Anton v. Lehpamer

• Decision Date: 02 May 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85-2565,85-2565
• Parties: Stanley A. ANTON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Glen LEHPAMER, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1141

787 F.2d 1141

Stanley A. ANTON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Glen LEHPAMER, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 85-2565.

United States Court of Appeals,

Seventh Circuit.

Argued Feb. 25, 1986.

Decided April 3, 1986.

Rehearing Denied May 2, 1986.

Miriam F. Miquelon, Miquelon & Assoc. Ltd., Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellant.

Paul E. Dengel, Schiff, Hardin & Waite, Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Before FLAUM and RIPPLE, Circuit Judges, and ESCHBACH, Senior Circuit Judge.

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge.

In this case, we must decide whether Wilson v. Garcia, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 85 L.Ed.2d 254 (1985), should apply retroactively when a federal court sitting in Illinois borrows the state's statute of limitations in an action under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 (1979). ¹ We hold that, in Illinois, a plaintiff whose section 1983 cause of action accrued before the Wilson decision, April 17, 1985, must file suit within the shorter period of either five years from the date his action accrued or two years after Wilson.

On December 21, 1978, the defendants, police officers from Downers Grove, Illinois, arrested Stanley Anton. Two years and one month later, on January 30, 1981, Mr. Anton filed suit against the officers in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He alleged that the use of excessive force during the arrest deprived him of constitutionally protected rights. See 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. Although Congress created a federal cause of action in 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, it did not provide for a federal limitation period on these actions. Instead, in section 1983 suits, federal courts have followed the well-settled practice of borrowing the most analogous state statute of limitations. In the Seventh Circuit, "the applicable limitations period is that which a court of the State where the federal court sits would apply had the action been brought there." Beard v. Robinson, 563 F.2d 331, 334 (7th Cir.1977), cert. denied sub nom. Mitchell v. Beard, 438 U.S. 907, 98 S.Ct. 3125, 57 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1978); see Movement For Opportunity v. General Motors Corp., 622 F.2d 1235, 1241 (7th Cir.1980). At the time Mr. Anton filed suit, federal courts in Illinois applied a five-year statute of limitations in all section 1983 actions. Beard, 563 F.2d at 338. That statute of limitations was the limitation period for "actions not otherwise provided for." See Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 83, Sec. 16. ²

More than four years after Mr. Anton filed suit, the Supreme Court held that, in all states, the most analogous statute of limitations for all section 1983 actions is the state's personal injury statute of limitations. Wilson v. Garcia, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 85 L.Ed.2d 254 (1985). In Illinois, the statute of limitations for personal injury actions is two years. See Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 110, p 13-202 (1983). ³ The district court, holding that Wilson should be applied retroactively, granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment.

The sole issue on appeal is whether Wilson should apply retroactively when a federal court in Illinois borrows the state's statute of limitations in a section 1983 action. In Chevron v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 106-07, 92 S.Ct. 349, 355, 30 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971), the Supreme Court enunciated a three-part test to determine whether a decision should be applied only prospectively:

First, the decision to be applied nonretroactively must establish a new principle of law, either by overruling clear past precedent on which litigants may have relied, ... or by deciding an issue of first impression whose resolution was not clearly foreshadowed.... Second, it has been stressed that "we must ... weigh the merits and demerits in each case by looking to the prior history of the rule in question, its purpose and effect, and whether retrospective operation will further or retard its operation." ... Finally, we have weighed the inequity imposed by retroactive application, for "[w]here a decision of this Court could produce substantial inequitable results if applied retroactively, there is ample basis in our cases for avoiding the 'injustice or hardship' by a holding of nonretroactivity."

(Citations omitted). Therefore, to resolve the issue presented here, we must examine carefully the Wilson decision and then evaluate that decision in light of the three Chevron criteria.

Wilson v. Garcia

In Wilson, the Supreme Court attempted to resolve the "conflict, confusion, and uncertainty concerning the appropriate statute of limitations to apply to this most important, and ubiquitous, civil rights statute...." 105 S.Ct. at 1942. After noting that the issue arises because Congress left a void in federal statutory law, the Court reaffirmed the well-settled principle that "[w]hen Congress has not established a time limitation for a federal cause of action, the settled practice has been to adopt a local time limitation as federal law if it is not inconsistent with federal law or policy to do so." Id. The Court noted that selection of the most analogous statute of limitations had varied from circuit to circuit: "the courts vary widely in the methods by which they characterize a section 1983 action, and in criteria by which they evaluate the applicability of a particular state statute of limitations to a particular claim." Id. In an attempt to provide some uniformity and reduce collateral litigation the Court held that: (1) the characterization of the section 1983 action, for the purpose of selecting a statute of limitations, is a question of federal not state law, id. at 1943; (2) the best approach is to select "in each State, the one most appropriate statute of limitations for all Sec. 1983 claims," id. at 1947; and (3) in every state the statute of limitations for the "tort action for the recovery of damages for personal injuries is the best alternative available." Id.

Chevron Criteria

"As a general rule, judicial decisions apply 'retroactively.' " Solem v. Stumes, 465 U.S. 638, 642, 104 S.Ct. 1338, 1341, 79 L.Ed.2d 579 (1984) (quoting Robinson v. Neil, 409 U.S. 505, 507-08, 93 S.Ct. 876, 877, 35 L.Ed.2d 29 (1973)). However, the Supreme Court has recognized exceptions to the general rule. See Northern Pipeline Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U.S. 50, 87-88, 102 S.Ct. 2858, 2880, 73 L.Ed.2d 598 (1982) (the Court utilized the Chevron analysis to determine whether a decision, in a civil case, should be afforded prospective application only).

A

The first Chevron criteria requires that, "the decision to be applied nonretroactively must establish a new principle of law, either by overruling clear past precedent on which litigants may have relied, or by deciding an issue of first impression whose resolution was not clearly foreshadowed." Chevron, 404 U.S. at 106, 92 S.Ct. at 355.

This first Chevron criterion requires that we examine pre-Wilson precedent. The defendants-appellees submit that such an examination should be nationwide in scope. They argue that Wilson was not a case of first impression because the Supreme Court had already dealt with the subject of statute of limitations in section 1983 actions, albeit in general terms. See Board of Regents v. Tomanio, 446 U.S. 478, 483-84, 100 S.Ct. 1790, 1794-95, 64 L.Ed.2d 440 (1980) (federal courts to apply the state statute of limitations "governing an analogous cause of action"). The lower courts, they further argue, "had attempted to give definition to the general guidance provided in Tomanio...." Appellees' Br. at 23. The defendants also submit that Wilson did not overrule clear past precedent upon which the parties may have relied since neither the Supreme Court nor the lower courts had adopted a uniform approach for selecting the most analogous state statute of limitations in a section 1983 case. However, we believe that Chevron requires a far more focused inquiry. Both the Supreme Court in Chevron and the other lower courts which have considered the retroactive application of Wilson have focused on the precedent within the circuit directly affected by the ruling. Accordingly, we must determine whether Wilson effectively overruled clear precedent in this circuit upon which litigants may have relied when they filed a section 1983 action in Illinois. ⁴

Prior to 1977, there was a conflict of authority in this circuit on the issue of the most analogous Illinois statute of limitations. In Wakat v. Harlib, 253 F.2d 59 (7th Cir.1958), this court applied to a section 1983 cause of action the Illinois five-year statute of limitations governing "all civil actions not otherwise provided for." However, in a similar section 1983 suit, this court selected the Illinois two-year statute of limitations applicable to personal injury actions. Jones v. Jones, 410 F.2d 365 (7th Cir.1969), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 1013, 90 S.Ct. 547, 24 L.Ed.2d 505 (1970). Finally, in Beard v. Robinson, 563 F.2d 331, 336 (7th Cir.1977), cert. denied sub nom. Mitchell v. Beard, 438 U.S. 907, 98 S.Ct. 3125, 57 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1978), the court recognized that:

Upon reflection, it seems to us that Wakat and Jones cannot stand together, for underlying the inconsistent results reached therein are two inconsistent approaches to determining the applicable statute of limitations. The Wakat approach treats all claims founded on the Civil Rights Acts as governed by the five-year Illinois statute of limitations applicable to all statutory causes of action that do not contain their own limitations periods. Jones, on the other hand, looks beyond the fact that a statutory cause of action has been alleged and seeks to characterize the facts underlying plaintiff's claim in terms of traditional common law torts for purposes of determining the applicable state statute of limitations.

We definitively resolved the inconsistency by adopting the Wakat approach. Id. We held that the Illinois statute of limitations most analogous to all section 1983 claims was the five-year limitation period. Id. at 338. After...