Struck because the court treated causation as an element of the plaintiffs’ claim rather than an affirmative defense. - Fourth defense—accord and satisfaction: Struck because it lacked sufficient factual content and was not legally available on the asserted basis. The court held that criminal restitution does not bar a later § 2255 civil claim based on the same predicate offense. Any liquidated damages later paid would offset previously paid restitution. - Fifth defense—unjust enrichment: Struck. The court held that the mandatory $150,000 liquidated-damages remedy could not be reduced merely because plaintiffs had received restitution or other payments, and Curtis had cited no authority allowing the court to disregard the statutory amount. - Sixth, seventh, and ninth defenses—constitutional challenges: Struck because the defenses lacked factual allegations explaining the challenges, including whether Curtis intended facial or as-applied challenges. The court also noted that the required notices concerning constitutional challenges had not been filed under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.1 and the applicable local rule. - Eighth defense—setoff: Struck because Curtis did not identify the source of the proposed credit and because the court concluded that § 2255’s liquidated-damages provision requires an award regardless of other conduct or payments of the type asserted.

The court therefore granted the plaintiffs’ first motion to strike and struck Curtis’s first through ninth affirmative defenses.

Judicial Notice and Filed Document

The court granted the plaintiffs’ amended request for judicial notice of two public records from Curtis’s criminal case: a restitution stipulation and an amended judgment and restitution list. Judicial notice allows a court to accept certain facts or documents without requiring ordinary proof when they are not reasonably disputable and can be accurately verified.

The court denied the plaintiffs’ motion to remove Curtis’s 2017 plea agreement from the public record. The court stated that plea agreements are restricted to case participants but are not treated as confidential unless a party seeks to file them under seal.

Second Motion to Strike

The parties filed supplemental declarations after briefing on the first motion to strike had ended. The court held that the declarations were not authorized by the applicable local rules because neither party obtained court approval and neither filing fell within an exception for reply materials. The court struck both supplemental declarations under its authority to control its docket.

Because the court struck Curtis’s supplemental declaration on that basis, it denied as moot the plaintiffs’ second motion to strike. The court expressly took no position on whether any party or nonparty acted improperly in connection with Curtis’s criminal restitution proceedings.

Classification

This is a procedural order because it decided motions to strike pleadings and related filings rather than finally deciding the plaintiffs’ entitlement to damages. Although the court interpreted § 2255 in resolving whether some defenses were legally available, it did not enter judgment on the underlying civil claim.