Thread by @EdwardMiessner

No #JusticeForJamesKing, it looks like. 😥 The Government's side in #BrownbackvKing said that King's side based his defence on two propositions that were previously rejected by the Supreme Court:...

jurist.org/news/2020/11/s…

2/ ...(1) that when the US prevails in an FTCA action, the district court must dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and (2) a jurisdictional dismissal does not trigger the judgment bar.

3/ Respondent argued that the judgment did not preclude the action because Section 2676 imported the common law definition of res judicata. Res judicata was never applied to claims brought together in a single action.

4/ Additionally, respondent argued that the judgment bar does not apply to claims dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, because Section 1346 restricts FTCA jurisdiction to actions satisfying six elements.

5/ Well I did some research and I found out that Section 1983 and Bivens claims that are thrown out for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because of qualified immunity ARE preclusive and DO trigger the "res judicata" judgement bar.

6/ Because the dismissal for lack of jurisdiction was based on failure to prove S1346(b)(1) Element 6, "under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred"...

7/ ..., because Michigan's governmental immunity law gave the US personal immunity because the district court found the officers did not act "with reckless indifference to the common dictates of humanity" since it found they had qualified immunity in his (appealed) Bivens claim!

8/ A majority of the Supremes will NOT rule in his favor because his failure to prove Element 6 means the Government is personally immune, and personal immunity is non-preclusive reason for dismissing FTCA claims (Simmons v Himmelreich), EXCEPT, the Supremes will decide,...

9/ ...because of qualified immunity for the officers!

Then, to prevent this from causing people from filing their Bivens claim in a separate action first or abandoning their FTCA claim altogether, the Supremes will decree that all Bivens claims MUST be filed with an FTCA claim!

10/ This, of course, is all contrary to the will of Congress who, in 1946, wrote the law so that the failure of proving Element 6 caused a dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction at a time that ALL such dismissals were non-preclusive.

11/ It's also contrary to the will of Congress that claims that don't gain admittance to FTCA jurisdiction were NOT ACTIONABLE and therefore don't become actions under that law's Section 1346(b) which meant that mere CLAIMS do not trigger the Section 2676 judgement bar.

12/ It's all in the law, in plain English. You can google it. But times changed. And laws changed. Congress did not anticipate that in 1982 a newly invented qualified immunity doctrine would be invented and that the Restatement of Judgements book would be rewritten,...

13/ ... thus changing the way court cases would be decided, inviting judges to declare some dismissals for lack of jurisdiction to be preclusive, thus triggering a judgement bar to any other claims on the same issue. Under the FTCA, an action dismissed in a preclusive manner...

14/ ...triggers its judgement bar against any action based on the same underlying facts or "subject matter" when Congress's intent was to have the "subject matter" to be what arise out of the same action, omission, or transaction. In other words, the issues of the claims!

15/ Thus the Supremes will make it very impossible to sue the US government and its federal agents and federalised joint task force cops for their crimes committed against suspects and even non-suspects. 😡

There will be no #justiceforjamesking 😥 and no police accountability.😡

16/ Why? Because these joint task forces will proliferate until ALL local and state investigative and law enforcement personnel are included. What do we do about it? End qualified immunity!

You'll ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ police accountability! Back it - back it - end #QualifiedImmunity