Opinion ID: 4203981
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Documents Outside the Pleadings

Text: Ironshore argues that, as a threshold matter, the district court committed reversible error when it relied upon materials outside the pleadings in granting AMSEA's and the United States' 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss. Specifically, Ironshore challenges the district court's decision to consider the Military - 5 - Sealift Command's contract with AMSEA. Ironshore did not include or append this contract to its complaint. Rather, AMSEA and the United States provided excerpts of the contract to the district court alongside their respective motions to dismiss, and the United States appended the full contract to its reply to Ironshore's opposition to its motion to dismiss.2 Ironshore asserts that, by relying on the contract in its disposition of the defendants' motions, the district court inappropriately converted the Rule 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss into Rule 56 summary judgment motions that could not be properly resolved until the completion of discovery. We disagree.3 Ordinarily[] . . . any consideration of documents not attached to the complaint, or not expressly incorporated therein, is forbidden, unless the proceeding is properly converted into one for summary judgment under Rule 56. Watterson v. Page, 987 F.2d 1, 3 (1st Cir. 1993). We have recognized, however, that when 2 AMSEA also submitted a number of other documents outside the pleadings along with its motion to dismiss, but the district court only relied upon one document outside the pleadings -- the contract between the Military Sealift Command and AMSEA -- in its memorandum of decision. 3 Ironshore has also argued that even if it may have been appropriate to convert the defendants' Rule 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss into Rule 56 motions for summary judgment, the district court failed to provide Ironshore reasonable opportunity to present any additional material pertinent to such a summary judgment motion as required under Rule 12(d). Because we find no such conversion occurred, we need not address this grievance. - 6 - considering 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss, courts have made narrow exceptions for documents the authenticity of which are not disputed by the parties; for official public records; for documents central to plaintiffs' claim; or for documents sufficiently referred to in the complaint. Id. Moreover, [u]nder First Circuit precedent, when 'a complaint's factual allegations are expressly linked to - - and admittedly dependent upon -- a document (the authenticity of which is not challenged),' then the court can review it upon a motion to dismiss. Diva's Inc. v. City of Bangor, 411 F.3d 30, 38 (1st Cir. 2005) (alteration in original) (quoting Alternative Energy, Inc. v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 267 F.3d 30, 34 (1st Cir. 2001)). Although Ironshore's complaint does not explicitly reference the contract between the Military Sealift Command and AMSEA or the relationship between the two parties, the complaint alleges that the United States was the owner of the FISHER and that AMSEA was [a]t all times material [to the dispute] the operator of the FISHER. It further alleges that AMSEA and the United States are responsible parties, subject to strict liability under the OPA. Because the OPA indisputably exempts public vessels from liability, 33 U.S.C. § 2702(c)(2), Ironshore's OPA claims hinge upon the question of whether the FISHER qualifies as a public vessel. That question, in turn, requires an examination of the contractual relationship between the Military - 7 - Sealift Command and AMSEA. Ironshore has not preserved any challenge to the authenticity of the contract, and, as we explain below, the contract answers the determinative OPA question.4 Hence, the district court did not commit a reversible error by considering the contract between AMSEA and the Military Sealift Command when it decided the defendants' motions to dismiss.