Adams

Partners in cattle partnerships organized and managed by breeder Walter J. Hoyt, III (the “Hoyt partnerships”) brought suit against Hoyt and more than twenty Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) agents (the “federal defendants”) in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon asserting claims for money damages under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 , 91 S.Ct. 1999 , 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971). Plaintiffs alleged that the IRS’s audits of the partnerships and the IRS’s assessment and collection of partnership taxes violated plaintiffs’ rights to procedural due process, substantive due process, and conflict-free representation under the Fifth Amendment, and access to the courts under the First Amendment.

The federal defendants moved to dismiss the complaint under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for failure to state a claim for which relief could be granted. The district court granted this motion, concluding that the federal defendants were entitled to qualified immunity, because of the district court’s view that the facts alleged in the complaint did not show any violation of a constitutional right. The…