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Nature of Suit Code: 190
Nature of Suit: Other Contract Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 19, 2014 Decided April 1, 2014 

No. 12-7091 

MICHAEL J. BREGMAN, 

APPELLANT

v. 

STEVEN R. PERLES, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:11-cv-01886) 

Tamara L. Miller argued the cause for appellant. Peter R. 

Masciola was on brief. 

Caroline M. Mew argued the cause for the appellees. 

Mark Emery and Annie P. Kaplan were on brief. Geoffrey T. 

Hervey entered an appearance. 

Before: HENDERSON and GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges, and 

SENTELLE, Senior Circuit Judge. 

KAREN LECRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge: In 2008, 

Libya paid $111 million to the victims of the 1986 LaBelle 

discotheque bombing in Berlin in order to settle a lawsuit (the 

Beecham case) alleging Libya’s responsibility for the 

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bombing. The victims’ lawyers—Steven Perles, Thomas Fay 

and Paul Schwarz—received nearly $36 million for their 

efforts. Appellant Michael Bregman, a retired federal agent 

who allegedly provided investigative and other services to the 

lawyers in the Beecham litigation, was paid nothing. Seeking 

his piece of the pie, Bregman sued the lawyers on October 26, 

2011. The district court found that Bregman’s unjust 

enrichment claim accrued on September 25, 2008, when 

Perles’s lawyer sent him a letter refusing his request for 

compensation. It therefore dismissed the claim as untimely 

under the applicable three-year statute of limitations. 

Bregman appeals, arguing that his claim accrued no earlier 

than November 17, 2008, when the defendant lawyers received 

payment from the Beecham settlement. We agree with the 

district court and therefore affirm. 

I 

Bregman worked for the United States Bureau of Alcohol, 

Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for 32 years.1

 In October 2001, 

Perles approached Bregman, who was by then retired, to ask 

for his help in collecting a judgment Perles and Fay had 

obtained for their clients in a suit against Iran. Bregman 

agreed and was paid $25,000 for his services after the 

judgment proceeds were disbursed. 

In January 2002, based on the success of that engagement, 

Perles engaged Bregman to work full-time on his other 

international terrorism cases. Bregman assisted Perles with 

business development, strategy, security and staff training. 

 1

 On a motion to dismiss, the facts alleged in the complaint are 

taken as true and all reasonable inferences therefrom are drawn in the 

plaintiff’s favor. Autor v. Pritzker, 740 F.3d 176, 179 (D.C. Cir. 

2014). 

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He also served as an in-house investigator for a variety of cases 

in which Perles, Fay and Schwarz represented victims of 

state-sponsored terrorist attacks. Perles initially told Bregman 

that he would be paid a percentage of any contingent fees 

recovered. Over the course of Bregman’s employment, 

however, Perles appeared to change the terms of his 

compensation, requesting Bregman’s hourly rate and the 

number of hours he had worked. In a September 2003 

meeting, Perles agreed to pay Bregman $100,000 for his 

services relating to the Beecham case. Perles also promised 

Bregman a $1 million bonus if the plaintiffs were successful in 

collecting on the Beecham judgment. Despite Bregman’s 

numerous requests, the parties never entered into a written 

agreement regarding his services and compensation. Between 

January 2002 and June 2004, Bregman claims to have 

performed 4,480 hours of services for Perles and his 

co-counsel, which, at Bregman’s claimed rate of $250 per 

hour, amounts to $1,120,000 in unpaid services. 

In August 2008, the United States and Libya reached an 

agreement providing for the settlement of terrorism-related 

claims of U.S. nationals against Libya. See Libyan Claims 

Resolution Act, Pub. L. No. 110-301, 122 Stat. 2999 (Aug. 4, 

2008); see also Exec. Order No. 13477, 73 Fed. Reg. 65965 

(Oct. 31, 2008). On September 8, 2008, Bregman’s lawyer 

sent a letter to Perles, Fay and Schwarz requesting 

confirmation that Bregman would be paid $1.1 million out of 

whatever contingency fee they recovered from the Beecham

settlement. The letter purported to serve as a lien on the total 

fee collected by the lawyers from the settlement. 

On September 25, 2008, Perles’s lawyer responded by 

letter. See Joint Appendix (JA) 48–49 (the “9/25 Letter”). 

Perles’s lawyer did not mince words: 

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I am writing in response to your letter . . . regarding 

the claim asserted by Michael Bregman in connection 

with the LaBelle [discotheque] case. As set forth 

below, there is no basis whatsoever for Mr. 

Bregman’s claim to any of the settlement proceeds 

from the LaBelle case. 

9/25 Letter 1. The letter denied that Perles had ever agreed to 

the alleged compensation structure. Id. It stated that “Mr. 

Perles is not aware of any work performed by Mr. Bregman in 

connection with the LaBelle case (other than perhaps one 

phone call made by Mr. Bregman to obtain a copy of the police 

report)” and requested that Bregman produce “documentation 

reflecting the work that [he] claims to have performed in 

connection with the LaBelle case.” Id. It continued: 

Mr. Perles is shocked that Mr. Bregman would assert 

a claim for $1,100,000, without providing one shred 

of documentation to support his claim. The plain and 

simple fact is that Mr. Bregman performed essentially 

no work on the LaBelle case, and he now seeks to 

extort money from Mr. Perles and his co-counsel, 

and, ultimately, the individual LaBelle victims and 

their Trust. Mr. Bregman should be aware that if he 

insists on pursuing his frivolous claim in court, Mr. 

Perles will fully defend the bad faith claim, and will 

seek appropriate sanctions. 

Id. at 2. The letter represented that Schwarz, Perles’s 

colleague, also “deems Mr. Bregman’s claim as entirely 

frivolous” and asserted that Fay, Perles’s other colleague, had 

never reported to Perles or Schwarz that Bregman had 

performed any work for him. Id. Finally, the letter 

concluded, “please be aware that no funds have been received 

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by Mr. Perles in connection with the LaBelle case, and it is 

unclear at this time when such funds may come in.” Id. 

 On November 17, 2008, those funds did come in. The 

Beecham plaintiffs received $111 million, from which Perles, 

Fay and Schwarz received $35.9 million in fees and expenses. 

Bregman was not paid. He filed suit on October 26, 2011, 

alleging two contract claims against Perles, an unjust 

enrichment claim against all three lawyers and a claim for 

declaratory relief. 

The district court denied Perles’s motion to dismiss the 

contract claims but dismissed the claim for declaratory relief. 

Relevant here, the district court also dismissed Bregman’s 

unjustment enrichment claim as barred by the applicable 

statute of limitations. Bregman filed a notice of appeal and, at 

the parties’ joint request, the district court entered final 

judgment on the unjust enrichment claim. 

II 

We review de novo the district court’s dismissal, accepting 

the factual allegations in the complaint as true and granting 

Bregman the benefit of all reasonable inferences derived from 

the facts alleged. Vila v. Inter-Am. Inv. Corp., 570 F.3d 274, 

284 (D.C. Cir. 2009). “[B]ecause statute of limitations issues 

often depend on contested questions of fact, dismissal is 

appropriate only if the complaint on its face is conclusively 

time-barred.” de Csepel v. Republic of Hungary, 714 F.3d 

591, 603 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (quoting Firestone v. Firestone, 76 

F.3d 1205, 1209 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (per curiam)). 

“Under District of Columbia law, which applies here, 

unjust enrichment claims are subject to a three year statute of 

limitations.” Vila, 570 F.3d at 283 (citing News World 

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Commc’ns v. Thompsen, 878 A.2d 1218, 1221 (D.C. 2005)). 

“[T]he statute of limitations begins to run when a claim 

accrues, and . . . a cause of action accrues when its elements are 

present, so that the plaintiff could maintain a successful suit.” 

Thompsen, 878 A.2d at 1222; see also Colbert v. Georgetown 

Univ., 641 A.2d 469, 472 (D.C. 1994) (en banc) (“Where the 

fact of an injury can be readily determined, a claim accrues for 

purposes of the statute of limitations at the time the injury 

actually occurs.”). “Unjust enrichment occurs when: (1) the 

plaintiff conferred a benefit on the defendant; (2) the defendant 

retains the benefit; and (3) under the circumstances, the 

defendant’s retention of the benefit is unjust.” Fort Lincoln 

Civic Ass’n, Inc. v. Fort Lincoln New Town Corp., 944 A.2d 

1055, 1076 (D.C. 2008) (quoting Thompsen, 878 A.2d at 

1222); see also Jordan Keys & Jessamy, LLP v. St. Paul Fire & 

Marine Ins. Co., 870 A.2d 58, 62–64 (D.C. 2005). Thus, “a 

claim for unjust enrichment accrues only when the enrichment 

actually becomes unlawful, i.e., where there has been a 

wrongful act giving rise to a duty of restitution.” Thompsen, 

878 A.2d at 1225 (alteration, citation and quotation marks 

omitted); accord id. at 1219 (“[T]he statute of limitations 

begins to run when the plaintiff’s last service has been rendered 

and compensation has been wrongfully withheld.”). 

In Thompsen, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals 

addressed, as a matter of first impression, the point at which the 

statute of limitations begins to run on an unjust enrichment 

claim. There, the plaintiff had pitched an idea to The 

Washington Times (Times) newspaper about publishing a 

family magazine for the Times. Having been told by the 

Times that she would be compensated, the plaintiff did 

substantial work developing the project, only to be told by the 

Times months later that there had been a change of heart: The 

Times was developing a similar project without her and did not 

plan to pay her for her previous efforts. Two years later, the 

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Times published the first edition of its magazine, “Family 

Times.” See id. at 1220. The D.C. Superior Court found the 

plaintiff’s unjust enrichment claim did not accrue until the 

Times published its first edition of the magazine, reasoning the 

claim could not accrue until then because “Defendant would 

not have been unjustly enriched if it had never used Plaintiff’s 

ideas.” Id. at 1221. The District of Columbia Court of 

Appeals disagreed. By providing the Times with the idea for 

the family magazine and doing some of the groundwork to 

develop it, the plaintiff had conferred something of value on 

the Times. Id. at 1225. Accordingly, the Times’s retention 

of the benefit became unjust—and the plaintiff’s claim 

accrued—when the Times told her she would not be paid, not 

on the later date when it published the magazine. Id. at 1226. 

We applied these principles in Vila v. Inter-American 

Investment Corp., 570 F.3d 274, 284 (D.C. Cir. 2009). There, 

the plaintiff was an independent consultant who worked on 

several projects for the Inter-American Investment 

Corporation (IIC). The plaintiff performed services for the 

IIC with the expectation that he would be paid but he was 

eventually told that in fact he would not be paid. See id. at 

276–77. As in Thompsen, the plaintiff’s claim accrued when 

the enrichment became unjust—i.e., when the IIC, having 

retained the benefit of the plaintiff’s services, refused payment. 

In Vila, however, there were at least two possible dates of 

refusal. Id. at 284. On August 4, 2003, an IIC employee told 

the plaintiff he would not be compensated. Undeterred, the 

plaintiff protested to the employee’s supervisors. Eventually, 

on November 4, 2003, the plaintiff was told unequivocally that 

he would not be paid. We held that, granting the plaintiff the 

benefit of all reasonable inferences arising from the allegations 

in the complaint, the plaintiff’s claim accrued on November 4, 

2003, because on that date “the first unequivocal refusal for all 

his work that year [occurred].” Id. at 284. 

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Here, the three lawyers were enriched by the services that 

Bregman allegedly performed for them between January 2002 

and June 2004. Bregman’s claim did not accrue, however, 

until that enrichment became unjust: when they unequivocally 

refused to compensate him for the services he had performed. 

See Vila, 570 F.3d at 284; Thompsen, 878 A.2d at 1225–26. 

Applying these principles, the district court held that 

Bregman’s claim accrued on September 25, 2008, because 

Perles’s lawyer’s letter of that date was an unequivocal refusal 

of payment. We agree. The letter informed Bregman, in no 

uncertain terms, that the three lawyers2

 were not going to 

compensate him for his services. It described Bregman’s 

claims as having “no basis whatsoever” and an “entirely 

frivolous” and sanctionable attempt to “extort money from Mr. 

Perles and his co-counsel.” 9/25 Letter 1–2. It denied that 

Perles ever agreed to compensate Bregman and claimed that 

Bregman “performed essentially no work” on their behalf. Id.

at 2. To be sure, the letter’s aggressive tone suggests a bit of 

posturing by Perles and his co-counsel. But it nevertheless 

informed Bregman that he would not be paid for his services; 

 2

 Bregman contends that the letter speaks only for Perles, not 

Fay and Schwarz, because it is signed by Perles’s lawyer. But 

Bregman took the opposite position below: “[T]his letter by 

[Perles’s lawyer] speaks for all three of these lawyers. . . . So we 

have this one lawyer who is speaking on behalf or representing the 

interests of Mr. Fay, Mr. Schwarz, as well as Mr. Perles . . . .” JA 

109 (Transcript of 5/29/12 Motion Hearing). Any alleged error in 

attributing the letter’s refusal to all three lawyers was therefore 

invited: “That one will not be heard to complain of receiving what 

one asked for has a long tradition both in jurisprudence, as in the 

doctrine of estoppel, and in common wisdom.” United States v. 

Harrison, 103 F.3d 986, 992 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (citing Seneca, 

Epistles, 95, I); see also United States v. Warren, 42 F.3d 647, 658 

(D.C. Cir. 1994). 

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therefore, as of that date, the elements of an unjustment 

enrichment claim were met and the statute of limitations began 

to run. 

Bregman contends that, drawing all reasonable inferences 

in his favor, the district court should have found that the letter 

was not a refusal of payment but rather an invitation to further 

negotiations. He notes that the letter is captioned “for 

settlement purposes only” and that at one point it requested that 

Bregman provide documentation of any work he performed in 

connection with the LaBelle case. We think the caption adds 

little to the analysis and, read in context, the request for 

documentation cannot reasonably be construed as an invitation 

to negotiate—especially considering that in the previous 

paragraph the letter requested a copy of any written agreement 

between the parties, which agreement all knew to be 

non-existent. See 9/25 Letter 1. Moreover, Bregman 

conceded below that the 9/25 Letter “certainly rejected in 

writing Mr. Bregman’s demands for compensation for his 

services.” JA 56. Instead of pressing the negotiations point, 

he argued that the statute of limitations did not begin to run 

until the lawyers received payment. We therefore turn to that 

contention. 

Bregman argues that “[u]ntil Defendants’ recovery of the 

Beecham settlement proceeds on November 17, 2008, there 

was no duty of restitution to Mr. Bregman” and his “unjust 

enrichment claim could only accrue when there were proceeds 

from which Mr. Bregman would have had an expectation of 

payment.” Br. of Appellant 9. Bregman misunderstands the 

nature of unjust enrichment, which is based not on a 

contractual duty but rather “has its roots in the common law 

concept of quasi-contract.” 4934, Inc. v. D.C. Dep’t of Emp’t 

Servs., 605 A.2d 50, 55 (D.C. 1992). That is: 

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A quasi or constructive contract rests upon the 

equitable principle that a person shall not be allowed 

to enrich himself unjustly at the expense of another. 

In truth it is not a contract or promise at all. It is an 

obligation which the law creates, in the absence of 

any agreement, when and because the acts of the 

parties or others have placed in the possession of one 

person money, or its equivalent, under such 

circumstances that in equity and good conscience he 

ought not to retain it, and which ex aequo et bono

belongs to another. 

Jordan Keys, 870 A.2d at 64 (second emphasis added) (quoting 

Miller v. Schloss, 218 N.Y. 400, 407 (1916)); see also Vila, 570 

F.3d at 279–80. Although the defendant lawyers were 

eventually enriched by the Beecham settlement proceeds, they 

were “enriched” in the legal sense by Bregman’s efforts on 

their behalf. Whether or not Bregman’s labors got them 

across the goal line, he conferred a benefit on them by working 

to move the ball forward: 

A person confers a benefit upon another if he . . . 

performs services beneficial to or at the request of the 

other . . . or in any way adds to the other’s security or 

advantage. He confers a benefit not only where he 

adds to the property of another, but also where he 

saves the other from expense or loss. The word 

“benefit,” therefore, denotes any form of advantage. 

Restatement (First) of Restitution § 1 (1937), cmt. b; see also 

id. § 40 & cmt. d; Bloomgarden v. Coyer, 479 F.2d 201, 211–

12 (D.C. Cir. 1973).3

 3

 Bregman also relies on Hannon Law Firm, LLC v. Melat, 

Pressman & Higbie, LLP, 293 P.3d 55 (Colo. App. 2011), to support 

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The Third Circuit corrected a similar misconception in 

Baer v. Chase, 392 F.3d 609 (2003). There, the plaintiff gave 

the defendant, the producer of the hit television series The 

Sopranos, some ideas and advice about developing the show. 

(As a former New Jersey prosecutor, the plaintiff was well 

qualified to do so.) The plaintiff thought he would be paid 

once the show aired but he was not paid. Id. at 612–14. The 

Third Circuit held the plaintiff’s quasi-contract claim accrued 

when the plaintiff last rendered services to the defendant. Id.

at 623.4

 The plaintiff argued that his claim could not accrue 

until the show aired because he believed remuneration for his 

 

his argument that, in a case involving a contingent fee arrangement, 

an unjust enrichment claim cannot accrue until the fee is recovered. 

Even if Hannon were a District of Columbia case, it would not 

necessarily require a different result. There, several law firms had 

represented the plaintiffs on a contingent basis but one firm, Hannon, 

withdrew before the case settled. Id. at 57–58. Hannon sued the 

other firms seeking the value of its hourly services. The court held 

that Hannon’s unjust enrichment claim accrued when the underlying 

case settled and the defendant firms recovered their contingent fee, 

not earlier when Hannon withdrew from representation (i.e., last 

rendered services). Id. at 60. Significantly, however, the 

defendant firms’ refusal to pay Hannon coincided with their 

recovery of the fee. Id. at 57–58. Here, by contrast, the three 

lawyers refused to pay Bregman two months before recovery of the 

Beecham settlement. Had the defendant firms in Hannon refused to 

pay Hannon before they received their fee, the result might have 

been different. Without expressing any opinion on Hannon’s 

reasoning, we think it a less helpful comparator than Thompsen, 

where the refusal to pay and the recovery fell on different dates. 

4

 The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has not adopted 

the last rendition of services test. See Thompsen, 878 A.2d at 1225 

n.7; see also Vila, 570 F.3d at 284. In Baer, the plaintiff was never 

affirmatively told that he would not be paid. 

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services was contingent upon the show’s broadcast. The court 

rejected the argument, explaining: 

[The plaintiff] misunderstands the nature of a 

[quasi-contract] claim with respect to the statute of 

limitations. . . . [His] belief that he was going to be 

paid if and when the show was a success is irrelevant 

because his understanding of his oral contract, even if 

correct, does not govern his quasi-contract claim 

inasmuch as a quasi-contract claim is not a “real” 

contract based on mutual consent and understanding 

of the parties. The essence of a quasi-contract claim 

is not the expectancy of the parties, but rather the 

unjust enrichment of one of them. It therefore would 

be inappropriate to look at [the plaintiff’s] 

expectations of payment, rather than at the services he 

provided [the defendant]. 

Id. (quoted approvingly in Thompsen, 878 A.2d at 1224). 

Although Bregman’s right to recover on his contractual 

claim—still pending in district court—may turn on the success 

of the Beecham litigation, his right of recovery on his unjust 

enrichment claim is based on the services he performed. See 

Jordan Keys, 870 A.2d at 64 (“[T]he claim of unjust 

enrichment asserted by [the plaintiff] is based on equitable 

principles, and it is not contingent upon the niceties of the law 

of contracts. Indeed, it is not a claim of breach of contract at 

all.”). As of June 2004, he had enriched Perles, Fay and 

Schwarz by performing those services. The enrichment 

became unjust on September 25, 2008, when they refused his 

request for compensation. Bregman’s claim therefore accrued 

on that date, see Vila, 570 F.3d at 284; Thompsen, 878 A.2d at 

1225–26, and, accordingly, it is untimely. 

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For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district 

court is affirmed. 

 So ordered.

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