Subject-matter Jurisdiction and Claim Splitting

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Bobbie Jo Scholz v. United States of America, et al.,

Case No.: 20-2163

Officials: SYKES, Chief Judge, and FLAUM and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.

Focus:  Subject-matter Jurisdiction and Claim Splitting

Plaintiff-appellant Bobbie Jo Scholz suffered from serious physical and mental ailments following her service in the military. As a result, Scholz received extensive treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”). After this challenging medical journey, she pointed to government negligence as the cause of the drastic decline in her mental and physical state. Seeking recourse, Scholz sued defendant-appellee United States twice under the Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”), 28 U.S.C §§ 1346(b), 2671–2680. Her first lawsuit predominately failed at the motion-for-summary-judgment stage. Her second lawsuit, now before us on appeal, sought to raise claims implicating the same, or essentially the same, facts as those claims from her first lawsuit. The district court therefore dismissed her duplicative lawsuit under the rule against claim splitting. Agreeing with the district court, we now affirm.

Affirmed
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Derek A Hawkins is Corporate Counsel, at Salesforce.