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USCA1 Opinion
January 20, 1993
United States Court of Appeals
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
For the First Circuit
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No. 92-1656
MANUEL LAFONT-RIVERA,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
JOSE SOLER-ZAPATA,
RICARDO TORRES MUNOZ,
ARMANDO TROCHE,
Defendants, Appellees.
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APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Carmen C. Cerezo, U.S. District Judge]
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Before
Torruella and Stahl, Circuit Judges,
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and Skinner,* Senior District Judge.
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Enrique J. Mendoza Mendez with whom Jose Enrique Mendoza Vidal
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was on brief for appellant.
Vannessa Ramirez, Assistant Solicitor General, with whom Anabelle
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Rodriguez, Solicitor General, Department of Justice, was on brief for
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appellees.
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*Of the District of Massachusetts, sitting by designation.
STAHL, Circuit Judge. In this appeal, plaintiff
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Dr. Manuel Lafont-Rivera challenges the district court's
dismissal of his 42 U.S.C. 1983 complaint as time-barred.
We affirm the judgment of the district court.
I.
I.
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BACKGROUND
BACKGROUND
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When reviewing the dismissal of a complaint, we
treat all allegations in the complaint as true and draw all
reasonable inferences in favor of plaintiff. See, e.g.,
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Monahan v. Dorchester Counseling Ctr., Inc., 961 F.2d 987,
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988 (1st Cir. 1992). Plaintiff, an optometrist, worked part
time for the Department of Health of the Commonwealth of
Puerto Rico ("DOH") from March 5, 1951, to November 30, 1971.
Sometime in 1984, plaintiff allegedly received a
"[C]ertificate of Service" (the "Certificate") verifying his
twenty-year term of employment with DOH. Plaintiff claims
that the Certificate operated as an official acknowledgment
that, as of 1982, the year in which he turned fifty-eight
years old, he became qualified to receive a pension.
Receiving a Certificate is, however, only the
beginning of the pension application process in Puerto Rico.
Apparently, DOH pension applicants with Certificates next
must acquire from DOH a "Form OP-15" verifying that
applicant's employment has terminated. According to the
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complaint, the Retirement Office does not process individual
pension applications without the Form OP-15.
After receiving his Certificate, plaintiff
attempted to secure a Form OP-15 from DOH. To that end,
sometime in 1984, plaintiff -- through his attorney --
requested DOH to issue him a Form OP-15. Apparently,
plaintiff's initial request went unheeded.
The complaint does not reflect further interaction
between the parties in 1984-1986. The complaint does state,
however, that on January 24, 1987, defendant Armando Troche,
Head of DOH's Personnel Office, communicated to plaintiff
that his case "was being referred" to the DOH Legal
Department.
Again, more than two years passed without further
communication between plaintiff and DOH. Then, on June 14,
1989, plaintiff reiterated his request that defendant Troche
issue the Form OP-15. On June 26, 1989, Troche wrote a
letter to plaintiff informing him that "nothing could be
done" as his case "had been referred to the Legal Department
six months before."
Sometime in 1990, plaintiff requested for a third
time that DOH issue the Form OP-15. Contemporaneously,
plaintiff also petitioned defendant Dr. Jose Soler Zapata,
the Secretary of Health of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to
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issue the Form. Apparently, defendant Soler did not respond
to plaintiff's request.
Sometime thereafter, plaintiff began extensive
negotiations over his employment status with officials in the
DOH Legal Department. After these negotiations, an official
in the Legal Department went to defendant Troche and
recommended that he fill out plaintiff's Form OP-15.
Defendant Troche ignored this recommendation and instead
referred plaintiff's case to the "Office of Central
Personnel."
After learning of this referral, plaintiff, on
February 21, 1991, filed "an appeal" with defendant Soler
again seeking his Form OP-15. Defendant Soler referred
plaintiff's case to defendant Ricardo Torres Munoz, the Head
of the DOH Legal Department. Defendant Munoz conferred with
defendant Troche and, in May of 1991, wrote a letter to the
Retirement Office certifying that plaintiff had worked with
DOH for twenty years. Without the requisite Form OP-15,
however, the Retirement Office would not process plaintiff's
application.
During the month of June 1991, plaintiff made
numerous phone calls and personal visits to DOH requesting
the Form OP-15. The DOH again ignored plaintiff's requests.
In a letter dated July 8, 1991, plaintiff made yet another
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request for the Form OP-15. Again, the DOH turned a deaf ear
to plaintiff's request.
On August 2, 1991, plaintiff filed the instant
lawsuit alleging that defendants' refusal to provide the
Retirement Office with his Form OP-15 was, inter alia, a
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violation of rights secured him under the Fourteenth
Amendment's Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.
Plaintiff sued under 42 U.S.C. 1983 seeking both damages
and injunctive relief. In response, defendants filed a
motion to dismiss plaintiff's complaint arguing, inter alia,
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that the complaint was barred by the applicable one-year
statute of limitations. Finding that plaintiff's cause of
action accrued more than a year before plaintiff filed suit,
the district court agreed and dismissed the complaint. For
the reasons outlined below, we affirm the district court's
ruling.
II.
II.
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DISCUSSION
DISCUSSION
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The parties do not dispute the applicability of
Puerto Rico's one-year statute of limitations governing tort
actions. See Rivera-Muriente v. Agosto-Alicea, 959 F.2d 349,
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353 (1st Cir. 1992); Torres v. Superintendent of Police, 893
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F.2d 404, 406 (1st Cir. 1990). While state law supplies the
statute of limitations in a 1983 action, federal law
governs the accrual period. See, e.g., Rivera-Muriente, 959
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F.2d at 353. Under federal law, a plaintiff's 1983 cause
of action accrues when s/he "knows, or has reason to know, of
the injury on which the action is based." Id.
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In determining when plaintiff became aware (or
should have been aware) of his alleged injury, our first task
is to identify the injury of which he complains. Plaintiff's
ultimate complaint is that defendants' actions are depriving
him of his pension. However, as is apparent from the
complaint, defendants have not officially denied him the
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pension. Rather, they allegedly are shuttling his Form OP-15
request from department to department within the DOH, thereby
preventing him from making formal application to the
Retirement Office. Therefore, it appears that it is
defendants' repeated failure to respond to plaintiff's
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request that DOH fill out a Form OP-15 that serves as the
basis for plaintiff's claim.
Thus, for statute of limitations purposes, the
pivotal question becomes when plaintiff knew or should have
known that defendants were not going to respond to his Form
OP-15 request. The district court determined that plaintiff
became aware of his injury in 1984, the year he received the
Certificate indicating that he was qualified to receive a
pension. The court based this determination, in part, on the
fact that plaintiff knew as early as 1972 that DOH's failure
to "define his status" would deprive him of pension benefits
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once he became eligible. The court therefore reasoned that,
in 1984, when plaintiff's initial request went unheeded, he
was (or should have been) on notice that his civil rights
were being violated. We disagree with the district court's
reasoning.
In 1984, plaintiff was on notice that he was
qualified to make an application to the Retirement Office for
a pension. As a result, he made his initial request to DOH
to issue him the Form OP-15. DOH did not respond to his
request. Plaintiff may well have known at that point that if
DOH ultimately failed to "define his status," the Retirement
Office would not be able to process his pension application.
It is hardly clear, however, that, in 1984, plaintiff knew
(or should have known) that defendants would never officially
respond to plaintiff's Form OP-15 request.
Plaintiff's initial request, however, went unheeded
for more than two years. In January 1987, when defendant
Troche finally responded to plaintiff's initial request, he
informed him that his case "was being referred to the Legal
Department[.]" Reading the complaint favorably to plaintiff,
we think it would not have been unreasonable for him to have
concluded -- at this point -- that, although extremely slow,
the bureaucratic process might eventually produce his Form
OP-15.
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Another two years passed, however, as plaintiff's
request apparently languished in the Legal Department. As a
result, we think that when defendant Troche informed
plaintiff on June 26, 1989, that "nothing could be done" as
his case again had been "referred to the Legal Department[,]"
plaintiff should have been on notice that defendants did not
intend to act on his Form OP-15 request. Thus, any cause of
action plaintiff had against defendants accrued at that
point.
Accordingly, we hold that, on June 26, 1989, the
one-year statute of limitations began to run on plaintiff's
1983 action.1 As plaintiff waited more than two years after
that date to file his complaint, his 1983 action was
untimely.2 Thus, while we disagree with the district
court's selection of an accrual date, we affirm its dismissal
of plaintiff's complaint.
Affirmed.
Affirmed.
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1. Plaintiff also pursues an alternative theory that his
lawsuit was in reality only against defendants Soler and
Munoz, whose unlawful actions, he contends, occurred within a
year of his filing of the complaint. For the reasons amply
articulated by the district court, see Lafont-Rivera v.
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Soler-Zapata, No. 91-1932CCC, slip op. at 5-6 (D.P.R. April
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29, 1992), we find this argument meritless.
2. Plaintiff attempts to establish timeliness by asserting
that defendants have committed a "continuing violation."
Plaintiff, however, failed to articulate this theory below.
As such he cannot raise it for the first time on appeal.
See, e.g., Clement v. United States, No. 91-1839, slip op. at
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20 (1st Cir. November 25, 1992).
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Document Info
Docket Number： 92-1656
Filed Date： 1/20/1993
Precedential Status： Precedential
Modified Date： 9/21/2015