N OTE : This disposition is nonprecedential. 

# United States **Court of Appeals**  **for the Federal Circuit**

______________________ CAROLYN BARNES, Plaintiff

- Appellant

v.

UNITED STATES, Defendant

- Appellee

______________________

2018

- 2096

______________________ Appeal from the United States Court of Federal Claims in No. 1:17

- cv

- 00534

- MCW, Judge Mary Ellen Coster Williams.

______________________

Decided: January 9, 2019

______________________

C AROLYN B ARNES , Leander, TX, pro se.

J OSHUA A. M ANDLEBAUM , Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for defendant

- appellee. Also represented by J OSEPH H. H UNT , R O BERT E DWARD K IRSCHMAN , J R ., L OREN M ISHA P REHEIM

.

______________________

Before D YK , B RYSON , and C HEN , Circuit Judges.BARNES v. UNITED S TATES 2

P ER C URIAM

. Plaintiff

–

Appellant Carolyn Barnes appeals the Court of Federal Claims’ (“ Claims Court’s ”) denial of her motion for relief under Rule 60 of the Rules of the United States Court of Federal Claims

. 1 Because we agree that the Claims Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction, we affirm

. B ACKGROUND On June 11, 2013, Ms. Barnes was convicted of aggr avated assault with a deadly weapon while using or exhi biting a firearm. Barnes v. State , No. 03

- 13

- 00434, 2016 WL 3917126 , at *1 (Tex. App. July 13, 2016) (affirming conviction). Ms. Barnes filed a complaint on behalf of herself and her children in the Claims Court on April 13, 2017, against numerous defendants, including but not limited to the United States, stemming from her purpor tedly wrongful conviction. The Claims Court aptly su mmarized Ms. Barnes’ complaint as follows:

Plaintiffs’ 179

- pag e complaint is difficult to u nderstand, but appears to stem from Ms. Barnes’ 2013 aggravated assault conviction. Plaintiffs a llege conspiracy on t he part of a number of ind ividuals to “frame” Ms. Barnes for a crime she did not commit. Plaintiffs further claim numerous v iolations of the Constitution, state and federal statutes, “international treaties, covenants, cov enants, and conventions,” as well as breach of co ntract, criminal activity

, and torts.

1 Ms. Barnes styled her filing as a motion for reco nsideration but the Claims Court treated it as a Rule 60 motion for relief from judgment

.BARNES v. UNITED S TATES 3

S.A. 207. All of Ms. Barnes’ allegations before the C laims Court amount to collateral attacks on her criminal convi ction.
On November 29, 2017 , the Claims Court dismissed Ms. Barnes’ complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdi ction. The Claims Court entered judgment on November 30, 2017. Ms. Barnes submit ted a motion styled as a “motion to reconsider” on December 29, 2017. The Claims Court construed Ms. Barnes’ motion as a motion for relief from the judgment under Rule 60. On May 24, 2018, the Claims Court denied Ms. Barnes’ motion because she “ha[d] not articulated any grounds warranting reconsi deration.” Ms. Barnes appealed to this court on June 21, 2018

. We have jurisdiction over this appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(3).

D ISCUSSION

This court reviews a denial of a motion for relief from judgment for abuse of discretion. Progressive Indus., Inc. v. United States , 888 F.3d 1248, 1255 (Fed. Cir. 2018)

. We review the Claims Court’s dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction de novo. Alpine PCS, In c. v. United States , 878 F.3d 1086, 1092 (Fed. Cir. 2018).
Ms. Barnes purports to appeal from the Claims Court’s judgment dis missing her complaint

. But Ms. Barnes’ appeal was docketed on June 21, 2018 , well pas t the 60

- day deadline to appeal from the Cl aims Court’s November 2017 judgment of dismissal. See Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(B). Though this deadline may be suspended by a motion under Rule 60 , that is only so where the motion was filed with the Claims Court “within the time a llowed,” which in this case is 28 days following entry of judgment

. See Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(4)(A)(v i ).

Because Ms. Barnes filed her motion for relief with the Claims Court 29 days after the Claims Court’s jud gment of dismissal was entered, her motion did not su s-BARNES v. UNITED S TATES 4

pend the deadline to appeal the Claims Court’s order of dismissal and was therefore untimely. Our jurisdiction is thus limited to a review of the Claims Court’s denial of Ms. Barnes’ motion for relief from judgment

. See Browder v. Dir., Dep’ t of Corr. , 434 U.S. 257, 263 (1978) (“[A]n appeal from denial of [Federal Rule of Civil Procedure] 60(b) relief does not bring up the underlying judgment for review.”); Brown v. United States , 80 F. A pp’x 676, 67 7 (Fed. Cir. 2003) ( construing plaintiff’s untimely motion for

recons ideration as a Rule 60 motion for relief from jud gment and limiting this court’s review to the denial of Rule 60 relief ). 2 Even if we were to consider Ms. Barnes’

ap peal from both the Claims Court’s order of dismissal and denial of relief under Rule 60, the result would be the

same.
Ms. Barnes ’ claims are collateral attacks on her cri minal conviction. It is well

- established that the Claims Court “ lacks jurisdiction to consider cla ims which amount
to ‘ collateral attacks ’ on criminal convictions .” Mercer v. United States , 668 F. App’x 362, 363 ( Fed. Cir. 2016); accord Beadles v. United States , 115 Fed. Cl. 242, 245 (2014) ; Carter v. United States

, 228 Ct. Cl. 898, 900 (1981). The C laims Court thus correctly dismissed Ms. Barnes ’ claims for lack of jurisdiction.
To the extent that Ms. Barnes argues that the limits on the jurisdiction of the Claims Court are un constit u-

2 The standard of review for a denial of relief is the same for both a Rule 60 motion under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of the Court of Federal claims. See Info

. Sys. & Networks Corp. v. United States

, 994 F.2d 792, 794 & n.3 (Fed. Cir. 1993) (applying the Rule 60 standard of review from Browder because “Rule 60(b) of the Claims Court is a virtual duplicate of Fe deral Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)”).BARNES v. UNITED S TATES 5

tional, she provides no reasoned basis for why this would be the ca se.
C ONCLUSION

Because the Claims Court did not err in dismissing Ms. Barnes’ case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, we affirm

. AFFIRMED

C OSTS

No costs.