Bagley v. CMC Real Estate Corp.

• Citation: 923 F.2d 758
• Decision Date: 22 January 1991
• Docket Number: No. 89-35870,89-35870
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (9th Circuit)
• Parties: Hughes Anderson BAGLEY, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CMC REAL ESTATE CORPORATION, aka Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad; Donald E. Mitchell; Norman W. Prins, Defendants-Appellees.

Page 758

923 F.2d 758

Hughes Anderson BAGLEY, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CMC REAL ESTATE CORPORATION, aka Chicago, Milwaukee, St Paul & Pacific Railroad; Donald E. Mitchell Norman W. Prins, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 89-35870.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted Aug. 6, 1990.

Decided Jan. 22, 1991.

Hughes Anderson Bagley, Jr., Sioux City, Iowa, in pro. per.

James C. Fowler, Graham & Dunn, Seattle, Wash., for defendant-appellee CMC Real Estate.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.

Before TANG, NELSON and CANBY, Circuit Judges.

CANBY, Circuit Judge:

Hughes Bagley appeals the district court's order granting judgment on the pleadings to all defendants in his civil rights action filed pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Secs. 1983 and 1985 and Bivens v. Six Unnamed Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971). Bagley challenges only the district court's rulings that his Sec. 1983 claim was barred by the statute of limitations and that he failed to state a cause of action under Sec. 1985. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

Defendants James O'Connor and Donald Mitchell were state law enforcement officers also employed as security officers by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad Company ("Milwaukee Road"). Defendant Norman Prins is an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ("BATF"). Defendants CMC Real Estate Corp. ("CMC") and the Soo Line Railroad ("Soo") are successors in interest to the Milwaukee Road, having been created pursuant to Milwaukee Road's reorganization proceedings.

Between April and June 1977, O'Connor and Mitchell, with the approval of the Milwaukee Road, assisted Prins in an undercover investigation of Bagley. As a result of this investigation, Bagley was indicted on 15 counts of violating federal narcotics and firearms statutes. O'Connor and Mitchell were the government's two principal witnesses. Prior to his trial, Bagley filed a discovery motion requesting that the government disclose the names of all its witnesses and any inducements made to them in exchange for their testimony. In response, the government provided affidavits from O'Connor and Mitchell, each of whom stated that he had neither received nor expected compensation for his services. In fact, however, Prins had informed O'Connor and Mitchell that he would pay them "expense money" in exchange for their investigatory services. Moreover, O'Connor and Mitchell had entered a written agreement with the BATF pursuant to which they received compensation for their assistance in the investigation.

At trial, O'Connor and Mitchell testified about both the firearms and the narcotics charges. The court found Bagley guilty on the narcotics charges, but not guilty on the firearms charges, and sentenced him to six months in prison and five years probation.

In May 1980, while in prison on other charges, Bagley filed requests for information pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U.S.C. Secs. 552 and 552a. Through this inquiry, he learned that O'Connor and Mitchell had received compensation for their assistance in the investigation. In 1982, Bagley filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2255 to vacate his narcotics conviction. On appeal of the denial of that motion, we reversed Bagley's conviction, holding that the government's failure to provide the requested information restricted Bagley's right to a fair trial. Bagley v. Lumpkin, 719 F.2d 1462 (9th Cir.1983). The Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case "for a determination whether there [was] a reasonable probability that, had the inducement offered by the Government to O'Connor and Mitchell been disclosed to the defense, the result of the trial would have been different." United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 684, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 3384, 87 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985). On September 2, 1986, we found that the government's failure to disclose material impeachment evidence undermined confidence in the outcome of the trial and reversed Bagley's 1977 conviction.

Bagley v. Lumpkin, 798 F.2d 1297 (9th Cir.1986).

Bagley filed the present action on August 18, 1988. The complaint alleged that Prins, O'Connor and Mitchell conspired to violate Bagley's constitutional rights to due process and to confront witnesses against him. Bagley sought damages in excess of $100 million for his wrongful conviction and imprisonment, and the deprivations that accompanied that imprisonment.

Mitchell and Prins moved for judgment on the pleadings, asserting that this action is barred by the statute of limitations and that the complaint fails to state a prima facie case under section 1985. ¹ In addition, Mitchell filed a motion for summary judgment asserting that the Brady claim raised in the complaint is inapplicable to him. Magistrate John L. Weinberg issued a Report and Recommendation in which he concluded that judgment on the pleadings should be granted for all defendants. He determined that the statute of limitations on the Sec. 1983 and Bivens claims was three years, Wash.Rev.Code Sec. 4.16.080(2); that Bagley's cause of action accrued in May of 1980; that the statute of limitations was tolled until Bagley was released from prison in 1982; that the pendency of Bagley's habeas corpus proceedings did not toll the statute of limitations or delay accrual of Bagley's claims; and that the claims became barred by limitations in 1985. The Magistrate also concluded that Bagley's Sec. 1985 claim should be dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired and because Bagley failed to allege that he is a member of a protected class. Given this recommendation, the Magistrate did not rule on Mitchell's Motion for Summary Judgment. The district court adopted the Magistrate's Report and Recommendation in its entirety and granted all defendants judgment on the pleadings. Bagley now appeals.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

We review de novo a judgment on the pleadings. See McGlinchy v. Shell Chemical Co., 845 F.2d 802, 810 (9th Cir.1988). Judgment on the pleadings is proper when it is clearly established that there are no issues of material fact, and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Id. We accept all allegations of fact by the party opposing the motion as true, and construe those allegations in the light most favorable to that party. Id.

DISCUSSION

A. Statute of Limitations

42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 does not contain its own statute of limitations. Consequently, we apply the statute of limitations for an analogous cause of action under Washington state law. Board of Regents v. Tomanio, 446 U.S. 478, 483-84, 100 S.Ct. 1790, 1794-95, 64 L.Ed.2d 440 (1980). We have held that the appropriate statute of limitations in a Sec. 1983 action is the three-year limitation of Wash.Rev.Code Sec. 4.16.080(2). Rose v. Rinaldi, 654 F.2d 546, 547 (9th Cir.1981). We have also held that this section applies to Bivens claims arising in Washington. See Johnston v. Horne, 875 F.2d 1415, 1424 (9th Cir.1989).

The dispute here is whether Bagley's claim accrued in 1980 when he first learned that O'Connor and Mitchell had in fact been promised compensation for their participation in the investigation, or in 1986 when Bagley's conviction was finally put to rest. Bagley argues that because he had no cognizable, compensable injury until his unconstitutional 1977 conviction was finally reversed in 1986, his cause of action did not accrue until that time. There is some appeal to this argument. Nevertheless, precedent compels us to reject this theory.

Federal law determines when a cause of action accrues and the statute of limitations begins to run for a Sec. 1983 claim. Norco Construction, Inc. v. King County, 801 F.2d 1143, 1145 (9th Cir.1986). A federal claim accrues when the plaintiff " 'knows or has reason to know of the injury which is the basis of the action.' " Id. (quoting Trotter v. International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union, 704 F.2d 1141, 1143 (9th Cir.1983)). The second circuit, addressing an issue very similar to the one before us here, held that a plaintiff's Sec. 1983 action accrues when he is incarcerated following a deprivation of his constitutional rights at trial. The court further held that the statute of limitations on that action begins to run upon incarceration notwithstanding the pendency of further state court proceedings. The court concluded, therefore, that the civil rights action should be stayed, rather than dismissed, in order to preserve it through the termination of the state court appeal. See Mack v. Varelas, 835 F.2d 995, 1000 (2d Cir.1987). ²

Other circuits, as well as our own, have implicitly held that habeas corpus proceedings do not delay accrual of Sec. 1983 claims. In Young v. Kenny, 907 F.2d 874 (9th Cir.1990), for instance, the plaintiff filed a Sec. 1983 action alleging that Washington state officials had unconstitutionally failed to apply good time credits to his prison sentence. The district court dismissed the complaint, holding that a habeas corpus petition, rather than a civil rights suit, was the appropriate procedure for challenging the length of the prison sentence. We reversed and ordered that the Sec. 1983 action be stayed, not dismissed, until the plaintiff had exhausted his state remedies. We reasoned:

Dismissal ... could be an unnecessarily harsh method of resolving the tension between section 1983 and the habeas exhaustion requirement. Exhaustion of state remedies is a process that may take years to complete; it is not farfetched to contemplate that a prisoner may be unable to exhaust state remedies before the limitations period expires on his section 1983 claim. Accordingly, district courts in some circuits stay, rather than dismiss, section 1983 complaints in this posture. [citations omitted]. This is a wise policy; ...

Id. at 878. Thus, we necessarily contemplated that the civil rights claim had accrued and the limitations...