Jonker v. Kelley

• Decision Date: 18 June 2003
• Docket Number: No. CIV.A.02-30032-MAP.,CIV.A.02-30032-MAP.
• Parties: Jean E. JONKER, Plaintiff, v. Paul KELLEY, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

268 F.Supp.2d 81

Jean E. JONKER, Plaintiff, v. Paul KELLEY, et al., Defendants.

No. CIV.A.02-30032-MAP.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

June 18, 2003.

Terrence M. Dunphy, Fallon & Sullivan, Springfield, MA, for Jean E. Jonker.

Douglas I. Louison, Merrick, James W. Simpson, Jr., Merrick, Louison & Costello, Boston, MA, for Framingham, Town of, George King, Jr., Paul M. Kelley, Steven B. Carl.

ORDER REGARDING REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION WITH REGARD TO DEFENDANTS' MOTION TO DISMISS

(Docket No. 2)

PONSOR, District Judge.

Upon de novo review, the Report and Recommendation of Magistrate Judge Kenneth P. Neiman dated May 15, 2003 is hereby adopted, without objection. The defendants' Motion to Dismiss (Docket No.

2) is hereby ALLOWED. The file is ordered closed.

It is So Ordered.

REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION WITH REGARD TO DEFEDANTS' MOTION TO DISMISS (Document No. 2)

NEIMAN, United States Magistrate Judge.

In this action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 ("section 1983"), Jean Jonker ("Plaintiff) alleges that Detective Paul Kelley of the Framingham Police Department ("Kelley") and other municipal actors (collectively "Defendants") violated her constitutional rights and committed statelaw conversion when they caused her vehicle to be illegally seized on July 18, 1998. Defendants' statute of limitations-based motion to dismiss, brought under Fed. R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), has been referred to this court for a report and recommendation. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B). For the reasons set forth below, the court will recommend that Defendants' motion be allowed.

I. STANDARD OF REVIEW

In determining whether to dismiss a complaint pursuant la Rule 12(b)(6) for failing to state a claim upon which relief may be granted, the court must accept the factual averments in the complaint as true, "extending ... every reasonable inference in [the plaintiffs] favor." Coyne v. City of Somerville, 972 F.2d 440, 443 (1st Cir. 1992). The complaint may be dismissed if the plaintiff cannot prove, beyond a doubt, that facts supporting her claims entitle her to relief. See Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957); Roeder v. Alpha Indus., Inc., 814 F.2d 22, 25 (1st Cir.1987).

II. BACKGROUND

The complaint, filed on February 26, 2002, alleges the following facts with respect to the seizure of Plaintiffs vehicle on July 18, 1998:

7. On January 17, 1998 ..., a 1994 Chrysler ... was towed from the parking lot of the Holyoke Mall ... by [a] towing service per order of the Holyoke Police Department....

8. On April 24, 1998[,] the ... vehicle was sold to Plaintiff ... at auction ....

9. On May 8, 1998, Plaintiff ... sought and was subsequently issued [a][t]itle ... for the [vehicle] ....

10. On a subsequent date preceding July 14, 1998, ... Kelley[,suspecting the vehicle was stolen,] traveled to Holyoke, Massachusetts to inspect the ... vehicle ... with the assistance of the Holyoke Police Department.

11. On or about July 18, 1998[,] Detective Moriarty of the Holyoke Police Department inspected the vehicle and found that the vehicle identification number [ ("VIN") ] of the vehicle reported stolen was different from the [VIN on] Plaintiffs vehicle.

12. The Holyoke Police Department further informed ... Kelley that Plaintiff's] ... vehicle appeared to be appropriately titled (a copy of [the title] was provided to ... Kelley) and not the subject of the stolen car report.

13. Despite the result of his inspection, ... Kelley requested the Holyoke Police Department to seize Plaintiff['s] vehicle[;] the Holyoke Police Department refused this request.

14. On or about July 18, 1998, ... Plaintiff reported to work at the Department of Education, Maiden, Massachusetts[,] on assignment for her employer, the Holyoke Public Schools, and parked her vehicle in a private parking lot directly behind the Department of Education building in Maiden, Massachusetts.

15.... Kelley ..., on or about that same date, caused Plaintiff['s vehicle], along with its contents, to be taken from the parking lot, with the knowledge and assistance of the Maiden Police Department.

16... . Kelley reported the ... vehicle stolen and, with the assistance of the Maiden Police Department, seized the vehicle without probable cause to believe that said property ... was lawfully subject to seizure.... Kelley and the Maiden Police Department acted without the authority of a warrant or other judicial mandate.

(Complaint ¶¶ 7-16.) The complaint is brought pursuant to section 1983 and contains three causes of action, namely, that Defendants (1) "deprived [Plaintiff] of the possession and use of her property without due process of law," (2) "violated [her] right to be free from unreasonable seizure of her property," and (3) committed "the tort of conversion under Massachusetts law." (Id. ¶¶ 23-25.)

In due course, Defendants filed the instant motion to dismiss. At oral argument, when it appeared that an out-ofcourt resolution of this matter might be possible, the court gave the parties a period of time to report (via Plaintiffs attorney) whether settlement discussions had succeeded or not. Just prior to the deadline, Plaintiffs attorney submitted a "supplemental" memorandum of law. (Document No. 11.) Then, two weeks later, he filed a letter informing the court that the parties had "been unable to settle the ... matter" and, therefore, that "[t]he pending motion will need to be resolved by the court." (Document No. 12.)

III. DISCUSSION

Defendants argue that the instant action, filed over three and one-half years after the seizure of Plaintiffs vehicle on July 18, 1998, is barred by one or more statutes of limitation. The court, in essence, agrees.

As Defendants observe, the Supreme Court directs federal courts considering civil rights claims under section 1983 to borrow personal injury limitations periods from state law. See Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 276-80, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 85 L.Ed.2d 254 (1985); Street v. Vose, 936 F.2d 38, 39 (1st Cir.1991). Accordingly, Defendants assert, the court should apply to this section 1983 case Massachusetts' three-year limitations period for personal injury actions outlined in Mass. Gen. L. ch. 260, § 2A. As for Plaintiffs conversion cause of action, Defendants continue, that claim is also governed by another three-year limitations period, see Mass. Gen. L. ch. 260, § 4, as would be any claim alleging a violation of the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act, see Mass. Gen. L. ch. 260, § 5B.

Plaintiff does not object to the application of the preceding three-year limitations periods. Rather, she argues in a single sentence of her opposition memorandum, ostensibly backed up by appended documents, that her causes of action did not accrue—i.e., the statutory clocks did not begin to run—until October 27, 1999, the date she purportedly "cleared title" to the subject vehicle. (Document No. 4 ("Plaintiffs Brief) at 4.)¹ Plaintiff makes additional arguments in her supplemental brief. Unfortunately for her cause, however, the court believes that she cannot avoid the three-year statutory bar.

First, Plaintiff is confronted with a significant procedural hurdle, i.e., the general inability of the court to look beyond the four corner's of the complaint in resolving Defendants' Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. Plaintiffs complaint says nothing about "clearing title" or, indeed, that anything occurred after July 18, 1998. Rather, as indicated, Plaintiff attempts to bring in the October 27, 1999 date through the documents appended to her opposition memorandum and her supplemental brief, the latter of which was filed without "leave of court." See Rule 7.1(B)(3) of the Local Rules of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

As Plaintiff is no doubt aware, it is generally inappropriate in a Rule 12(b)(6) context to consider materials outside the complaint. See Watxerson v. Page, 987 F.2d 1, 3 (1st Cir.1993). Granted, there is a "narrow" exception to the complaint-only rule, see Alternative Energy, Inc. v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 267 F.3d 30, 33 (1st Cir.2001) ("In ruling on a [Rule 12(b)(6)] motion to dismiss, ... [while,] [o]rdinarily, a court may not consider any documents that are outside of the complaint[,] ... [t]here is ... a narrow exception for documents the authenticity of which are not disputed by the parties; for official public records; for documents central to plaintiffs claim; or for documents sufficiently referred to in the complaint.") (citations and internal quotation marks omitted), but Plaintiff fails to articulate how that exception applies here.

Second, even assuming Plaintiff can overcome this procedural obstacle, her substantive argument is deficient. In essence Plaintiff argues that the court should simply infer from the documents she attaches to her brief that her causes of action accrued on the date she "cleared title" (October 27, 1999), not on the more obvious date of "seizure" (July 18, 1998). Unfortunately, her opposition memorandum cites no case law supporting this approach. Nor does Plaintiff attempt to analyze the nettlesome issue of accrual in the section 1983 context. See Karen M. Blum & Kathryn R. Urbonya, Section 1983 Litigation at 96 (Federal Judicial Center 1998) (describing question of section 1983 accrual as a "complex ... federal issue"). This failure alone is reason enough to reject her position. See United States v. Ramirez-Rivera, 241 F.3d 37, 40 (1st Cir.2001) ("Judges are not expected to be mindreaders. Consequently, a litigant has an obligation to spell out his arguments squarely and distinctly, or else forever hold his peace.") (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

More importantly, however, the court's own research has found no support for Plaintiffs accrual argument. Judges confronting section 1983 actions "must consult federal law in order to fix the point in time from which the limitations period begins to accrue." Morris...