Leslie Ocasio v. Neftalí Soto

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 14-1806
LESLIE OCASIO, ET AL.,
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
v.
NEFTALÍ SOTO,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Jay A. García-Gregory, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella, Kayatta, and Barron,
Circuit Judges.
Juan P. Rivera-Román and JRAF Law Firm on brief, for
appellants.
Margarita Mercado-Echegaray, Solicitor General, Department of
Justice, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and Andrés González-
Berdecía, Assistant Solicitor General, on brief, for appellee.
October 23, 2015

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BARRON, Circuit Judge. Plaintiffs appeal from the
District Court's grant of Defendant Neftalí Soto's motion to
dismiss their due process challenge, which arises out of a failed
settlement negotiation of employment claims. We affirm.
The complaint alleges the following facts. Soto
was Puerto Rico's Secretary of Agriculture in January of 1997 when
he fired approximately 600 employees of the Department of
Agriculture. Many of these former employees, including the
plaintiffs here, sued in a Puerto Rico court. One group of fifty
such former employees obtained a favorable judgment from a Puerto
Rico court and then settled with the Department of Agriculture.
Meanwhile, another set of approximately 200 cases, including those
of the plaintiffs here, remained pending before a Puerto Rico
court. At some point, settlement negotiations began between those
200 plaintiffs and the Department. At various points a new
Secretary of Agriculture, as well as attorneys from the Puerto
Rico Departments of Agriculture and Justice, recommended settling
with the former employees. Nonetheless, the settlement
negotiations dragged on without being completed. Then, in 2012,
when the settlement was all but agreed to and about to be signed,
Soto again became the Secretary of Agriculture and refused to
settle with the former employees.
On the basis of these alleged facts, the plaintiffs
brought suit in Federal District Court, claiming that Soto violated

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their procedural and substantive due process rights by refusing to
settle with them. The District Court dismissed the suit under
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) because the plaintiffs
had not adequately alleged a violation of a constitutionally
protected right. See Ocasio v. Soto, No. 13–1699 (JAG), 2014 WL
2586278, at * 2 (D.P.R. June 10, 2014)("Plaintiffs cannot seriously
claim they are entitled to the settlement of the state court case
absent consent from the opposing party.").
We review the grant of a motion to dismiss under Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) de novo. See Carter's of New
Bedford, Inc. v. Nike, Inc., 790 F.3d 289, 291 (1st Cir. 2015).
In doing so, "[w]e assume the truth of all well-pleaded facts in
the complaint and indulge all reasonable inferences that fit the
plaintiff's stated theory of liability." Id. (quoting Centro
Médico del Turabo, Inc. v. Feliciano de Melecio, 406 F.3d 1, 5
(1st Cir. 2005)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
"In order to establish a substantive due process claim,
the plaintiff must first show a deprivation of a protected interest
in . . . property." Rivera v. Rhode Island, 402 F.3d 27, 33-34
(1st Cir. 2005). Similarly, in order "[t]o establish a procedural
due process claim under § 1983, a plaintiff must [have] alleged
that she was deprived of a property interest." Maymi v. P.R. Ports
Auth., 515 F.3d 20, 29 (1st Cir. 2008). Plaintiffs repeatedly
assert in their briefs that they had a constitutionally protected

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interest in their jobs, see Cleveland Bd. of Educ. v. Loudermill,
470 U.S. 532, 542 (1985), but the complaint identifies the
settlement (rather than the jobs) as the only protected property
interest that was infringed. The plaintiffs have not developed any
argument, however, as to why they have a constitutionally protected
interest in a settlement that the government refuses to consummate.
And plaintiffs make no other constitutional claim. We therefore
affirm the District Court's order dismissing the case with
prejudice on the ground that the plaintiffs had "failed to put
forth a cognizable violation of a constitutionally protected
property right." Ocasio, 2014 WL 2586278, at * 2; see Gemco
Latinoamerica, Inc. v. Seiko Time Corp., 61 F.3d 94, 101 (1st Cir.
1994)("An appellant waives arguments not made or only cursorily
developed.").
For the reasons stated above, the judgment of the
District Court is Affirmed.

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