Aikens v. Ingram

A majority of our en banc Court imposes the severest of sanctions against Colonel Aikens for his lawyer’s failed, but sincere attempt to have the district court address the merits of Aikens’s claim that his former military associates engaged in deplorable conduct that worked a serious deprivation of his civil rights. Having concluded, wrongly, that it lacked authority to decide the dispute, the district court dispatched Aikens to embark on a futile quest to vindicate its - jurisdictional theory. Though the court believed itself rid of the matter, it was required by long-standing Supreme Court…