McKinney v. United States

Background

Ayesha McKinney, Tracina Ross, and Tammy Bloomer sued the United States and Dennis Bresnahan. The plaintiffs alleged that Bresnahan was a federal law-enforcement officer and a U.S. probation officer who acted within the scope of his employment when he committed alleged torts against them. Their Third Amended Complaint asserted assault, battery, and abuse-of-process claims against the United States under Minnesota law. The plaintiffs did not reassert an intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim.

In an earlier order, the court dismissed several claims for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), including the assault, battery, abuse-of-process, and related emotional-distress claims. The court then allowed the plaintiffs to amend their complaint. In the Third Amended Complaint, the plaintiffs alleged that Bresnahan’s conduct was foreseeable and a known risk in his role and that other federal probation officers had used authority over people they supervised to obtain sexual favors.

Issue and analysis

The Government’s Second Motion to Dismiss argued that the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), the statute that allows certain tort claims against the United States, barred the plaintiffs’ assault, battery, and abuse-of-process claims under the FTCA’s intentional-tort exception. That exception generally excludes claims arising from those torts, but it contains a provision for acts or omissions by federal law-enforcement officers acting within the scope of their employment.

The court treated the jurisdictional challenge as a facial attack. That meant it accepted the plaintiffs’ factual allegations as true and asked only whether they had adequately alleged a basis for federal subject-matter jurisdiction. The court did not decide whether the alleged events actually occurred or whether the plaintiffs would ultimately prevail.

Under Minnesota law, conduct is within the scope of employment when its source is related to the employee’s duties and the conduct occurs within work-related limits of time and place. The court stated that the parties did not dispute the time-and-place requirement. It focused on whether the alleged conduct was related to Bresnahan’s duties. The court explained that sexual assault may be related to an employee’s duties when it is a foreseeable risk of that particular profession, and it noted the importance of expert evidence concerning whether such conduct is a known hazard in the profession.

The court accepted the plaintiffs’ allegations as true and found that their allegations about foreseeability, a known risk, and similar conduct by other probation officers were sufficient to make their claims plausible at the pleading stage. The court also stated that it could consider an expert report submitted by the Government in connection with the jurisdictional motion, but found that the complaint’s allegations were sufficient even without that report. For purposes of the motion, the Government apparently continued to assume that Bresnahan qualified as a federal law-enforcement officer, so the court did not decide that issue.

Ruling

The court concluded that the assault, battery, and abuse-of-process claims were not barred by the FTCA’s intentional-tort exception because they fell within the law-enforcement provision. It therefore found that the plaintiffs had established subject-matter jurisdiction over those claims and denied the Government’s Second Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction.

The opinion expressly states that the plaintiffs’ claims against Bresnahan, individually and in his official capacity, were not at issue in this order. This was a Rule 12(b)(1) jurisdictional ruling, not a final decision on whether the plaintiffs will succeed on the underlying tort claims.