O'Connor v. Boeing North American, Inc.
| Decision Date | 27 November 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. 00-56141.,00-56141. |
| Citation | 311 F.3d 1139 |
| Parties | Lawrence O'CONNOR; Margaret O'Connor; Kathy Hecker; Mary Jane Vroman; Nicky Pelaez, On Behalf of Herself and All Others Similarly Situated; Laverne F. Barina, Mary Hillerstein; Sharon Grandinetti; Donald Reed; Terri Aungst; Ruby Diamond; Marjorie Extract; Heather Hultgren; Patricia Lev; Jody Smith; Maralyn Soifer; The Estate of Marjorie Taaffe; The Estate of Robin Lynn Trench; Cheryl Wernke; Carol Wolfsen; Stephanie Zakarian; Harold Samuels; Joyce Samuels; Carlene Getter; Estate of Bernard Hudson; Estate of Eugene D. Mauck, Plaintiffs, and Mary Christine Crilley, Carmela Anzilotti; Faith Arnold; Lila Arnold; Linda Blaustein; Howard Bleecker; Melissa Bolster; Ashle Bryant; Jennifer Cady; Heather Cass; Briana Alys Chappell; Mark Leslie Davis; Madeline Felkins; Robert Grandinetti; Norman Gross; Susan Hemming; Julie King; Margaret Kirby; Joy E. Lee; Helen Pasquini; Laurel Ann Peyton; Rosemary Pitts; Emanuel Rubin; William Rueger; Pauline Sablow; Hariet Spero; Donna Stone; Jerry Stone; Mildred Strausburg; Miles Teicher; Jacqueline Teicher; Ralph Tremonti; Victor Wollman; Estate of Edward J. Barina; Kathleen Brucato; Gerald Creinin; Roy Fischman; Grace Highfield; Miriam Hintz; Estate of Jason E. Hudlett; Joan Mann; Shirley Orban; Marion Rosen; Denise Seth-Hunter; Randall Trench; Don Varley; Helen White; The Estate of Marrilee Fay Reed; The Estate of Archibald P. Cameron; The Estate of Hai-Chou Chu; The Estate of Ralph Tremonti, Sr.; The Estate of Paula Jean Trevino, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BOEING NORTH AMERICAN, INC., a Delaware Corporation; Rockwell International Corporation, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
A. Barry Cappello, Cappello & McCann LLP, Santa Barbara, CA; Tina B. Nieves, Hector G. Gancedo, Gancedo & Nieves, Pasadena, CA, for the plaintiffs-appellants.
William W. Schofield, Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP, San Francisco, CA, for the defendants-appellees.
Before: O'SCANNLAIN and PAEZ, Circuit Judges, and KING, District Judge.*
Opinion by Judge PAEZ; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge O'SCANNLAIN.
In 1997, Plaintiffs filed this action against Boeing North America, Inc. and Rockwell International Corporation ("Defendants"), alleging that hazardous radioactive and non-radioactive substances released from four nuclear and rocket testing facilities (the "Rocketdyne facilities") caused their latent illnesses. The district court granted summary judgment against Plaintiffs, ruling as a matter of law that California's one-year statute of limitations barred their state law tort claims. O'Connor v. Boeing N. Am., Inc., 92 F.Supp.2d 1026, 1036-52 (C.D.Cal.), modified on reconsideration, 114 F.Supp.2d 949 (2000).1 Plaintiffs appeal, asking us to determine when California's statute of limitations began to run on their claims.
Under the California statute of limitations, a plaintiff has one year from the date of injury to bring a personal injury or wrongful death claim. All of the Plaintiffs learned of their diagnoses more than one year before they filed suit. Unless Plaintiffs can show that delayed discovery of their claims warrants tolling of the statute of limitations, the one-year limit bars their claims.
To answer this question, we must decide whether the district court erred in declining to apply the delayed discovery rule of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 ("CERCLA") to Plaintiffs' claims that the release of hazardous substances caused their injuries. See 42 U.S.C. § 9658. CERCLA does not create a federal statute of limitations. Rather, it retains the state statute of limitations, and establishes a federal standard that governs when delayed discovery of a plaintiff's claims will toll the statute of limitations. This federal standard trumps a less generous state rule that would start the limitations period earlier. Thus, whether CERCLA applies here turns on whether CERCLA's federal standard is more generous than California law in tolling California's one-year statute of limitations.
Because Plaintiffs alleged that the release of hazardous substances caused their injuries, the district court considered whether applying the federal standard for commencement of state limitations periods under CERCLA would start the limitations period running at a later date than under California law. O'Connor, 92 F.Supp.2d at 1036 n. 19. Comparing CERCLA's federal standard to California's delayed discovery rule, which postpones the start of the limitations period until a plaintiff suspects or should have suspected their claims, the district court concluded that, in this case, the state and federal standards were the same. Id. The district court held that Plaintiffs' claims were untimely because, under California's discovery rule, Plaintiffs suspected or should have suspected the cause of their illnesses more than a year before they filed their claims. Id.
We hold that (1) the district court erred in concluding that the federal and California standards are the same, and (2) the federal discovery standard applies here. We also conclude that, under the federal discovery rule, summary judgment was improper because there are genuine issues of material fact regarding whether Plaintiffs knew or should have known of their claims within the limitations period. However, we affirm the district court's ruling barring the claims of thirty-four of the Plaintiffs in light of their failure to explain adequately how and when they discovered their claims.
Plaintiffs are fifty-two persons2 who reside or in the past resided in the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley regions (hereinafter "San Fernando Valley") of southern California. They have been diagnosed with a variety of cancers and other illnesses. These illnesses include cancers of the thyroid, brain, cervix, breast, lung, ovaries, bladder, prostate, pancreas, and stomach; leukemia; lymphoma; hypothyroidism; infertility; and multiple chemical sensitivity sensory neuropathy.
Defendants own or have operated the Rocketdyne facilities, located in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. The Rocketdyne facilities have been in operation for more than fifty years. The federal government and private entities have used the facilities to conduct testing of rocket and energy technologies, including nuclear technologies. Plaintiffs alleged that testing at the facilities has involved various radioactive contaminants and non radioactive hazardous chemicals. Some Plaintiffs resided in close proximity to the Rocketdyne facilities; others lived miles away.
On March 10, 1997, six plaintiffs filed the original complaint in this action, asserting individual and class claims for personal and property injuries. Plaintiffs amended the complaint several times, joining new plaintiffs and adding new claims with supporting allegations. Plaintiffs filed the fourth amended complaint ("Complaint") on March 30, 1998. On behalf of the personal injury and wrongful death plaintiffs, the Complaint alleges state tort claims of negligence, negligence per se, and strict liability for ultrahazardous activities. It also asserts a claim under the Price-Anderson Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2210, alleging injury from past nuclear accidents at the Rocketdyne facilities.
Thirty-seven plaintiffs joined this action with the second amended complaint on June 27, 1997. Twenty-nine joined with the filing of the third amended complaint on December 22, 1997, and seven with the fourth amended complaint on March 30, 1998. All Plaintiffs alleged that they discovered their claims on September 11, 1997, when UCLA released the results of an epidemiological study concluding that employees at one of the four Rocketdyne facilities, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory ("SSFL"), were at an increased risk of contracting cancer.
On December 27, 1999, Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment on the ground that the statute of limitations barred all of Plaintiffs' claims. Plaintiffs countered that the one-year limitations period did not begin until September 1997 when news of the UCLA study alerted them to the connection between the Rocketdyne facilities and their illnesses, and that they filed their action within the year.
The district court granted Defendants' motion. It ruled that, as a matter of law, past publicity about releases of potentially hazardous substances from the Rocketdyne facilities should have led forty-eight of the fifty-two Plaintiffs to suspect prior to the release of the UCLA study that Defendants caused their injuries. O'Connor, 92 F.Supp.2d at 1041, 1051, 1054-55. With respect to thirty-four of the fifty-two Plaintiffs, the district court held in the alternative that their failure to explain how they discovered their claims before filing suit barred those claims.
The district court granted Plaintiffs' motion for entry of a final judgment pursuant to Rule 54(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Plaintiffs appeal the district court's summary judgment in favor of Defendants.
The primary focus of this appeal concerns the district court's ruling that the statute of limitations barred Plaintiffs' claims because Plaintiffs filed their claims more than one year after discovering them. We review de novo the district court's summary judgment. Messick v. Horizon Indus. Inc., 62 F.3d 1227, 1229 (9th Cir.1995). We hold that the district court erred in concluding that the standard for discovery of claims under California law is the same as the federal standard under CERCLA. Because the California standard results in an earlier commencement date for the statute of limitations, the district court should have applied the federal standard.
Applying the federal standard, we reverse the...
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Case summaries.
...Inc., 309 F.3d 1113 (9th Cir. 2002), cert. dismissed, 123 S. Ct. 2267 (2003), infra Part V.A. O'Connor v. Boeing North American, Inc., 311 F.3d 1139 (9th Cir. 2002), infra Part California ex rel. California Department of Toxic Substances Control v. Campbell, 319 F.3d 1161 (9th Cir. 2003). T......