Opinion ID: 1433952
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The essence of Doe's claims

Text: Although the district court determined, as I would, that Doe's allegations satisfied the requirements of the commercial activity exception, it ultimately held the commercial activity exception inapplicable. See Doe, 434 F.Supp.2d at 941-42. It did so because, following what it considered to be the overarching principle in Nelson,  it concluded that it could not fairly characterize[ ] [the activities described in the complaint] as commercial. Id. at 947. Rather, it explained that at the heart of plaintiff's complaint is the injury inflicted by a sexually abusive priest at plaintiff's church, a claim clearly sounding in tort. Id. at 942. On the district court's reading of Nelson, if the essence of a plaintiff's complaint sounds in tort, id., the plaintiff's claims can proceed only under the FSIA's tortious act exception, or not at all. The Sixth Circuit recently came to a similar conclusion in O'Bryan v. Holy See, 556 F.3d 361 (6th Cir.2009). O'Bryan held that, because the true essence or gravamen of the wrongful activities alleged in the plaintiff's complaint sounded like torts, the court could exercise jurisdiction over the Holy See only through the FSIA's tortious act exception. O'Bryan, 556 F.3d at  ___-____, ___-____, 2009 WL 305342, at -12, 16-17. It therefore held the commercial activity exception inapplicable to the Holy See's employment activities. I disagree that the arguably tortious essence of Doe's claims renders the commercial activity exception unavailable to him. Nothing in the FSIA suggests that the commercial activity exception and the tortious act exception are mutually exclusive and cannot possibly apply to the same conduct. Nor does Nelson, or any other controlling case, authorize reading such a requirement into the statute. In Nelson, the plaintiff entered into an employment contract in the United States with a Saudi Arabian hospital operated by the government of Saudi Arabia. 507 U.S. at 351-52, 113 S.Ct. 1471. He then moved to Saudi Arabia, where he worked as an engineer for the hospital. Id. at 352, 113 S.Ct. 1471. After he reported several safety violations to his superiors, he was arrested by the Saudi national police, imprisoned, and tortured. Id. at 352-53, 113 S.Ct. 1471. He sued in U.S. federal court, alleging several intentional tort causes of action based on his imprisonment and torture, as well as a claim regarding the hospital's negligent failure to warn him, during the contract negotiations in the United States, that he would be subject to imprisonment and torture if he reported safety violations. Id. at 353-54, 113 S.Ct. 1471. He argued that there was jurisdiction over his claims under the first clause of the commercial activity exception. The Supreme Court concluded that there was no jurisdiction over any of his causes of action. His intentional tort claims could not proceed under the commercial activity exception because a foreign state's exercise of the power of its police is an act which is peculiarly sovereign in nature, and therefore not commercial within the meaning of the FSIA. Id. at 361, 113 S.Ct. 1471. As to the failure to warn claim, the Court concluded that the plaintiff could not meet the statute's requirement that his claim be based upon the commercial activity of Saudi Arabia merely by phrasing his claim in terms of the contract negotiations in the United States during which the failure to warn allegedly occurred. [A] plaintiff could recast virtually any claim of intentional tort committed by sovereign act as a claim of failure to warn.... To give jurisdictional significance to this feint of language would effectively thwart the Act's manifest purpose. Id. at 363, 113 S.Ct. 1471. In analyzing the failure to warn claim, then, Nelson simply applied the general principle that the court does not accept a plaintiff's mischaracterization of the legal significance of the facts he has alleged, but will look beyond the complaint's characterization to the conduct on which the claim is based. Blaxland v. Commonwealth Dir. of Pub. Prosecutions, 323 F.3d 1198, 1203 (9th Cir.2003) (quoting Mt. Homes, Inc. v. United States, 912 F.2d 352, 356 (9th Cir.1990)). [4] Here, unlike in Nelson, Doe's negligent retention, supervision, and failure to warn claims are not simply a feint of language to obtain jurisdiction through the commercial activity exception. Nelson, 507 U.S. at 363, 113 S.Ct. 1471. Doe has alleged that the Holy See continued to employee Ronan, and placed him in the Archdiocese where he molested Doe, even after the Holy See was aware that Ronan had molested young boys on at least two prior occasions while in its employ. He has alleged further that the Holy See did not inform Doe or his parents of what it knew about Ronan's dangerousness, despite its position of trust with respect to Doe and its employment relationship with Ronan. Doe's negligence claims are not a mischaracterization of the factual allegations he has made, but are in fact among the central wrongs he alleges. [5] In summary, I see no reason why claims arising from actions with an arguably tortious essence cannot proceed under the commercial activity exception. As noted above, the phrase commercial activity in the FSIA is a term of art. Neither the statute, nor any controlling case, requires the conclusion that the commercial activity exception is necessarily inapplicable whenever the label tort would be, in common usage, a better description of the harms a plaintiff alleges.