Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-19-02300/USCOURTS-ca13-19-02300-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jameel Ibrahim
Appellant
United States
Appellee

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________

JAMEEL IBRAHIM,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

UNITED STATES,

Defendant-Appellee

______________________

2019-2300

______________________

Appeal from the United States Court of Federal Claims 

in No. 1:19-cv-00760-CFL, Senior Judge Charles F. Lettow.

______________________

Decided: February 7, 2020

______________________

JAMEEL IBRAHIM, Newark, NJ, pro se. 

 ERIN MURDOCK-PARK, Commercial Litigation Branch, 

Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for defendant-appellee. Also represented by 

JOSEPH H. HUNT, DEBORAH ANN BYNUM, ROBERT EDWARD 

KIRSCHMAN, JR. 

 ______________________

Before LOURIE, CHEN, and STOLL, Circuit Judges.

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2 IBRAHIM v. UNITED STATES

PER CURIAM.

Mr. Jameel Ibrahim appeals from a decision of the 

United States Court of Federal Claims (the “Claims 

Court”), dismissing his complaint against the United 

States for an alleged breach of an implied-in-law contract. 

Ibrahim v. United States, No. 1:19-cv-00760-CFL, 2019 WL 

3384849 (Fed. Cl. July 26, 2019) (“Decision”). Because the 

Claims Court correctly concluded that it lacked subject 

matter jurisdiction pursuant to the Tucker Act, we affirm. 

BACKGROUND

Ibrahim filed a complaint in the Claims Court in May 

2019, alleging that the United States breached an “implied 

by law” contract it had made with Ibrahim on April 26, 

2000. The Claims Court allowed Ibrahim to supplement 

his complaint shortly thereafter. Supplement to 

Complaint, Ibrahim v. United States, No. 1:19-cv-00760-

CFL, 2019 WL 3384849 (Fed. Cl. May 28, 2019), ECF No. 

5. It appears from this Supplement that the “contract” 

Ibrahim refers to is a child support order from the state 

court system of New Jersey. 

On January 23, 2019, Ibrahim sent a twelve-page letter 

to various officials of the State of New Jersey, cabinet 

secretaries, and the Supreme Court of the United States, 

styled a “Conditional Acceptance for the 

Value/Agreement/Counter Offer to Acceptance of Offer.” 

Supplement at 7. In the letter, Ibrahim alleged that he had 

“received [these parties’] offer and accept[ed]” it, subject to 

conditions set forth in the rest of the letter—for the most 

part, demands that the recipients justify the existence of 

various governmental agencies and practices. Id. The 

letter asserts that failure to do would result in “default,” 

and in turn, an obligation to pay Ibrahim $3.5 million in 

damages. Id. at 14.

The Claims Court dismissed Ibrahim’s complaint, 

concluding that he had failed to establish the Claims 

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IBRAHIM v. UNITED STATES 3

Court’s jurisdiction over his action because, among other 

reasons, Ibrahim had failed to plausibly allege that any 

contract existed between him and the United States. 

Decision, 2019 WL 3384849, at *3–4. The Claims Court 

also held that dismissal would be proper under Rule 

12(b)(6) of the Rules of the United States Court of Federal 

Claims because Ibrahim’s complaint “allege[d] implausible 

facts about an alleged contract between him and the 

United States government” and provided only the signed 

letter sent by Ibrahim as support for his allegations. Id. at 

*4.

Ibrahim then filed this appeal. We have appellate 

jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(3). 

DISCUSSION

We review dismissals by the Claims Court for lack of 

jurisdiction de novo. Frazer v. United States, 288 F.3d 

1347, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2012). A plaintiff bears the burden of 

establishing jurisdiction by “supporting [his] allegations by 

competent proof.” Thomson v. Gaskill, 315 U.S. 442, 446 

(1942). A pro se plaintiff is entitled to a liberal construction 

of his complaint, see Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520 

(1972), but this leniency does not lessen his burden of 

establishing the Claims Court’s subject matter jurisdiction, 

see Kelley v. Sec’y, U.S. Dep’t of Labor, 812 F.2d 1378, 1380 

(Fed. Cir. 1987).

The Claims Court is a court of limited subject matter 

jurisdiction. See Terran ex rel. Terran v. Sec’y of Health & 

Human Servs., 195 F.3d 1302, 1309 (Fed. Cir. 1999). It has 

jurisdiction to “render a judgment upon any claim against 

the United States founded . . . upon any express or implied 

contract with the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 1491(a). 

Establishing subject matter jurisdiction is a threshold 

issue, Dow Jones & Co. v. Ablaise Ltd., 606 F.3d 1338, 1348 

(Fed. Cir. 2010), and every federal court has an 

“independent obligation to determine whether subject 

matter jurisdiction exists, even in the absence of a 

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4 IBRAHIM v. UNITED STATES

challenge from any party.” Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 

U.S. 500, 514 (2006). In deciding whether there is subjectmatter jurisdiction, “the allegations stated in the 

complaint are taken as true and jurisdiction is decided on 

the face of the pleadings.” See Shearin v. United 

States, 992 F.2d 1195, 1195–96 (Fed. Cir. 1993).

Ibrahim principally argues that the Claims Court erred 

in dismissing his complaint because he failed to establish 

the existence of a contract between him and the United 

States. He contends that his letter was a “counter-offer” 

and that the government’s failure to respond constituted 

an acceptance of a default, unilateral contract. 

The government responds that Ibrahim did not 

plausibly allege the existence of a contract and therefore

could not invoke the jurisdiction of the Claims Court. The 

government further argues that, even viewed charitably, 

Ibrahim’s letter is no more than a conditional counteroffer, 

and thus, not a contract. 

We agree with the government that Ibrahim failed to 

meet his burden of establishing the jurisdiction of the 

Claims Court. A non-frivolous allegation that a contract 

exists between a plaintiff and the United States is 

sufficient to invoke the subject matter jurisdiction of the 

Claims Court, but dismissal may be proper for lack of 

subject matter jurisdiction “if the claim is ‘wholly 

insubstantial and frivolous.’” Lewis v. United States, 70 

F.3d 597, 602–04 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (quoting Bell v. Hood, 327 

U.S. 678, 682–83 (1946)). As the Claims Court concluded,

Ibrahim’s complaint and supplement do not set forth any

non-frivolous factual allegations from which the Claims 

Court could have plausibly concluded that Ibrahim had a 

contract with the United States government. Instead, it 

only appears that Ibrahim sent several governmental 

officials an unsolicited letter, which is not a contract. Cf. 

Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. United States, 88 F.3d 1012, 

1019 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (“[T]he essence of a unilateral 

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IBRAHIM v. UNITED STATES 5

contract is that one party’s promise is conditional upon the 

other party’s performance of certain acts and when the 

other party performs, the first party is bound.” (emphasis 

added)). In other words, an offeree’s failure to respond to 

an unsolicited offer does not create a contract, regardless 

of any contrary terms in the offer. 

Even if Ibrahim’s letter were responsive to a previous 

communication of the United States government—a 

scenario which is both wholly unsupported by the 

pleadings and highly improbable—a conditional 

counteroffer does not form a contract. See First Commerce 

Corp. v. United States, 335 F.3d 1373, 1381 (Fed. Cir. 2003)

(“A reply to an offer which purports to accept it but is 

conditional on the offeror’s assent to terms additional to or 

different from those offered is not an acceptance but is a 

counter-offer.” (quoting RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF 

CONTRACTS § 59 (1979))). Contract law does not permit one 

to send unsolicited letters to the government (or anyone 

else) declaring that a failure to respond to the letter 

constitutes both formation and breach of a contract, 

entitling the sender to liquidated damages. 

In addition, to the extent Ibrahim alleges that his 

contract with the United States was implied-in-law, the 

Supreme Court has “repeatedly held that [Tucker Act] 

jurisdiction extends only to contracts either express or 

implied in fact, and not to claims on contracts implied in 

law.” Hercules Inc. v. United States, 516 U.S. 417, 423 

(1996) (collecting cases). Thus, the Claims Court would 

still have been required to dismiss Ibrahim’s complaint for 

lack of subject matter jurisdiction. 

Because we conclude that the Claims Court correctly 

held that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction, we need not 

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6 IBRAHIM v. UNITED STATES

reach its alternative ground of dismissal for failure to state 

a claim under Rule 12(b)(6).1

CONCLUSION

We have considered the rest of Ibrahim’s arguments 

but find them unpersuasive. For the foregoing reasons, the 

judgment of the Claims Court is 

AFFIRMED

1 We have previously noted that, while dismissal for 

lack of subject matter jurisdiction may be appropriate in

some frivolous cases, “the Supreme Court has made clear 

that such jurisdictional dismissals for frivolousness must 

be ‘confin[ed]’ to cases ‘that are very plain.’” Lewis, 70 F.3d 

at 603–04 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (quoting Hart v. B.F. Keith Vaudeville Exch., 262 U.S. 271, 274 (1923)). And unlike dismissal for failure to state a claim, jurisdictional dismissal 

does not give rise to claim preclusion. See Lewis, 70 F.3d 

at 603. 

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