Court Opinion

ID: 9918303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-01-12 16:02:10.016391+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:52:15.438184
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-2074    Document: 40     Page: 1   Filed: 01/12/2024

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                  ______________________

            UNITED COMMUNITIES, LLC,
                 Plaintiff-Appellant

                             v.

                    UNITED STATES,
                    Defendant-Appellee
                  ______________________

                        2022-2074
                  ______________________

    Appeal from the United States Court of Federal Claims
 in No. 1:20-cv-01220-PEC, Judge Patricia E. Campbell-
 Smith.
                 ______________________

                Decided: January 12, 2024
                 ______________________

     G. SCOTT WALTERS, Smith, Currie & Hancock LLP, At-
 lanta, GA, for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by
 SARAH CARPENTER, Charlotte, NC.

     EBONIE I. BRANCH, Commercial Litigation Branch,
 Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Wash-
 ington, DC, for defendant-appellee. Also represented by
 BRIAN M. BOYNTON, DEBORAH ANN BYNUM, PATRICIA M.
 MCCARTHY.
                   ______________________
Case: 22-2074     Document: 40     Page: 2    Filed: 01/12/2024

 2                             UNITED COMMUNITIES, LLC v. US

     Before REYNA, TARANTO, and CHEN, Circuit Judges.
 PER CURIAM.
      United Communities, LLC (United Communities) filed
 with the United States Court of Federal Claims a motion
 for extension of time to file a notice of appeal one month
 after its notice of appeal should have been filed. The court
 denied this motion, determining that United Communities
 failed to show excusable neglect. United Communities,
 LLC v. United States, 160 Fed. Cl. 591, 592–93 (2022) (Or-
 der). Because we do not believe the court abused its discre-
 tion in finding no excusable neglect, we affirm.
                        BACKGROUND
      In 2006, the United States (Government) and United
 Communities entered a contract in which United Commu-
 nities agreed to develop and operate privatized military
 housing at McGuire Air Force Base and Fort Dix,
 Wrightstown, Burlington County, New Jersey. Under the
 contract, United Communities agreed to cap the rent it
 would charge to military families at an amount equal to
 each military member’s Basic Allowance for Housing
 (BAH). United Communities, LLC v. United States, 154
 Fed. Cl. 676, 678 (2021). On May 1, 2020, United Commu-
 nities—dissatisfied with the Secretary of Defense’s exer-
 cise of statutory authority to reduce the BAH—submitted
 a certified claim to the contracting officer that alleged
 (1) breach of contract, (2) breach of the implied duty of good
 faith and fair dealing, and (3) violation of the Takings
 Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Con-
 stitution. Id. at 680; J.A. 40–43. The contracting officer
 denied the claim in a final decision on June 29, 2020.
 United Communities, 154 Fed. Cl. at 680.
     After a subsequent confirmation of the contracting of-
 ficer’s decision on July 8, 2020, United Communities filed
 suit in the Court of Federal Claims on September 17, 2020
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 UNITED COMMUNITIES, LLC v. US                                 3

 against the Government, again alleging breach of contract,
 breach of the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing,
 and violation of the Takings Clause. Id. The Government
 moved to dismiss the complaint under Rule 12(b)(6) of the
 Rules of the Court of Federal Claims, and the Court of Fed-
 eral Claims granted the motion, dismissing the complaint
 with prejudice. Id. at 677–78, 685. United Communities
 filed a motion for reconsideration, which the court denied
 on November 18, 2021. United Communities, LLC v.
 United States, 157 Fed. Cl. 19, 20 (2021).
      United Communities failed to timely file with the
 Court of Federal Claims its notice of appeal to our court.
 The parties do not dispute that, under Federal Rule of Ap-
 pellate Procedure 4(a)(1)(B), the deadline for filing a notice
 of appeal was tethered to the date of the court’s denial of
 United Communities’s motion for reconsideration and that
 this deadline was on January 17, 2022. United Communi-
 ties did not file a notice of appeal on or before this deadline.
 Order, 160 Fed. Cl. at 592. Instead, United Communities’s
 counsel incorrectly relied on 41 U.S.C. § 7107, which gov-
 erns timing of appeals of a decision from an agency board
 of contract appeals. J.A. 803.
       After discovering this error, United Communities filed
 a motion for extension of time to file a notice of appeal on
 February 16, 2022 accompanied with a notice of appeal.
 Under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(5)(A), a
 “district court may extend the time to file a notice of appeal
 if . . . (i) a party so moves no later than 30 days after the
 time prescribed by this Rule 4(a) expires; and (ii) regard-
 less of whether its motion is filed before or during the 30
 days after the time prescribed by this Rule 4(a) expires,
 that party shows excusable neglect or good cause.” United
 Communities’s notice of appeal removed jurisdiction from
 the Court of Federal Claims, and we remanded the case to
 the Court of Federal Claims to permit it to rule on the mo-
 tion for extension of time.
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 4                             UNITED COMMUNITIES, LLC v. US

      The Court of Federal Claims denied the motion, deter-
 mining that United Communities’s failure to timely file did
 not rise to the level of excusable neglect. Order, 160 Fed.
 Cl. at 591–92. United Communities’s lead argument was
 that the circumstances of its neglect were analogous to the
 unique docketing circumstances in Cygnus Corporation,
 Inc. v. United States, 65 Fed. Cl. 646 (2005), a case in which
 the court previously found excusable neglect. Order, 160
 Fed. Cl. at 592–93. But the court found that such unique
 docketing circumstances did not exist around United Com-
 munities’s neglect. Id. at 593. The court further consid-
 ered the specific non-exhaustive factors articulated in
 Pioneer Investment Services Co. v. Brunswick Associates
 Ltd. Partnership, 507 U.S. 380 (1993), but found no excus-
 able neglect because United Communities “fail[ed] to iden-
 tify anything other than ‘garden-variety miscalculation’ on
 counsel’s part.” Order, 160 Fed. Cl. at 593 (quoting Kansas
 Gas & Elec. Co. v. United States, 111 Fed. Cl. 169, 175
 (2013)). Finally, the court disposed of United Communi-
 ties’s contention first raised in its reply that relied on
 United States v. Brown, 133 F.3d 993 (7th Cir. 1998). Or-
 der, 160 Fed. Cl. at 592 n.3. In United Communities’s view,
 the reasoning in Brown established that denial of United
 Communities’s motion would be overly harsh and accord-
 ingly counseled in favor of granting the motion. The court
 did not find this argument persuasive, explaining that
 Brown was not binding on the Court of Federal Claims and,
 as a criminal case, was factually distinguishable because it
 implicated a different set of rights and equities than those
 at issue in this civil case. Id. The court thus denied United
 Communities’s motion for an extension of time for filing a
 notice of appeal. Id. at 593.
    United Communities timely appeals this denial. We
 have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(3).
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 UNITED COMMUNITIES, LLC v. US                                5

                    STANDARD OF REVIEW
     We review a trial court’s grant or denial of a motion to
 extend time for filing a notice of appeal for an abuse of dis-
 cretion. Penrod Drilling Co. v. United States, 925 F.2d 406,
 408 (Fed. Cir. 1991). “To constitute an abuse of discretion,
 a court must either make a clear error of judgment in
 weighing relevant factors or exercise discretion based upon
 an error of law.” DGR Assocs., Inc. v. United States, 690
 F.3d 1335, 1340 (Fed. Cir. 2012).
                          DISCUSSION
     We are unpersuaded that the Court of Federal Claims
 abused its discretion in denying United Communities’s mo-
 tion for an extension of time to file a notice of appeal.
                    I.   Excusable Neglect
     United Communities argues that the Court of Federal
 Claims failed to properly weigh the Pioneer factors. In Pi-
 oneer, the Supreme Court explained that “inadvertence, ig-
 norance of the rules, or mistakes construing the rules do
 not usually constitute ‘excusable’ neglect . . . .” 507 U.S. at
 392.    According to the Supreme Court, determining
 whether a party’s neglect is excusable “is at bottom an eq-
 uitable one, taking account of all relevant circumstances
 surrounding the party’s omission.” Id. at 395. The Su-
 preme Court then endorsed certain non-exhaustive factors
 including (1) the danger of prejudice to the non-moving
 party, (2) the length of the delay and its potential impact
 on judicial proceedings, (3) the moving party’s reason for
 the delay, including whether the delay was within the rea-
 sonable control of the moving party, and (4) whether the
 moving party acted in good faith. Id. These factors are
 commonly known as the Pioneer factors. See FirstHealth
 of Carolinas, Inc. v. CareFirst of Maryland, Inc., 479 F.3d
 825, 828–29 (Fed. Cir. 2007).
     We do not believe the Court of Federal Claims abused
 its discretion. United Communities’s motion primarily
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 6                              UNITED COMMUNITIES, LLC v. US

 relied on a Court of Federal Claims decision—Cygnus—but
 the court identified specific material differences between
 the circumstances surrounding United Communities’s ne-
 glect and the circumstances in Cygnus, observing that Cyg-
 nus “involved the unusual circumstance that the clerk’s
 office did not timely enter on the docket the order that be-
 gan the appeal clock.” Order, 160 Fed. Cl. at 593. United
 Communities, the court explained, “identified no such fac-
 tor that contributed to its delay in this case that is ‘outside
 the ordinary course.’” Id. (quoting Cygnus, 65 Fed. Cl. at
 649). The court additionally considered each Pioneer factor
 and, despite finding little prejudice to the Government and
 little threat to judicial administration, concluded that
 United Communities’s failure to identify any reason be-
 sides counsel’s erroneous understanding of the law
 weighed in favor of denial. Id.
     United Communities argues that the Court of Federal
 Claims’s excusable-neglect analysis failed to consider the
 harshness of depriving United Communities of the right to
 appeal the dismissal. But under the circumstances, we be-
 lieve the court’s response to this argument did not amount
 to an abuse of discretion. It reasoned that the rights and
 equities at issue in Brown, a criminal case, were distin-
 guishable from the rights and equities implicated in the
 present civil case. Id. at 592 n.3. Instead, following its
 Kansas Gas decision, the court explained that United Com-
 munities “fail[ed] to identify anything other than ‘garden-
 variety miscalculation’ on counsel’s part.” Id. at 593 (quot-
 ing Kansas Gas, 111 Fed. Cl. at 175). Considering United
 Communities’s limited presentation of its argument to the
 Court of Federal Claims, we conclude it has failed to show
 that the court abused its discretion.
     Furthermore, we are not persuaded that the other
 cases that United Communities raises for the first time on
 appeal establish that the Court of Federal Claims abused
 its discretion. Appellant’s Br. 19–20 (first citing Feeder
 Line Towing Serv., Inc. v. Toledo, P. & W. R. R. Co., 539
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 UNITED COMMUNITIES, LLC v. US                               7

 F.2d 1107 (7th Cir. 1976); and then citing Treasurer, Trus-
 tees of Drury Indus., Inc. Health Care Plan & Tr. v. Goding,
 692 F.3d 888 (8th Cir. 2012)). In Feeder Line, the Seventh
 Circuit determined the district court did not abuse its dis-
 cretion in finding excusable neglect based on counsel’s mis-
 taken understanding of “clearly conflicting language of two
 provisions of the law” with respect to the deadline for filing
 a notice of appeal. 539 F.2d at 1109. And in Treasurer, the
 Eighth Circuit similarly determined that the district court
 did not abuse its discretion in finding excusable neglect
 based on a computer error in counsel’s calendaring system.
 692 F.3d at 893. These cases, however, are factually dis-
 tinguishable. Here, United Communities explained that
 its calendaring error was due to counsel’s misplaced reli-
 ance on their experience with appeals from a different tri-
 bunal, not due to conflicting language in the law or a
 computer error. Order, 160 Fed. Cl. at 592. Moreover, it is
 worth noting that in these decisions as well as in Brown,
 the appellate courts did not reverse any trial court rulings
 but instead deferred to the trial courts, given the latitude
 they are accorded under the applicable standard of review.
 In sum, we do not believe the Court of Federal Claims
 abused its discretion in finding no excusable neglect.
                       II. Good Cause
     United Communities alternatively alleges that the
 Court of Federal Claims legally erred in refusing to analyze
 whether good cause justified the delay. We agree with the
 court that “[i]n substance, however, [United Communi-
 ties]’s argument [before the Court of Federal Claims] ad-
 dresse[d] only excusable neglect.” Id. at 592 n.2. Having
 addressed United Communities’s substantive arguments,
 which were all directed to excusable neglect, the court did
 not abuse its discretion by not separately addressing
 United Communities’s bare references to good cause. To
 the extent United Communities argues that we should find
 good cause for the first time on appeal, we decline to do so.
 See Fresenius USA, Inc. v. Baxter Int’l, Inc., 582 F.3d 1288,
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 8                            UNITED COMMUNITIES, LLC v. US

 1296 (Fed. Cir. 2009) (deeming a “skeletal or undeveloped
 argument” presented to the district court to be waived on
 appeal).
                        CONCLUSION
      We have considered United Communities’s remaining
 arguments and find them unpersuasive. While we are
 sympathetic to United Communities’s situation, we cannot
 find a sufficient reason to displace the discretion of the
 Court of Federal Claims in denying United Communities’s
 motion for extension of time. For the foregoing reasons, we
 affirm the denial of the Court of Federal Claims.
                       AFFIRMED