Opinion ID: 488510
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Satisfying the Jurisdictional Requirement of Presentment

Text: 55 In assessing the adequacy of the presentments made by GAF and Eagle-Picher, the District Court identified the correct legal standard to apply, reciting the two-pronged requirement of minimal notice we have identified above. 112 In neither case did the court view the sum-certain requirement as posing a problem. 113 Rather, in each instance the District Court dismissed the cases for lack of jurisdiction on the ground that the claimants had failed to provide sufficient information regarding the claims presented. 114 Those dismissals reflect a misapplication of the sufficient-notice standard, which in turn rests on a misunderstanding of the role of presentment within the statutory scheme. 56 The District Court in both cases placed special emphasis on the fact that the companies presented the Government with a claim seeking indemnification for a host of underlying claims. 115 In its view, the character of the claim presented was distinctive, requiring a special standard of review; common sense dictates that the amount of information more than sufficient in a simple case may be patently insufficient in a more complex case. 116 For guidance, the court turned to the Second Circuit's opinion in Keene I as pertinent appellate authority on standards of notice for presentment of claims for indemnification involving multiple underlying claims; adopting Keene I 's approach, it demanded extensive documentation of the underlying claims--both as regards their factual predicates and the theory of liability upon which each rested. In both instances, the court found that the claimants had failed to particularize the theories of liability on which recovery for each of the underlying claims rested. 117 And even where the court found the factual information sufficient as a general matter, it rejected the factual sufficiency of the presentment as a whole for gaps or insufficiently particularized responses on some of the descriptive attachments provided by the companies for each of the underlying claims. 118 57 In our view, the character of the claims here at issue does not warrant a distinctive standard for evaluating the sufficiency of the presentments tendered. Section 2675(a) remains, without regard to the character of the claim presented, a requirement of notice. By contrast, we think the District Court viewed the complexity of the claims as warranting a more stringent standard of review. The court imposed upon the claimant, not simply the burden of notifying the Government of its claims, but of substantiating them; [i]t is not enough for Eagle-Picher to proffer individual cover sheets with spaces for particular information if the information contained on them is not provided or does not measure up to what is necessary for the Government to investigate or evaluate the claim. 119 58 As these remarks suggest, the court viewed the burden on the claimant as one of proof as much as notice. It judged the presentments tendered factually insufficient, not because it deemed the type of information provided inadequate as a general matter, but because it deemed it insufficient in particular instances. A similar understanding informs its demand that the claimants specify particular theories of liability for each of the underlying claims for which indemnification was sought. Following the Second Circuit, the District Court construed the presentment requirement as imposing upon the claimants the burden of demonstrating the merits of their claims at the agency level as a jurisdictional prerequisite to filing suit--this despite the fact that the Standard Form 95 the Government would have claimants use for presentation of claims requests no such argumentation. 120 In short, despite its nominal recitation of the correct standard of review, the District Court assessed the presentments here at issue in accordance with a very different and fundamentally erroneous understanding of the jurisdictional requirements of the Act. 59 In our view, GAF and Eagle-Picher have presented the Government with notice of their claims for contribution or indemnification that is wholly sufficient to meet the jurisdictional requirements of the Act. Each has presented the Government with a sum-certain claim for damages--disaggregated to reflect each of the underlying claims they have satisfied by settlement or judgment, and the defense costs associated with them. 121 They have organized the information presented in accordance with the Government's Standard Form 95, supplying the types of information there requested by means of copious attachments which characterize individually and collectively the underlying claims they have satisfied. 122 They have further identified the acts and omissions of the Government that in their view justifies contribution or indemnification for the liabilities they have incurred. 123 60 The District Court's objections notwithstanding, we believe GAF and Eagle-Picher have supplied the Government with notice sufficient for it to undertake an investigation of their claims and evaluate its potential liabilities. Most of the underlying claims for which GAF and Eagle-Picher seek contribution or indemnification are abundantly documented. The information missing on some of the attachments will not impede the Government from investigating and evaluating the acts and omissions on which the claims for contribution or indemnification are predicated. Rather, missing information on the attachments, linking injuries claimants have compensated by settlement or judgment to work performed by the claimants for the Government in accordance with its asbestos specifications, would become relevant only as a matter of proof; if the Government chose to settle or were adjudicated liable for its role in requiring asbestos in its construction contracts, the extent of its liabilities would turn on the claimants' success in attributing each of the underlying settlements or judgments to the Government acts or omissions alleged. Additional documentation might thus appropriately be demanded of claimants in the course of ensuing settlement negotiations or a trial on the merits, and at that time, they might similarly be expected to specify theories of governmental liability for each of the underlying claims. But, for purposes of Section 2675(a)'s notice requirement, the information provided by their presentments is wholly sufficient to apprise the Government of the factual predicates of their claims for contribution or indemnification: the acts and omissions which in their view make the Government liable for the claims they have satisfied, as well as considerable factual and legal information about the classes of underlying claims for which contribution or indemnification is sought. 61 Ironically, the Government's jurisdictional objections in these cases attest most pointedly to the sufficiency of notice provided by the challenged presentments. The Government evidently would prefer to engage appellants in evidentiary battles on jurisdictional grounds rather than to defend against appellants' claims on the merits. But Section 2675(a) entitles the Government only to notice of a claim for investigative purposes, not to proof of it. It does not empower the Government to keep these claimants out of court for more than the six-month period statutorily conferred on it to investigate and negotiate claims for settlement, and it surely does not establish the Department of Justice as the exclusive, or even primary, arbiter of the Government's liability under the Federal Tort Claims Act. 124 62 We recognize that the claims for indemnification here at issue rest on complex legal and factual predicates, and in this light understand the District Court's reservations concerning the adequacy of the presentment made. It is evident that the claims here at issue do not fit easily into the mold of tort claims involving, for example, an automobile collision or a simple workplace injury. But this does not render the claimants any less entitled to an opportunity to raise them under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The claimants have provided the Government with notice sufficient to entitle them to a trial on the merits, and it is at that juncture, rather than on jurisdictional grounds, that the task of substantiating these claims in greater detail is appropriately imposed upon them. 63 In adding the presentment requirement to the Federal Tort Claims Act, Congress explicitly recognized that there would be complex tort claims not susceptible to settlement within the six-month framework it adopted, observing that there would be some difficult tort claims that cannot be processed and evaluated in this 6-month period. 125 It left to the claimant's judgment in such cases the decision whether additional time in settlement negotiations with the Government would be fruitfully expended. 126 Where, as here, the claimants, having presented their claims to numerous agencies in accordance with the requirements of Section 2675(a), determine that a judicial forum is the preferred forum for an adjudication of their claims, there is nothing in the Federal Tort Claims Act that qualifies or abrogates their right to insist upon it. Congress understood that the presentment requirement and settlement process it added to the Act would, in some instances, do little to alter the adjudication of difficult tort claims such as these; and, where the parties stand as divided as those before us, nor do we think it inexorably must. 127 The jurisdiction of the District Court to hear the cases having been established, it should proceed to trials on the merits.