Silbaugh v. Chao

• Decision Date: 14 November 2019
• Docket Number: No. 18-35756,18-35756
• Citation: 942 F.3d 911
• Parties: Alisha R. SILBAUGH, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Elaine L. CHAO, Secretary of the Department of Transportation, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

942 F.3d 911

Alisha R. SILBAUGH, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.Elaine L. CHAO, Secretary of the Department of Transportation, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 18-35756

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted July 12, 2019 Seattle, Washington

Filed November 14, 2019

Timothy Patrick O’Donnell, Mercer Island, Washington; Aaron V. Rocke, Rocke Law Group PLLC, Seattle, Washington; for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Teal Luthy Miller (argued) and Sarah K. Morehead, Assistant United States Attorneys; Annette L. Hayes, United States Attorney; United States Attorney's Office, Seattle, Washington; for Defendant-Appellee.

Before: Danny J. Boggs,^* Marsha S. Berzon, and Paul J. Watford, Circuit Judges.

WATFORD, Circuit Judge:

This case involves a common problem in suits against officers or agencies of the United States: The plaintiff files her action within the statute of limitations, but discovers after the limitations period has expired that she named the wrong defendant. The problem arises with some frequency because a plaintiff may sue the federal government only if the United States waives its sovereign immunity, and Congress has in some instances conditioned such a waiver on the naming of a particular person or entity as the defendant. Those directives are not always intuitive. For certain types of claims, the plaintiff may be required to name the United States itself as the defendant, while for others the plaintiff may be required to name a designated government official, even though that official played no role in the events giving rise to the lawsuit. Failure to name the correct defendant can result in dismissal of the plaintiff’s case.

Fixing a mistake of this sort is simple enough if the statute of limitations has not yet run, for the plaintiff can file a new action naming the correct defendant. But if the time for filing suit has passed, the plaintiff’s claims will be time-barred unless the plaintiff can amend her complaint to add the correct defendant and have that amendment "relate back" to the original, timely filed complaint. Relation back of such amendments is the province of Rule 15(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The rule governs when an amendment that "changes the party ... against whom a claim is asserted" will relate back to the date of the original complaint. Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c)(1)(C). And it contains a specific provision—at issue here—that governs relation back "[w]hen the United States or a United States officer or agency is added as a defendant by amendment." Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c)(2).

The plaintiff in this case, Alisha Silbaugh, invoked Rule 15(c) because she named the wrong defendant in her lawsuit and did not discover the mistake until after the statute of limitations had expired. She sued the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) after the agency terminated her employment and the Merit Systems Protection Board affirmed that decision. She filed her action in the district court within the 30-day limitations period set by statute, see 5 U.S.C. § 7703(b)(2), but she mistakenly named the FAA and her former supervisor as the defendants. Because Silbaugh’s suit alleges claims of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, she was required to name as the defendant the head of the executive agency to which the FAA belongs. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(c) ; see 5 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105. In this case, that person is Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Transportation.

After the 30-day statute of limitations had expired, the FAA moved to dismiss Silbaugh’s action on the ground that she had named the wrong defendant. Silbaugh responded by immediately filing an amended complaint that dropped the FAA and her former supervisor as defendants and substituted in their place Secretary Chao. In light of that amendment, the district court struck the FAA’s motion to dismiss as moot.

Secretary Chao then filed her own motion to dismiss. She argued that Silbaugh’s action is barred by the statute of limitations because her amended complaint was filed outside the 30-day limitations period. Secretary Chao further argued that Silbaugh’s amended complaint cannot relate back to the date of her original complaint because the requirements for relation back under Rule 15(c) have not been met. The district court agreed and dismissed Silbaugh’s action with prejudice.

The only issue before us is whether relation back is permitted under Rule 15(c). The text of the provision provides in full:

(c) Relation Back of Amendments.

(1) When an Amendment Relates Back . An amendment to a pleading relates back to the date of the original pleading when:

(A) the law that provides the applicable statute of limitations allows relation back;

(B) the amendment asserts a claim or defense that arose out of the conduct, transaction, or occurrence set out—or attempted to be set out—in the original pleading; or

(C) the amendment changes the party or the naming of the party against whom a claim is asserted, if Rule 15(c)(1)(B) is satisfied and if, within the period provided by Rule 4(m) for serving the summons and complaint, the party to be brought in by amendment:

(i) received such notice of the action that it will not be prejudiced in defending on the merits; and

(ii) knew or should have known that the action would have been brought against it, but for a mistake concerning the proper party’s identity.

(2) Notice to the United States . When the United States or a United States officer or agency is added as a defendant by amendment, the notice requirements of Rule 15(c)(1)(C)(i) and (ii) are satisfied if, during the stated period, process was delivered or mailed to the United States attorney or the United States attorney’s designee, to the Attorney General of the United States, or to the officer or agency.

Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c). As explained below, we conclude that Silbaugh is entitled to relation back under subsection (c)(2), which obviates any need for us to decide whether she would be entitled to relation back under subsection (c)(1).

Before parsing the language of the rule, it is helpful to bear in mind the rule’s overriding purpose. The provisions of Rule 15(c) are aimed at "the elimination of unjust dismissals" resulting from pleading mistakes that cause no prejudice to the defendant. Miles v. Department of the Army , 881 F.2d 777, 783 n.4 (9th Cir. 1989). If the conditions specified in subsection (c)(1)(C) are satisfied, the defendant brought in by amendment will be no worse off, in terms of her ability to defend the action, than if she had been named as a defendant initially. She will have received adequate notice of the action within the period allowed for service of the summons and complaint, and she will have realized (or had a basis for realizing) that the action would have been brought against her but for the plaintiff’s inadvertent mistake. The plaintiff, by contrast, would suffer extreme prejudice—dismissal of the action as time-barred—if the amendment were not allowed to relate back to the date of the original complaint. In these circumstances, the drafters of the rule concluded, "to deny relation back is to defeat unjustly the claimant’s opportunity to prove his case." Advisory Committee’s Notes on 1966 Amendments to Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(c), 39 F.R.D. 69, 83 (1966).

The same rationale—absence of any prejudice to the defendant but potentially severe prejudice to the plaintiff—underlies the government-specific rule in subsection (c)(2). That rule applies when the party to be added as a defendant is the United States or one of its officers or agencies. It provides that the notice requirements of subsection (c)(1)(C) are satisfied if "process" was delivered or mailed to one of several government officials during the period permitted for service of the summons and complaint under Rule 4(m) —i.e. , within 90 days after the complaint is filed. When that condition is satisfied, a responsible government official will have received notice of the plaintiff’s action and will be aware that the plaintiff seeks to sue the government even if she has named the wrong defendant. In other words, the government will have been "put on notice of the claim within the stated period," id. , thereby negating any prejudice the government might have suffered as a result of the plaintiff’s pleading error.

The application of Rule 15(c)(2) to the facts of this case is straightforward. No one disputes that the provision applies here, as Silbaugh’s amended complaint seeks to add "a United States officer"—Secretary Chao—as a defendant. To satisfy the requirements for relation back, Silbaugh needed to deliver or mail "process," within the 90-day period permitted under Rule 4(m), to one of the following officials: the United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington; the Attorney General of the United States; or Secretary Chao herself. Rule 15 does not define the term "process," but it is commonly understood in this context to mean a copy of the summons and complaint. See Miles , 881 F.2d at 782 ; cf. Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(c)(1). It is undisputed that Silbaugh mailed a copy of the summons and complaint to both the United States Attorney and the Attorney General within the 90-day period permitted under Rule 4(m). It would seem, then, that the requirements for relation back under Rule 15(c)(2) have plainly been met.

The district court reached the opposite conclusion by adopting what we regard as an overly technical interpretation of the term "process" as used in Rule 15(c)(2). The court held that Silbaugh’s mailing of the summons and complaint did not count as "process" because the summons she sent was not signed by the clerk of court. It is true that service of a valid summons is necessary before the district court may exercise personal jurisdiction over the defendant, and to be valid a summons must indeed be signed by the clerk. Omni Capital International, Ltd. v. Rudolf Wolff & Co. , 484 U.S. 97, 104, 108 S.Ct. 404, 98 L.Ed.2d 415 (1987) ; Ayres v. Jacobs &...