James King v. United States, et al.

In an earlier decision in this case, Brownback v. King, 592 U.S. 209 (2021), the Court “forged a new interpretation” of the Federal Tort Claims Act’s judgment bar, 28 U.S.C. 2676. Pet. App. 21a (Clay, J., dissenting). Brownback held that, “despite the absence of subject matter jurisdiction,” a district court order can trigger the judgment bar to foreclose claims against individual federal employees. Pet. App. 21a (Clay, J., dissenting). On remand, the Sixth Circuit applied Brownback’s change in procedural law to “ruinous effect,” retroactively barring “King’s separate constitutional claims that were still pending on appeal, * * * leaving King with no legal recourse against the federal officers who brutalized him.” Id. at 25a (Clay, J., dissenting). King moved for relief from judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6), citing the Ninth Circuit’s grant of such relief in the similar change-ofprocedural-law case Henson v. Fidelity National Financial, Inc., 943 F.3d 434 (9th Cir. 2019). But the Sixth Circuit ignored Henson and denied King relief. As Judge Clay observed in dissent, the decision below created an outcome-determinative split between the circuits. Pet. App. 26a–28a. King now petitions this Court to hear his case again. This time the question presented is: Whether a litigant can claim relief from judgment under Rule 60(b)(6) when a change in settled procedural law retroactively vitiates the litigant’s reasonable reliance on the law.