On April 1, I filed a Rule 59(e) motion exposing four major legal errors in the March 12 judgment.
First, the most outrageous error: The Court sua sponte dismissed my personal-capacity claims against Cole, Line, and Batdorf with prejudice—even though the Court acknowledged that no one had ever filed a motion to dismiss those claims. The federal government appeared only in official capacity. I had explicitly pleaded personal-capacity allegations and had identified FOIA materials supporting them. The Court said “judicial economy” justified deciding the issue without letting me respond or amend. First Circuit law says that’s backwards. Sua sponte merits dismissals are “strong medicine” requiring notice and opportunity to amend unless futility is crystal clear. Here, there was no crystal clarity—just the Court’s impatience.
Second, the sweep: The final judgment says all my claims against everyone are dismissed “WITH PREJUDICE.” But it rested on Eleventh Amendment immunity (OCIF, Zequeira, Lugo), foreign sovereign immunity (foreign defendants), and lack of personal jurisdiction (The Age). Those aren’t merits decisions—they’re threshold rulings. A court cannot say it lacks authority over a defendant and then enter a claim-preclusive judgment on the same claim. Rule 41(b) is explicit: jurisdictional dismissals are not adjudications on the merits.
Third, the release mess: The Court said a corporate release in the liquidation documents “independently deprived [it] of subject-matter jurisdiction.” Release is a defense, not jurisdictional. And the language released claims “Euro Pacific may have”—not my personal constitutional or reputational claims in my individual capacity. I signed as “for and on behalf of Euro Pacific,” not for myself. The Court used a corporate document to lock the door on my personal claims.
Fourth, the trap: The Court excluded the FOIA materials from consideration because they were outside the pleadings, then faulted my complaint for lacking detail, then dismissed with prejudice and refused to let me amend. On March 25, another federal judge ruled the IRS had improperly withheld those very documents. The Puerto Rico Court closed my case with prejudice while the federal record was still opening in the FOIA case. The IRS got the benefit of its own illegal withholding.
The motion asks the Court to correct these errors: vacate the sua sponte dismissal, convert threshold rulings to without-prejudice, fix the jurisdictional mischaracterization of the release, and reopen the case for proper motion practice and amendment.
The timing alone shows the injustice: I was simultaneously told to pound sand here while another judge was ordering the IRS to hand over what it should have produced all along.