Background
Ruth Wilson established a testamentary trust for her daughter, Elizabeth Koeberer, before Wilson died in 2013. Koeberer’s brother initially served as trustee and later appointed attorney Robert Weir as successor trustee, while JPMorgan Chase Bank held the trust’s financial assets. Nearly a decade after her mother’s death, Koeberer began filing lawsuits concerning the estate and trust.
In this action, Koeberer sued the trustee, Chase, her former probate attorney, and her siblings. Her claims included negligence and alleged violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, and NACHA operating rules, as well as abuse-of-process claims arising from her siblings’ probate-court motions. The district court dismissed the claims against Chase and the siblings and declined supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims against Weir and former probate attorney Ryan Gordon.
The Court’s Holding
The Sixth Circuit affirmed. It held that Koeberer could not use the Bank Secrecy Act’s suspicious-activity-reporting requirements to establish negligence per se because she had not shown that the statute supplied a private right of action. Her EFTA claim, based on conduct occurring in 2014 and 2015, was filed well beyond the statute’s one-year limitations period. The court held that the discovery rule did not apply and that continuing effects from the earlier transactions did not constitute continuing violations.
The court also held that Ohio’s economic-loss rule barred the negligence claim against Chase because Koeberer alleged contractual privity and purely economic losses but identified no independent tort duty. The ordinary bank-customer relationship did not establish a fiduciary duty, and allegations of noneconomic harm raised on appeal did not appear in the complaint. Her NACHA claim likewise failed because the deposit agreement neither incorporated NACHA’s operating rules nor identified her as an intended beneficiary of them.
Koeberer’s abuse-of-process claims failed because the probate court had authority to decide her siblings’ sanctions and witness-exclusion motions; alleged ulterior motives did not transform authorized uses of judicial process into abuse of process. After dismissing every federal claim, the district court acted within its discretion by declining supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims. The panel separately warned Koeberer’s counsel about numerous problematic citations in her appellate briefs but declined to impose sanctions.
Key Takeaways
- A plaintiff may not use the Bank Secrecy Act’s reporting requirements to support an Ohio negligence-per-se claim without establishing a private right of action under the federal statute.
- The EFTA’s one-year limitations period runs from the violation, and neither a discovery rule nor continuing consequences revive claims based on transactions from years earlier.
- Ohio abuse-of-process liability requires misuse of process to obtain a result the court lacked authority to grant; an improper motive alone is insufficient.
Why It Matters
The decision limits attempts to convert federal banking regulations and private payment-network rules into customer claims where no enforceable private right or contractual incorporation exists. It also reinforces the barriers that the EFTA’s limitations period and Ohio’s economic-loss doctrine pose to older disputes framed as statutory or negligence claims.
The opinion further underscores that federal courts ordinarily may dismiss remaining state-law claims once all federal claims are gone, and it gives appellate counsel a pointed reminder that every citation and supporting proposition must be independently verified.