Arce v. Garcia

• Decision Date: 28 February 2005
• Docket Number: No. 02-14427.,02-14427.
• Citation: 400 F.3d 1340
• Parties: Juan Romagoza ARCE, Neris Gonzalez, and Carlos Mauricio, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Jose Guillermo GARCIA, an individual, and Carlos Eugenio Vides-Casanova, an individual, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

400 F.3d 1340

Juan Romagoza ARCE, Neris Gonzalez, and Carlos Mauricio, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Jose Guillermo GARCIA, an individual, and Carlos Eugenio Vides-Casanova, an individual, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 02-14427.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

February 28, 2005.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Peter J. Stern, Morrison & Foerster, LLP, Walnut Creek, CA, Kurt R. Klaus, Jr., Miami, FL, for Defendants-Appellants.

James K. Green, James K. Green, P.A., West Palm Beach, FL, Joshua N. Sondheimer, The Center for Justice & Accountability, San Francisco, CA, Carolyn P. Bhun, UC School of Law-Boalt Hall, New York City, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before TJOFLAT and CARNES, Circuit Judges, and CONWAY^*, District Judge.

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:

I.

The three plaintiffs in this case are Salvadoran refugees who claim that they were tortured by soldiers in El Salvador during the course of a campaign of human-rights violations by the Salvadoran military from 1979 to 1983.

The first plaintiff, Juan Romagoza Arce, claims that he was kidnaped by government soldiers on or about December 12, 1980 and that he was tortured until January 5, 1981, when he was released. Specifically, Arce alleges that he was shot in the foot and hand, hung from ropes made of sharp material, forced to undergo electric shocks, pushed to the edge of the open door of a helicopter with threats that he would be thrown out, and severely beaten for failing to answer questions to his captor's satisfaction. Arce arrived in the United States in 1983.

The second plaintiff, Neris Gonzalez, claims that she was abducted by Salvadoran soldiers on December 26, 1979 and detained for two weeks. Gonzalez alleges that she was burned with cigarettes, stuck with needles under her fingernails, asphyxiated with a powder-filled rubber mask while she received electric shocks, repeatedly raped, had a bed frame balanced on her stomach when she was eight months pregnant, forced to drink the blood from an open wound in a man's stomach, and severely beaten. She arrived in the United States in 1997.

The third plaintiff, Carlos Mauricio, claims that he was kidnaped on June 13, 1983 and held for one and a half weeks at the National Police Headquarters. Mauricio alleges that he was interrogated while he had his hands strung up behind his back. He also claims that during his interrogation he was severely beaten with a metal bar covered with rubber. It appears that he arrived in the United States in 1983.

The defendants in this case are Jose Garcia, the minister of defense of El Salvador from 1979 to 1983, and Carlos Vides-Casanova (Casanova), the director-general of El Salvador's National Guard during the same period. Both defendants moved to the United States in August 1989 and have since been residing in this country as permanent residents.

On February 22, 2000, the plaintiffs brought this action against Garcia and Casanova in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Their complaint sought relief based on two general theories.¹ One count relies on the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA), 28 U.S.C. § 1350 note (2000). The others rely on the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (2000), and its connection with corresponding causes of action.

The defendants filed an answer asserting several defenses, including lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and the running of the statute of limitations. On April 27, 2001, the defendants filed a "motion for judgment on the pleadings" on statute-of-limitations grounds, contending that the acts of which the plaintiffs complained occurred more than ten years prior to the lawsuit. In a sparse one-page order, the district court rejected this motion, holding that the plaintiffs' claims "were [equitably] tolled at least until the Salvadoran civil war ended on January 16, 1992, which is the date the Salvadoran Peace Accords were negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations, and the independence of the judiciary was restored in El Salvador." The defendants immediately filed a "motion for amendment of judgment," arguing that the court should not have tolled the statute of limitations because the defendants were subject to service of process for more than ten years following the last alleged act of torture. The court rejected this motion without explanation.

On October 23, 2001, the defendants filed a "motion to dismiss [for lack of] subject matter jurisdiction." They argued that the plaintiffs had failed to state a cause of action under the ATCA. Three days later, they filed a motion for "judgment on the pleadings [for] failure to state a claim," raising similar arguments. At that time, they also filed a "motion to dismiss [due to the] statute of limitations" and a "motion for judgment on the pleadings [due to the] statute of limitations," which were virtually identical to each other. The plaintiffs responded that these motions were redundant and untimely. The district court issued an omnibus order denying, without explanation, all of the motions except the last two.

At trial, the jury awarded the three plaintiffs $54.6 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The defendants filed a motion styled "Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law and/or Motion for New Trial/Statute of Limitations," arguing that the verdicts should be overturned because the plaintiffs' claims were time-barred. The court denied this motion without written explanation. The defendants now appeal, contending that the district court should have dismissed the plaintiffs' ATCA and TVPA claims under the relevant statutes of limitations.

This opinion focuses on two issues. First, in Part II, we discuss whether we have subject-matter jurisdiction. Second, in Part III, we discuss whether the plaintiffs asserted a cause of action within the relevant statute of limitations. We conclude that although we have jurisdiction, the plaintiffs failed to assert a cause of action within the statute of limitations. Accordingly, we reverse the district court's judgment.

II.

As stated above, the plaintiffs bring claims based on the TVPA and the ATCA. Before we evaluate these claims, we must determine whether we have jurisdiction because courts have a duty to consider their subject-matter jurisdiction sua sponte. TVA v. Whitman, 336 F.3d 1236, 1257 n. 34 (11th Cir.2003).

One potential basis for jurisdiction is federal-question jurisdiction under section 1331: "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (2000). Here, federal-question jurisdiction applies because the plaintiffs' first claim for relief is brought under the TVPA, which provides a federal cause of action against "[a]n individual who, under actual or apparent authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation" subjects another to torture or extrajudicial killing. 28 U.S.C. § 1350 note (2000).

In turn, this federal-question jurisdiction predicated upon the TVPA also provides jurisdiction for the remainder of the plaintiffs' claims — including those causes of action relying on the ATCA — based on the same underlying acts of torture under principles of supplemental jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a) (2000) (giving district courts "supplemental jurisdiction over all claims ... that are so related to claims in the action within such original jurisdiction that they form part of the same case or controversy under Article III of the United States Constitution"). Accordingly, this court has jurisdiction to hear all of the plaintiffs' claims.² Having established jurisdiction, we will now address whether the plaintiffs pursued their claims too late.

III.

In this Part, we focus on the statute of limitations. Part III.A defines the relevant statute of limitations for both the ATCA and the TVPA. Part III.B addresses whether the ATCA and the TVPA are potentially subject to equitable tolling, which is the "doctrine under which plaintiffs may sue after the statutory time period has expired if they have been prevented from doing so due to inequitable circumstances." Ellis v. Gen. Motors Acceptance Corp., 160 F.3d 703, 706 (11th Cir.1998) (citations omitted). Part III.C applies these rules and concludes that the plaintiffs failed to present sufficient evidence to qualify for equitable tolling.

A.

The TVPA contains an express ten-year statute of limitations. 28 U.S.C. § 1350, historical and statutory notes § 2(c) ("No action shall be maintained under this section unless it is commenced within 10 years after the cause of action arose.").

The ATCA, however, does not contain an express statute of limitations. When confronted with a federal statute that does not contain a limitations period, we look to the statute's closest state-law analogue to determine the limitations period that the statute implicitly contains. See Reed v. United Transp. Union, 488 U.S. 319, 324, 109 S.Ct. 621, 625, 102 L.Ed.2d 665 (1989) (noting the "general rule that statutes of limitation are to be borrowed from state law"). However, "when a rule from elsewhere in federal law clearly provides a closer analogy than available state statutes, and when the federal policies at stake and the practicalities of litigation make that rule a significantly more appropriate vehicle for interstitial lawmaking, we have not hesitated to turn away from state law." DelCostello v. Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 172, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 2294, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983).

Several courts have held that the ATCA's implicit limitations period should be based on the TVPA because the statutes — and the policies behind the statutes — are similar. E.g., Papa v. United States, 281 F.3d 1004, 1012-13 (9th Cir.2002); Doe v. Islamic Salvation Front, 257 F.Supp.2d 115, 119 (D.D.C.2003); Estate of Cabello v. Fernandez-Larios, 157...