District Court partially reversed in latest chapter of decade-long Blackbeard copyright case

District Court partially reversed in latest chapter of decade-long Blackbeard copyright case

The Fourth Circuit found it was ‘constrained to reverse the 2021 decision’ and subsequently vacated the district court’s 2024 ruling as moot.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a ruling in Allen versus Stein that likely ends a decade-long copyright battle over documentary footage of a state-sponsored salvage project disinterring a shipwreck associated with the famed pirate Blackbeard. Reversing and vacating rulings by the Eastern District of North Carolina, the Fourth Circuit found that an erroneous legal standard was used in allowing Allen to pursue a new theory for his copyright claims, remanding the case to the district court with directions to dismiss Allen’s complaint with prejudice.

Footage of a private company’s project to salvage Blackbeard’s flagship Queen Anne’s Revenge from the North Carolina coastline was recorded by videographer Frederick Allen and his company Nautilus Productions. North Carolina state employees in 2013 uploaded Allen’s footage to state-sponsored social media channels, leading Allen to file suit in December 2015 against several state officials and the state’s cultural resources department. The case ultimately landed at the U.S. Supreme Court, which in March 2020 ruled that the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act (CRCA) did not properly repeal state sovereign immunity with respect to copyright infringement claims.

On remand in Eastern North Carolina district court, Allen filed a motion for reconsideration under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 60(b) to renew unconstitutional takings claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that was removed in 2017 on a motion to dismiss. Allen’s amended complaint pursued his Section 1983 claim under a new theory from the Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling in United States versus Georgia, which held that Congress may validly abrogate state sovereign immunity for claims stemming from conduct amounting to actual violations of the Fourteenth Amendment’s substantive guarantees. Allen’s motion was granted by the district court which construed it as a motion under FRCP 54(b) motion to reconsider as the district court only dismissed some claims in 2017 and did not render a final judgment as required by FRCP 60(b).

Legal error was found by the Fourth Circuit in the district court’s decision to construe Allen’s FRCP 60(b) motion to reconsider under FRCP 54(b), which allows orders to be revised before final judgment is entered. By August 2020, all claims in Allen’s lawsuit had been doused either by application of sovereign immunity or through voluntary dismissal. Therefore, at the time of Allen’s motion to reconsider, there existed a final judgment, making FRCP 60(b) the proper avenue for analysing Allen’s motion to reconsider.

Allen’s motion to reconsider was specifically made under FRCP 60(b)(6), a catch-all provision for ‘any other reason that justifies relief’. On appeal, the Fourth Circuit found no extraordinary circumstances sufficient to reopen litigation in 2021 on a legal theory based on Supreme Court precedent that was 14 years old when Allen’s FRCP 60(b)(6) motion was filed. Allen never raised arguments under Georgia before his 2021 motion to reconsider and never presented any explanation as to how failure to pursue an established legal theory could meet the exceptional circumstances requirement.

The Fourth Circuit found that the district court ‘perplexingly collapsed’ Allen’s burdens under FRCP 60(b)(6) and FRCP 15(a)(2), which directs courts to freely give leave to amend complaints when justice requires. Under Fourth Circuit case law, FRCP 60(b) grounds must be satisfied before considering a motion to amend, whereas the district court here allowed Allen to reopen litigation and demonstrate merits later.

The Fourth Circuit reportedly wrote, “[I]t is difficult to imagine how the restart of this litigation is anything other than a ‘do-over’” – an abuse of the district court’s discretion that was both unfair to the defendants and inefficient to the judicial system. The Fourth Circuit found it was ‘constrained to reverse the 2021 decision’ and subsequently vacated the district court’s 2024 ruling as moot.