In the United States Court of Federal Claims

No. 14-228C

(Filed: October 2, 2014)

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VANESSA BROOKS *

Doing business as *

BORROWED TIME *

ENTERERPRISES, INC., *

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Plaintiff, *

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v. *

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THE UNITED STATES, *

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Defendant. *

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ORDER DISMISSING CASE

Plaintiff Vanessa Brooks, doing business as Borrowed Time Enterprises, Inc., 

filed her Complaint on March 25, 2014. Plaintiff vaguely alleges that she had a contract 

to provide supplies to the Government and that upon delivery of those supplies, the 

Government rejected the delivery as being incorrect. Compl. at 1. Plaintiff believes the 

delivery was wrongly rejected and seeks damages for breach of contract in the amount of 

$10,090.00. Id. at 2. On May 27, 2014, the Government filed its Motion to Dismiss 

pursuant to the Rules of the Court of Federal Claims (“RCFC”) 12(b)(6) for failure to 

state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Plaintiff filed her Response on September 

30, 2014.1 For the reasons set forth below, the Court grants the Government’s Motion to 

Dismiss.

RCFC 12(b)(6) allows for the dismissal of a complaint if, assuming the truth of all 

the allegations, the complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted as a 

matter of law. Lindsay v. United States, 295 F.3d 1252, 1257 (Fed. Cir. 2002). When 

analyzing a motion to dismiss under RCFC 12(b)(6), the Court must also accept as true 

the complaint's undisputed factual allegations and should construe them in a light most 

1 This case had previously been dismissed without prejudice for failure to 

prosecute due to Plaintiff’s counsel’s failure to timely become admitted to practice before 

the United States Court of Federal Claims. Thereafter, Counsel became admitted to 

practice on August 22, 2014, and in light of this, the Court granted his Motion for 

Reconsideration and reopened the case on August 25, 2014.

 
favorable to plaintiff, Gould, Inc. v. United States, 935 F.2d 1271, 1274 (Fed. Cir. 1991), 

and "the [f]actual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the 

speculative level." Bell Altantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007). The Court 

is “not bound to accept as true a legal conclusion couched as a factual allegation.”

Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555 (quotation marks omitted). “[N]aked assertion[s]” devoid of 

“further factual enhancement” do not suffice. Id. at 557; see also Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 

U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (noting that the pleading standards demand more than “unadorned, 

the-defendant-unlawfully harmed-me accusation[s].”).

Plaintiff’s vague complaint, which contains only three numbered paragraphs, does 

not rise to the pleading standard required by Twombly and Iqbal. Plaintiff has failed to 

include any details of the contract in the pleadings, including what supplies the contract 

called for, which branch of government the Plaintiff contracted with, what supplies were 

delivered to the Defendant when they were rejected, what the obligations of each party 

were under the contract, the total value of the contract, and any argument for why 

$10,090.00 is the appropriate amount of damages for the alleged breach.

Additionally, as RCFC 9(k) provides, “[i]n pleading a claim founded on a contract 

or treaty, a party must identify the substantive provisions of the contract or treaty on 

which the party relies. In lieu of a description, the party may annex to the complaint a 

copy of the contract or treaty, indicating the relevant provisions.” Plaintiff has not cited 

to any specific passage or substantive provision of the contract nor has a copy of the 

contract been attached to the Complaint. 

Thus, because the Complaint contains an insufficient amount of information

necessary for this case to proceed, Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss is hereby GRANTED. 

The Clerk of Court is directed to enter judgment accordingly and close the case.

s/ Edward J. Damich 

EDWARD J. DAMICH

Senior Judge

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