Cloud ex rel. Cloud v. Summers, 39881-4-I.
| Decision Date | 13 December 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. 39881-4-I.,39881-4-I. |
| Citation | 98 Wash.App. 724,991 P.2d 1169 |
| Court | Washington Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Darrell CLOUD, By and Through his guardian ad litem Ingrid and William CLOUD, and Ingrid and William Cloud, individually, Appellants, v. John SUMMERS and Lyle Summers, as co-personal representatives of the Estate of Neal Summers and the Seattle Public School District, part and parties, Respondents. |
Thomas Jeffrey Keane, Seattle, for appellants.
David John Burman, Perkins Coie, David Mark Soderland, Dunlap & Soderland PS, Seattle, for respondents.
A federal district court dismissed Darrell Cloud's section 1983 civil rights claim against the Seattle Public School District arising from childhood sexual abuse by Darrell's former teacher, Neal Summers, ruling that the claim was barred by the statute of limitations. In the same federal action, Darrell had invoked federal supplemental jurisdiction for state claims against the School District for, inter alia, negligent supervision and retention of its employee, Summers. Darrell's parents, Ingrid and William Cloud, brought a state claim against the School District in the same federal action for wrongful interference with the parent/child relationship. And in the same federal action, Darrell and his parents also brought state claims against the co-personal representatives of the Summers Estate for injuries arising from Neal Summers' childhood sexual abuse of Darrell. After the federal district court dismissed Darrell's civil rights claim on summary judgment, the parties agreed that that there was no reason for the state claims to remain in federal court. Accordingly, the federal court denied supplemental jurisdiction over the state claims and dismissed them without prejudice.
Darrell and his parents then filed their state claims against the School District and the Summers Estate in King County Superior Court. The superior court granted summary judgment dismissing the claims against the School District based on collateral estoppel and the running of the statute of limitations, and dismissing the claims against the Summers Estate based on the Clouds' failure to timely file notice of their claims with the personal representatives.
The Clouds appeal the dismissal of their state claims. We affirm the dismissal of the claims against the Summers Estate; those claims are forever barred because the Clouds failed to timely file notice of their claims in the King County probate proceedings. We reverse the dismissal of the claims against the School District. Although the section 1983 civil rights claim arose from the same facts upon which the state claims against the School District are based, collateral estoppel does not apply because the federal court was obliged to apply federal common law to determine the accrual of the civil rights claim for purposes of the statute of limitations, and Washington's discovery rule as applied in childhood sexual abuse cases differs substantially from the federal common law upon which the federal district court relied.
Neal Summers was a teacher at Whitman Junior High School in the Seattle Public School District. Darrell Cloud—who alleges that Neal Summers sexually abused him commencing in 1983 when he was a 13-year-old student at Whitman and continuing for months and years thereafter—shot and killed Summers on January 31, 1994. After his arrest, Darrell was found incompetent to stand trial. He was hospitalized until he returned to competency following drug therapy and counseling. He was convicted of first degree murder and is currently serving his sentence.
Darrell, who once was a good student and talented athlete, flunked out of college and became dysfunctional in virtually every aspect of his life, eventually sliding into psychosis, commencing in 1992-3 years after he turned 18. His psychiatrist attributed Darrell's mental illness to sexual abuse by Summers.
The Clouds brought their federal and state claims in federal district court in 1994. In its ruling dismissing the section 1983 claim, the federal court explained that "the statute of limitation for a [federal civil rights] claim is the same as that for general personal injury claims sounding in tort in the state in which the claim arises." Clerk's Papers at 48. It then applied federal common law accrual principles to the Washington general statute of limitations and concluded that Darrell Cloud's claim was time-barred:
Under the law summarized above, [Darrell] Cloud's claim based on sexual molestation would have accrued no later than the last act of molestation, which took place before he was eighteen years old. In Washington, commencement of the limitations period is tolled until the potential plaintiff reaches age eighteen. RCW 4.16.190. The three-year period on plaintiff's civil rights claim therefore began to run when he turned eighteen on July 25, 1987. The undisputed record shows that plaintiff knew or should have known of the alleged injury at all times from that date until the three-year period expired on July 25, 1990.
Id. Thereafter, the federal court "decline[d] to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state claims" and dismissed them without prejudice, id. at 50, noting, "The state claims raise potentially important questions of state law which should be decided in the courts of Washington." Id. at 49-50.
In January 1996, the Clouds brought their state claims against the Seattle Public School District and the Summers Estate in King County Superior Court. The trial court granted summary judgment to the School District, concluding that the claims were barred by collateral estoppel and the statute of limitations. Although the court denied summary judgment to the Summers Estate on those grounds, it ultimately granted the Summers Estate's motion for summary judgment, dismissing the Clouds' claims because they failed to timely file their claims with the personal representatives as required by the Washington Probate Notice to Creditor Statute, RCW 11.40.
The Clouds appeal the trial court's order granting summary judgment to the School District and to the Summers Estate.
Summary judgment is appropriate "if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." CR 56(c). "The motion will be granted, after considering the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, only if reasonable persons could reach but one conclusion." Reynolds v. Hicks, 134 Wash.2d 491, 495, 951 P.2d 761 (1998). "When reviewing a summary judgment order, an appellate court engages in the same inquiry as the trial court." Id.
The Clouds maintain that neither collateral estoppel nor the statute of limitations bars their negligent supervision and retention of employee, and wrongful interference with the parent-child relationship claims against the School District. We agree.
The doctrine of collateral estoppel—which is also referred to as issue preclusion—bars relitigation of a particular issue or determinative fact. Shoemaker v. City of Bremerton, 109 Wash.2d 504, 507, 745 P.2d 858 (1987). The purposes of this doctrine are "to avoid the burdens and potentially disruptive consequences of permitting a second and possibly inconsistent determination of matters that have been once decided[,]" 18 CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT ET AL., FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 4420, at 182 (1981), and "to prevent relitigation of determined causes, curtail multiplicity of actions, prevent harassment in the courts, and inconvenience to the litigants, and promote judicial economy." State v. Sherwood, 71 Wash.App. 481, 488, 860 P.2d 407 (1993). The party seeking the application of collateral estoppel has the burden of proving that:
(1) the issue decided in the prior adjudication is identical with the one presented in the second action; (2) the prior adjudication must have ended in a final judgment on the merits; (3) the party against whom the plea is asserted was a party or in privity with the party to the prior adjudication; and (4) application of the doctrine does not work an injustice.
Nielson v. Spanaway Gen. Med. Clinic, Inc., 135 Wash.2d 255, 263, 956 P.2d 312 (1998).
But collateral estoppel does not apply where a substantial difference in applicable legal standards differentiates otherwise identical issues of mixed law and fact. 1B JAMES WM. MOORE ET AL., MOORE'S FEDERAL PRACTICE § 0.443[2], at 763-64, 766 (2d ed.1991); see also Peterson v. Clark Leasing Corp., 451 F.2d 1291, 1292 (9th Cir.1971)
(); United States v. Powell, 494 F.Supp. 260, 263 (S.D.Ga.1980) ().
Because the federal civil rights statutes lack statutes of limitations of their own, the U.S. Supreme Court has directed the lower federal courts in such cases to apply the general state law limitations period for personal injury claims. Felder v. Casey, 487 U.S. 131, 140, 108 S.Ct. 2302, 101 L.Ed.2d 123 (1988); Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 279, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 85 L.Ed.2d 254 (1985).
But even though the duration of the limitation period for a section 1983 claim is governed by the state's general personal injury statute of limitations, when a section 1983 claim accrues is governed by federal common law. Cada v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 920 F.2d 446, 450-51 (7th Cir.1990); Ernstes v. Warner, 860 F.Supp. 1338, 1340 (S.D.Ind.1994). Therefore, to determine when Darrell's section 1983 civil rights claim...
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