Mb Financial Group v. US Postal Service

I. Background

MB Financial Group, Inc. (“MB Financial”) sells mail order mortgage loans to members of labor unions in the San Diego area. Its business depends on receiving mailed-in responses to its solicitations. It rented a post office box in a USPS branch office in San Diego and paid for six months of usage. The USPS, admittedly through its own fault, did not make the box available for the full six months. MB Financial alleges that, as a result, it lost hundreds of thousands of dol- lars worth of business.

MB Financial, according to its complaint, rented the box on June 30, 2004, and paid fifty dollars as a six month rental fee. Some time later that year, one of its representatives contacted the USPS branch office to complain about not receiving mail. In a letter dated January 3, 2005, which was attached to the complaint, the USPS apologized and acknowledged that it “may have been at fault” for the “premature closure of [the] PO Box” due to “improper handling of fees.”

MB Financial filed this action against the USPS and the United States in federal district court in April 2006, alleging two claims for relief. The first was a negligence claim under the FTCA, 28 U.S.C. §…