Opinion
Civil Action No. 03-4859.
July 1, 2004
MEMORANDUM
I. INTRODUCTION
Plaintiff Roosevelt Broadus, an inmate confined in the Lee County United States Penitentiary, Lee County, Virginia, instituted this action on August 25, 2003 alleging defendant Cheryl J. Sturm, Esquire, had a conflict of interest while representing him on a motion to vacate his sentence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Section 2255 and seeking $200,000.00 in damages as a result of her alleged professional negligence. Now before me is defendant's 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss plaintiff's complaint. For the reasons stated below, I will grant defendant's motion.
II. BACKGROUND
On February 7, 1992, following a jury trial plaintiff Roosevelt Broadus was convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute cocaine base (crack) in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846, possession with intent to distribute cocaine base (crack) in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 8451(a)(1) and carrying or using firearms during and in relation to a drug-trafficking crime in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1). He was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 660 months on February 25, 1993. Plaintiff's conviction was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on November 4, 1994. United States v. Broadus, 39 F.3d 1178 (4th Cir. 1994).
On or about March 8, 1995, plaintiff contacted defendant Sturm through a family member and asked her to review his case to determine whether he had any viable issues for a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence. Sturm prepared an opinion letter outlining the issues available to plaintiff for a 2255 motion and subsequently prepared a 2255 motion and sent it to plaintiff for his approval, cautioning him that she had not included certain issues he had asked her to raise because they were too similar to issues that had already been raised and rejected on direct appeal. Defendant sent a second draft of the motion to plaintiff on March 13, 1997.
On or about April 30, 1997, defendant filed the 2255 motion and memorandum she had prepared, including an additional pro se motion by plaintiff as an exhibit. Plaintiff refused to submit the motion to the court without his pro se brief in which he argued he was innocent of being a leader of the single, large conspiracy charged in the indictment because Neville Brooks' trial testimony that plaintiff was the leader of a single conspiracy was false and misleading. The motion was subsequently dismissed without prejudice by the Magistrate Judge because it was not in a single document format and because it exceeded twenty pages of double spaced type in length. Defendant then communicated the Magistrate Judge's decision and explanation for the dismissal to plaintiff and prepared to resubmit the motion to the Magistrate Judge without plaintiff's additions. Despite defendant's explanation of the Magistrate Judge's refusal to accept both her prepared brief and plaintiff's pro se materials, on May 27, 1997, plaintiff sent to defendant a seven page motion he wanted to append to her prepared 20 page motion. Defendant then resubmitted her motion and plaintiff's pro-se motion to the court and asked the Magistrate Judge for assistance. On June 6, 1997, the Magistrate Judge rejected the 2255 motion again.
Defendant then wrote to plaintiff explaining that because the Magistrate Judge would not accept both the 2255 motion she had prepared and plaintiff's pro-se motion, he could either choose to sign her motion or proceed pro-se. Plaintiff signed the 2255 motion defendant prepared on June 26, 1997 and she mailed it to the clerk of the district court on or about August 1, 1997. However, without informing defendant, plaintiff also submitted a pro-se 2255 motion and the motion was therefore dismissed again. Thereafter, defendant was able to obtain plaintiff's consent to file the motion she had prepared without his additions and on September 9, 1997, she submitted the 2255 motion with a motion for leave to file the 2255 motion out-of-time.
The prepared 2255 motion alleged a Brady/Giglio violation based on non-disclosure of the fact that when police searched baggage carried by Dorrell Coulthrust they found Neville Anthony Brooks' identification information and cocaine in the bag Coulthrust was carrying. This incident contradicted Neville Brooks' testimony at trial insofar as it identified Broadus (and not Coulthrust) as the source of drugs sold by the conspiracy and could support plaintiff's argument that he had not been the leader of a single large conspiracy. On or about November 17, 1997, the government filed a response opposing the 2255 motion. The prosecutor denied he knew or had reason to know that Neville Brooks' testimony was perjured. Defendant requested an evidentiary hearing on the Brady/Giglio claim on December 16, 1997 by filing a traverse.
On November 9, 1998, the district court adopted a report and recommendation by the Magistrate Judge which explained "the information as to Mr. Brooks cannot be considered material" and recommended that the twenty year sentence imposed on the weapons charge in Count Six be vacated and that the rest of the 2255 motion be denied without hearing (D's Mot. to Dismiss, Ex. L at 9). Plaintiff's appeal of the decision on the 2255 motion was dismissed by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on June 1, 2000. Plaintiff subsequently filed a pro-se application for leave to file a second 2255 motion. The application was denied on July 30, 2001.
Dorrell Coulthrust was arrested on August 7, 1990 after plainclothes police detectives found cocaine, a photo ID of Neville Anthony Brooks and an ID belonging to Coulthrust in an unclaimed bag on a Greyhound bus on which Coulthrust was a passenger. Coulthrust was convicted of possession with intent to distribute cocaine base in violation of 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1) and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment in 1991. His conviction was affirmed on November 5, 1992. On April 15, 1997, represented by the defendant in this case, Coulthrust filed a 2255 motion alleging ineffective assistance of counsel for failure to conduct an adequate pretrial investigation. The motion alleged that if defense counsel had conducted a thorough pretrial investigation he would have learned that Brooks was a major drug dealer who sold drugs in North Carolina, information which Coulthrust could have used to establish his innocence or to argue for a lesser sentence. That motion was denied by the District Court for the District of Columbia on June 26, 1997.
On August 6, 2001, plaintiff filed a Rule 60(b) motion in the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina alleging that defendant had a conflict of interest arising from her simultaneous representation of Coulthrust and plaintiff with respect to their 2255 motions. On June 5, 2002, the District Court adopted a Magistrate Judge's report and recommendation that the Rule 60(b) motion be denied and entered judgment against plaintiff. The District Court's decision was affirmed by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on December 18, 2002.
III. STANDARD FOR RULE 12(b)(6)
A Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss examines the sufficiency of the complaint. Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45 (1957). In determining the sufficiency of the complaint I must accept all of the plaintiff's well-pleaded factual allegations as true and draw all reasonable inferences therefrom. Graves v. Lowery, 117 F.3d 723, 726 (3d Cir. 1997).
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not require a claimant to set out in detail the facts upon which he bases his claim. To the contrary, all the Rules require is "a short and plain statement of the claim" that will give the defendant fair notice of what the plaintiff's claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.Id., quoting Conley, 355 U.S. at 47. I should not inquire as to whether the plaintiff will ultimately prevail, but only whether he is entitled to offer evidence to support his claims.See Oatway v. Am. Int'l Group, Inc., 325 F.3d 184, 187 (3d Cir. 2003). "Thus, [I will] not grant a motion to dismiss `unless it appears beyond a doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.'" Graves, 117 F.3d at 726, quoting, Conley, 355 U.S. at 45-46.
IV. DISCUSSION
Plaintiff cannot establish a claim of professional negligence against defendant because the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina has already decided that the information allegedly negligently withheld by defendant would not have been sufficient to change the outcome on his 2255 motion. Plaintiff alleges that defendant committed malpractice by failing to inform him of a potential conflict of interest created by her representation of both plaintiff and Coulthrust on their 2255 motions. Defendant asserts that plaintiff's professional negligence claim is precluded because he presented the same allegations to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina in his Rule 60(b) motion and the court found that plaintiff's allegations of attorney misconduct were meritless.
In order to find defendant liable for professional negligence, regardless of whether the law of Pennsylvania or of North Carolina applies to this case, plaintiff must prove that defendant's alleged negligence caused him to suffer harm. Plaintiff must establish three elements to establish legal malpractice under Pennsylvania law: "(1) employment of the attorney or other basis for a duty owed to the client; (2) failure of the attorney to exercise ordinary skill and knowledge; and (3) the attorney's negligence proximately caused damage to the client." Hughes v. Consol.-Pennsylvania Coal Co., 945 F.2d 594, 616-17 (3d Cir. 1991) (citations omitted). In essence, plaintiff must "prove that he had a viable cause of action against the party he wished to sue in the underlying case and that the attorney he hired was negligent in prosecuting or defending that underlying case (often referred to as proving a `case within a case')." Kituskie v. Corbman, 714 A.2d 1027, 1030 (Pa. 1998). Similarly, under North Carolina law, a plaintiff in a legal malpractice case "is required to prove that he would not have suffered the harm alleged absent the negligence of his attorney." Hummer v. Pulley, Watson, King Lischer, P.A., 577 S.E.2d 918, 923 (N.C.Ct.App. 2003), quoting Rorrer v. Cooke, 329 S.E.2d 355, 369 (N.C. 1985). In order to prove defendant was negligent, plaintiff must therefore prove that but for defendant's failure to disclose her involvement with Coulthrust and the allegations made in Coulthrust's 2255 motion plaintiff would have succeeded on his own 2255 motion. Plaintiff is precluded from making this assertion.
Defendant's alleged negligence took place during her representation of plaintiff in legal proceedings in North Carolina and it is most likely where plaintiff's alleged injury took place and where the conduct causing the alleged injury to plaintiff occurred. Pennsylvania is the forum state and the current residence of defendant. Plaintiff, who currently resides in the United States Penitentiary in Jonesville, Virginia has no direct contact with Pennsylvania.
"Under collateral estoppel, once a court has decided an issue of fact or law necessary to its judgment, that decision may preclude relitigation of the issue in a suit on a different cause of action involving a party to the first case." Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 94 (1980), citing Cromwell v. County of Sac., 94 U.S. 351, 352 (1877). See also, Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322, 326, 58 L. Ed. 2d 552, 99 S. Ct. 645 (1979). The doctrine of issue preclusion is based on "the simple principle that later courts should honor the first actual decision of a matter that has been actually litigated." Hitchens v. County of Montgomery, No. 03-1858, 2004 U.S. App. LEXIS 8231, at * 10 (3d Cir. Apr. 26, 2004), citing Burlington N.R.R. v. Hyundai Merchant Marine Co., 63 F.3d 1227, 1231 (3d Cir. 1995). The test under federal law for when an issue is precluded because it has been litigated already requires the presence of four factors: "(1) the identical issue was previously adjudicated; (2) the issue was actually litigated; (3) the previous determination was necessary to the decision; and (4) the party being precluded from relitigating the issue was fully represented in the prior action." Dam Things from Den. v. Russ Berrie Co., 290 F.3d 548, 559 n. 15 (3d Cir. 2002) (internal quotations omitted).
In his Rule 60(b) motion, plaintiff asserted that defendant had a conflict of interest in his 2255 proceedings and that her conflict of interest "seriously undermined the integrity of the postconviction proceedings" in his case. (D's Mot. to Dismiss, Ex. O at 3). The Magistrate Judge's report and recommendation on plaintiff's 60(b) motion, which was adopted by the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, held that:
Petitioner's allegations fail to show any basis for granting relief from the denial of his section 2255 claims. When considering petitioner's section 2255 motion, this Court noted that there was testimony presented to the jury as to the possibility of the existence of separate conspiracies . . . This Court also noted that even disregarding the testimony of Mr Brooks, there was ample testimony from a succession of witnesses that petitioner was the kingpin of a single large conspiracy. . . . This court found that even if facts were disclosed to the jury severely undermining Brooks' testimony, these would not seriously undermine the Court's confidence in the overall result. Accordingly, petitioner's further attempts to discredit Brooks' testimony by raising counsel's alleged conflict of interest do nothing to undermine the earlier judgment.
(D's Mot. to Dismiss, Ex. Q at 2) (emphasis added). Implicit in the Magistrate Judge's opinion is the finding that any possible conflict between defendant's representation of defendant on his 2255 motion and her representation of Coulthrust on his 2255 motion did not harm plaintiff because there was sufficient evidence to uphold his conviction without considering any of the evidence relating to Brooks. Plaintiff has thus already litigated and lost on the issue of whether defendant's failure to disclose her representation of Coulthrust and the allegations made pertaining to Brooks in Coulthrust's 2255 motion caused the denial of plaintiff's 2255 motion in his Rule 60(b) motion. He is therefore precluded from relitigating that issue before me.
Plaintiff had every incentive in his Rule 60(b) proceeding to argue aggressively for his claim that defendant's alleged conflict of interest negatively affected the outcome of his 2255 motion and he has had a full and fair opportunity to prove his allegations regarding the conflict. As the Supreme Court has noted,
a party who has had one fair and full opportunity to prove a claim and has failed in that effort should not be permitted to go to trial on the merits of that claim a second time. Both orderliness and reasonable time saving in judicial administration require that this be so unless some overriding consideration of fairness to a litigant dictates a different result in the circumstances of a particular case.Blonder-Tongue Laboratories, Inc. v. University of Illinois Foundation, 402 U.S. 313, 324-25 (1971) (citation omitted). Plaintiff's allegations in this case include the same issues he presented in his Rule 60(b) petition, and although in this civil case he couches his claims primarily in tort, he has raised no new material contentions here.
Because the District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina has already held that the overall result of plaintiff's 2255 motion would not have been altered by defendant's disclosure of facts pertaining to Coulthrust, whom she also represented, plaintiff is precluded from relitigating this issue here.Compare McCord v. Bailey, 636 F.2d 606 (D.C. Cir. 1980) (holding either collateral estoppel or the lack of any legally cognizable harm to plaintiff precluded his legal malpractice claims); Kowalczyck v. Gilroy, 994 F. Supp. 410, 412 (E.D.N.Y. 1998) (holding plaintiff's claims of malpractice were barred by issue preclusion because the court had previously denied the ineffective assistance of counsel claims raised in plaintiff's habeas petition); Ospina v. Booth, No. 94-8163, 1995 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8981 (S.D.N.Y. June 28, 1995) (holding prisoner was precluded from basing his alleged injury on a claim that he would not have been convicted absent his attorney's malpractice because the issue was raised and rejected in his state criminal appeal). Plaintiff therefore cannot prove that defendant was negligent in failing to disclose her representation of Coulthrust or to produce evidence that might have impeached Brooks' testimony.
Proof of causation is essential to a successful professional negligence action and plaintiff has made no other allegations that would support a finding that defendant's actions caused him to lose his 2255 motion. Viewing plaintiff's factual allegations as true and drawing all reasonable inferences therefrom, I cannot find that plaintiff has established a claim of negligence against defendant. Accordingly, I will dismiss plaintiff's claims against defendant.
ORDER
AND NOW, this ___ day of July 2004, after considering defendant's motion to dismiss and plaintiff's response thereto, and for the reasons set forth in the accompanying memorandum, it is ORDERED that defendant's motion is GRANTED and plaintiff's complaint against defendant Cheryl J. Sturm is DISMISSED.