Searles v. Metropolitan Correctional Center
- Valerie Caproni
- 1:21-cv-05395
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Searles v. Metropolitan Correctional Center, Judge Caproni ordered the complaint amended to name the United States as defendant.
Jared Searles, the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the United States as the required defendant for the specified Federal Tort Claims Act claims.
What happened
Jared Searles sued the Metropolitan Correctional Center and Federal Bureau of Prisons over alleged assaults, negligence, and emotional distress. He brought the claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a law allowing certain lawsuits over wrongdoing by federal employees.
The court explained that the federal government generally keeps legal protection from lawsuits unless that protection has been waived, and that the Federal Tort Claims Act waives it only when the United States is named as a party.
The court ordered Searles to amend his complaint by July 6, 2021, to replace the current defendants with the United States for claims involving acts by government employees in their official roles. Judge Valerie Caproni did not decide the underlying tort claims in this order.
The detailed version
- Searles v. Metropolitan Correctional Center · No. 1:21-cv-05395
- Valerie Caproni
- June 28, 2021
Background
On June 18, 2021, Jared Searles filed a complaint against the Metropolitan Correctional Center and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The complaint asserted state-law claims for assault and battery, negligence—including negligent hiring, training, retention, and entrustment—and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Searles brought those claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which provides a limited waiver of the federal government's protection from certain lawsuits based on torts committed by federal employees.
Court’s reasoning
The court stated that the Federal Tort Claims Act waives the government's protection from suit only when the United States is named as a party. The complaint instead named the Metropolitan Correctional Center and the Federal Bureau of Prisons as defendants. The order addresses claims for alleged torts committed by employees of those entities while acting in their official capacities as federal government employees.
Ruling
The court ordered that, to the extent Searles seeks to pursue those Federal Tort Claims Act claims, he must amend his complaint to substitute the United States of America as the defendant. The deadline was July 6, 2021. The order did not decide whether Searles's tort claims were legally or factually valid. Judge Valerie Caproni entered the order on June 28, 2021.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.