Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-93-05260/USCOURTS-caDC-93-05260-0/pdf.json

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

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Argued November 2, 1994 Decided January 27, 1995

No. 93-5260

TRANSCAPITAL FINANCIAL CORPORATION

AND AMERICAN CAPITAL CORPORATION,

APPELLANTS

v.

DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF THRIFT SUPERVISION,

AS SUCCESSOR TO THE FEDERAL HOME LOAN BANK BOARD,

IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY

AND THE FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION,

AS SUCCESSOR TO FEDERAL SAVINGS & LOAN

INSURANCE CORPORATION,

APPELLEES

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On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 90cv1678)

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Vincent J. Colatriano argued the cause for appellants. With him on the briefs was Charles J. Cooper.

Michael A. Carvin and Robert J. Cynker entered their appearance for appellants.

Douglas Letter, Counsel, United States Department ofJustice, argued the cause for appellees. With

him on the briefs were Frank W. Hunger, Assistant Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, Jr., United

States Attorney, Edward T. Swaine, Attorney, United States Department of Justice; Douglas H.

Jones, Acting General Counsel, and Thomas A. Schulz, Assistant General Counsel, Federal Deposit

Insurance Corporation; Thomas J. Segal, Deputy Chief Counsel, Aaron B. Kahn, Assistant Chief

Counsel, and Kerry W. Kircher, Attorney, Office of Thrift Supervision.

Before SILBERMAN, BUCKLEY and TATEL, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed PER CURIAM.

PER CURIAM: Appellants Transcapital Financial Corporation and American Capital

Corporation, holding companies of the now-defunct Transohio Savings Bank, challenge the district

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court's dismissal with prejudice of appellants' takings claim against the Office of Thrift Supervision

("OTS") and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ("FDIC"). The FDIC cross-appeals the

district court's dismissal without prejudice of appellants' contract claims against it. We initially

disposed of this appeal in an unpublished memorandum issued November 23, 1994. Appellants then

moved for publication, arguing that the decision clarifies this court's previous opinion in the same

case, Transohio Savings Bank v. Director, Office of Thrift Supervision, 967 F.2d 598 (D.C. Cir.

1992). We will not repeat the extended statement of the facts found in the Transohio opinion. See

id. at 600-06. 

In Transohio we explained that the Ramirez exception (see Ramirez de Arellano v.

Weinberger, 745 F.2d 1500, 1527 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (en banc), vacated on other grounds, 471 U.S.

1113 (1985)) permitted a United States District Court to exercise jurisdiction over a takings claim

for injunctive relief when the monetary compensation available exclusively in the Federal Court of

Claims would be wholly inadequate to compensate the complainant for the alleged taking. 967 F.2d

at 613. We found no need for the district court to decide on remand whether Appellants' takings

claim against the OTS and the FDIC fell within this jurisdictional exception, however, because we

had independently determined that in any event Appellants could not prevail on the merits of their

takings claim for injunctive relief. Id. at 613-14.

On remand, the district court nevertheless determined that it had jurisdiction over Appellants'

takings claim, citing our discussion of the Ramirez exception. But by the time of the district court's

jurisdictional determination, the OTS had placed Transohio Savings Bank into receivership, thereby

rendering moot Appellants' claims for injunctive relief. Therefore, the Ramirez exception simply

could not apply.

Appellees do not appear to contest this analysis, as they do not argue that the district court's

resolution of the jurisdictional issue was correct. Rather, they argue only that the proper resolution

of the jurisdictional issue is "unclear," both because of this Court's Transohio decision and because

of the Supreme Court's decision last Term in FDIC v. Meyer, ___ U.S. ____, 114 S. Ct. 996 (1994).

Appelleestherefore urge this court to "bypass" the issue of jurisdiction and affirm the district court's

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judgment in their favor because in light of the Transohio opinion "a "decision on the merits is ...

foreordained' " (quoting Secretary of the Navy v. Avrech, 418 U.S. 676, 678 (1974); see Burlington

Northern R.R. Co. v. ICC, 985 F.2d 589, 593 (D.C. Cir. 1993)).

As we explained above, any uncertainty that may have existed at the time of our Transohio

decision over whether the Ramirez exception sufficed to establish district court jurisdiction over

Appellants' takings claim for injunctive relief has now been completely eliminated. That Appellants'

complaint also contained an alternative prayer for rescission, restitution and "other and further relief"

is not material to our analysis of whether Ramirez could have provided a basis for district court

jurisdiction after the bank's seizure. These alternatives did not pertain to Appellants' takings claim,

which sought only prospective relief. For purposes of this appeal, we reject the argument that Meyer

renders the jurisdictional issue so complicated that we should proceed to the merits.

We also note that precisely because the United States District Courts do not have jurisdiction

over takings claimsfor compensation in excess of $10,000, our prior Transohio decision did not limit,

and indeed could not have limited, Appellants' right to seek compensation in the Federal Court of

Claims. Rather, the takings analysis in the Transohio opinion, including the statement that "Transohio

cannot prevail on its takings claim on the merits," 967 F.2d at 614, was solely concerned with

Appellants' ability to obtain injunctive relief, as is evident from the opinion's repeated explanations

that Transohio "did not receive from the banking regulators a right that defeats Congress' power to

change the law on goodwill accounting." Id. at 613; see id. at 601, 624. That analysis has no

bearing one way or the other on the merits of Appellants' claimfor compensation in the FederalCourt

of Claims.

Accordingly, we vacate the district court's judgment in favor of Appellees on the merits of

Appellants' takings claim, and we remand the case with instructions to dismiss the takings claim

without prejudice for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. We also reject the FDIC's efforts to

cross-appeal the district court's dismissal without prejudice of Appellants' contract claim against the

FDIC. Such an appeal is not proper in the absence of a notice of cross-appeal, as the FDIC admits,

and we will not waive this requirement in these circumstances. Whatever technical deficiencies may

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have existed in the district court's apparent failure to complywith the separate judgment rule,see Fed.

R. Civ. P. 58 and 79(a), this failure did not give rise to the confusion and uncertainty that we relied

upon in waiving the cross-appeal notice requirement in Spann v. Colonial Village, Inc., 899 F.2d 24,

33 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 980 (1990).

So ordered.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge, concurring: On rehearing, the court reaffirms that the appropriate

time for determining the requisite relatedness of the complaint and charge allegations is at the time

the complaint is filed. In so doing, the court also emphasizes the perils for the Board of relying on

boilerplate language, albeit thistime with regard to the complaint in addition to the charge. Cf. Lotus

Suites, Inc. v. NLRB, 32 F.3d 588, 592 (D.C. Cir. 1994); G.W. Galloway Co. v. NLRB, 856 F.2d

275, 278 (D.C. Cir. 1988). Absent allegations on the face of the complaint that make apparent their

factual relationship to the allegations in a timely charge, the court holds that the Board's decision in

Nippondenso Mfg. U.S.A., Inc., 299 N.L.R.B. 545 (1990), bars it from relying on legal theory alone

to link untimely complaint allegations.

Before the original panel, the Board's counsel "all but conceded" that the Board no longer

approves of its reasoning in Nippondenso. Drug Plastics & Glass Co. v. NLRB, 30 F.3d 169, 174

(D.C. Cir. 1994) (Drug PlasticsI). New counsel for the Board candidly acknowledged on rehearing

that Nippondenso is alive and well but asserted that it is distinguishable. Such distinctions as are

urgedsee id. (discharged employee in Nippondenso was only peripherally subject to § 8(a)(1)

violations alleged in the complaint, and the complaint did not refer to charge conduct)however, do

not substitute for a statement in the complaint indicating the requisite nexus between its factual

allegations and those in the charge. See Galloway, 856 F.2d at 280 (requiring a "significant factual

affiliation" between complaint and charge allegations); Nippondenso, 299 N.L.R.B. at 545. The

charge refers only to Matthews' discharge and his union activities; it neither alleges a pattern of

anti-union activities by the employer nor that Matthews' discharge was part of such activities. The

complaint, in turn, while including the charge allegation regarding Matthews' discharge, does not

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1The one possible exception is in Paragraph 13, referring to both Matthews' discharge

(Paragraph 11) and the wage increase complaint allegation (Paragraph 10). But, the Board

dismissed the wage increase allegation and, hence, neither it nor Matthews' discharge are part of

the enforcement order at issue. 

2

In Waste Management,

[t]he charge consisted of specific allegations of unlawful grants of wage increases

and threats of retaliation against employees for their support of the Union; but it

referred to these as part of [the employer's] "interfer[ence] with the freedom of the

employees to make a fair choice of representation" during "the course of an

election campaign...." Although the complaint alleged acts of interference different

from those specifically alleged in the charge, the reference in the charge to [the

employer's] interference with the particular organizational campaign was sufficient

to support the complaint allegations that [the employer] sought to undermine and

discourage employee support for the Union by interrogating employees, soliciting

grievances and impliedly promising to remedy them, and soliciting employees to

campaign against the Union.

308 N.L.R.B. at 50. The Board noted that Nippondenso did not compel dismissal of the

complaint because in that case "neither the allegations of the charge nor the complaint placed at

issue acts that were all part of an overall plan to resist union organization." Id. n.5. 

allege that Matthews' discharge was related to the conduct that is the basis for the added statutory

violations. Its boilerplate allegationsComplaint paragraphs 12 and 13assert that each of the acts

complained of constituted a statutory violation; they do not indicate that the charge acts and added

complaint acts are related to each other.1

Missing from the charge and complaint is the factual relatedness required by § 10(b), see 29

U.S.C. § 160(b) (1988), that is present, for example, in the Board's post-Nippondenso decision in

Waste Management of Santa Clara County, 308 N.L.R.B. 50, 50 & n.2 (1992).2 The court does not

suggest that the facts as found by the Board fail to show factual relatedness. Indeed, as shown in

Drug Plastics I, 30 F.3d at 174, Matthews, as an employee, was personally subject to most of the §

8(a)(1) conduct alleged in the complaint. The problem arises because the proper focus for

determining § 10(b) factualrelatednessis on the allegations in the complaint, and the complaint here

does not attempt to allege the factual relatedness of its allegations to those in the charge. Under

Nippondenso, the vacuum cannot be filed by legal theory. Consequently, notwithstanding inclusion

in the instant complaint of the charge allegation regarding Matthews' discharge, the Board may not

relyon a relationship between the charge allegations and the complaint allegationsthat is not apparent

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3To this extent the instant case differs from Galloway. While the court points out the close

temporal relationship between the charge and complaint allegations in Galloway, the additional

allegation in the Galloway complaint was not factually related to the allegation in the charge, 856

F.2d at 278 & n.21, because they had no more in common than that they concerned the same

employer and occurred at the same location. Id. at 280. In the instant case, the allegations were

more factually related because they involve the same employee and the same anti-union campaign. 

However, this factual relatedness is irrelevant to our inquiry because it is not apparent on the face

of the charge and the complaint. 

in either the charge or the complaint.

It is thus crucial to recognize that this case hinges on a defect in the complaint, rather than

on the facts themselves. It may well be that the additional claims in the complaint are sufficiently

related to the charge regarding Matthews' discharge in that they were all "part of an overall plan to

resist union organization."3 Waste Management, 308 N.L.R.B. at 50 (quoting Well-Bred Loaf, Inc.,

303 N.L.R.B. 1016, 1016 n.1 (1991)). However, because relatedness must be determined from the

face ofthe charge and complaint, and because those documentsin the instant case do not indicate any

relationship between the alleged discharge and the additional claims in the complaint, the additional

claims are untimely.

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