Background
Norman Bartsch Herterich alleged that he did not receive notice of his father’s death or the California probate proceedings. He unsuccessfully sought a share of the estate in California courts, including as a purported pretermitted heir, and later brought a fraud action against the executor and the executor’s attorney.
Herterich then filed pro se federal actions in the Northern District of California alleging that the will was fraudulent and that the state courts had denied him due process. Those cases were dismissed under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. He subsequently sued the United States in the Court of Federal Claims, characterizing the action as a collateral attack and seeking damages based on alleged due-process, takings, and implied-contract theories.
The Court’s Holding
Senior Judge Eric G. Bruggink granted the government’s motion and dismissed the complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Tucker Act requires a plaintiff to identify a money-mandating source of law, and Herterich identified none.
The Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause is not money-mandating. His takings theory was also outside the court’s jurisdiction because it sought to challenge federal-court judgments dismissing his earlier suits; moreover, a jurisdictional dismissal does not adjudicate the merits or extinguish the underlying claim. Finally, docketing a complaint and accepting a filing fee do not create an implied-in-fact contract between a litigant and the federal government.
Key Takeaways
- A Tucker Act plaintiff must identify a valid money-mandating source of substantive law.
- The Due Process Clause cannot independently support damages jurisdiction in the Court of Federal Claims.
- A litigant cannot recast dissatisfaction with federal jurisdictional dismissals as a takings or contract claim against the United States.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces the limited jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims. Claims seeking damages for alleged errors by other federal courts must still rest on a money-mandating legal source, and neither a jurisdictional dismissal nor payment of a court filing fee supplies one.