Lucht v. Encompass Corp.

• Decision Date: 18 June 2007
• Docket Number: No. 4:06-CV-00562-JEG.,4:06-CV-00562-JEG.
• Citation: 491 F.Supp.2d 856
• Parties: Judy LUCHT, Plaintiff, v. ENCOMPASS CORPORATION and Iowa Foundation for Medical Care a/k/a IFMC/Encompass, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Iowa

491 F.Supp.2d 856

Judy LUCHT, Plaintiff, v. ENCOMPASS CORPORATION and Iowa Foundation for Medical Care a/k/a IFMC/Encompass, Defendants.

No. 4:06-CV-00562-JEG.

United States District Court, S.D. Iowa, Central Division.

June 18, 2007.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Patricia K. Wengert, Des Moines, IA, for Plaintiff.

Frank B. Harty, Debra Lynne Hulett, Nyemaster Goode West Hansell & O'Brien, PC, Des Moines, IA, for Defendants.

ORDER ON MOTION TO DISMISS

GRITZNER, District Judge.

This matter comes before the Court on Defendants' Motion to Dismiss (Clerk's No. 10). Plaintiff Judy Lucht (Lucht) is represented by Patricia Wengert. Defendants Encompass Corporation and Iowa Foundation for Medical Care (IFMC) are represented by Frank Harty and Debra Hulett. The matter came on for hearing January 18, 2007, and is fully submitted for ruling.

SUMMARY OF MATERIAL FACTS

Lucht filed a Petition in the Iowa District Court for Polk County on November 1, 2006, alleging that Defendants, her former employers, discriminated against her on the basis of age and disability in violation of state and federal law. She also alleges claims for wrongful termination, "wage and hour violations," breach of contract, and negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The actions complained of arose from periods in 2005 when Lucht took leaves of absence for medical reasons. She claims Defendants failed to accommodate her return to work.

Defendants removed the case to this Court on November 20, 2006, and filed a pre-answer motion to dismiss on December 12, 2006. Plaintiff filed what was identified as a resistance to the motion, which did not deny any of the essential allegations of the motion to dismiss, while raising various collateral issues. The organization of the Petition makes Lucht's claims difficult to characterize, but the pending motion pertains only to the state and federal age and disability discrimination claims and the wrongful discharge claim.

The District Court's jurisdiction is premised upon the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12101, et seq., and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), 29 U.S.C. § 621, et seq.¹ The wrongful termination claim and state disability discrimination claim are properly considered under the Court's supplemental jurisdiction. 28 U.S.C. § 1367.

The Petition filed in the Iowa District Court, and a part of this Court's record in the removal documents, commenced this action on November 1, 2006. Paragraph 6 of that Petition recites, "Lucht was issued a Right to Sue Letter by the EEOC and the ICRC dated July 28, 2006." Thus, despite the allegation in paragraph 7 of the Petition that "[t]his Petition is filed with this court within (90) days as the Rules provide," the Petition is untimely on its face. Attached to the Petition is only the Right to Sue Letter from the Iowa Commission, which does bear the date of July 28, 2006.

The Dismissal and Notice of Rights document from the EEOC, attached to the Motion to Dismiss as Exhibit B, is dated May 2, 2006, and is addressed to the Plaintiff at 2305 Park Lane, West Des Moines, Iowa. At the hearing, Plaintiff presented the Court with Exhibit 1, which also indicates it is a Dismissal and Notice of Rights from the EEOC, though replete with peculiarity, and which is addressed to Plaintiff at 2305 Park Lane, West Des Moines, Iowa. It is conceded this is the correct address for Plaintiff, and there is no dispute that Plaintiff received Exhibit 1 at some point in time. While counsel for Plaintiff concedes she at some point was provided with Exhibit 1, there is no record of when Plaintiff brought Exhibit 1 to counsel's attention. There is also no record of when Plaintiff actually would have received the May 2, 2006, Dismissal and Notice of Rights from the EEOC.

APPLICABLE LAW AND DISCUSSION

I. MOTION TO DISMISS STANDARD²

This is a pre-answer motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). "[D]ismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) serves to eliminate actions which are fatally flawed in their legal premises and designed to fail, thereby sparing litigants the burden of unnecessary pretrial and trial activity." Young v. City of St. Charles, 244 F.3d 623, 627 (8th Cir.2001) (citing Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 326-27, 109 S.Ct. 1827, 104 L.Ed.2d 338 (1989)).

Recently, the Supreme Court revisited the standards applicable to motions to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). In Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, the Court "address[ed] the proper standard for pleading an antitrust conspiracy through allegations of parallel conduct." Bell Atlantic, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 1963 (2007).³ The Court maintained the requirement that the reviewing court must view all allegations in the complaint as true, "even if it strikes a savvy judge that actual proof of those facts is improbable." Id. at 1965 (citing Swierkiewicz v. Sorema N. A., 534 U.S. 506, 508, n. 1, 122 S.Ct. 992, 152 L.Ed.2d 1 (2002); Neitzke, 490 U.S. at 327, 109 S.Ct. 1827 ("Rule 12(b)(6) does not countenance ... dismissals based on a judge's disbelief of a complaint's factual allegations"); Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236, 94 S.Ct. 1683, 40 L.Ed.2d 90 (1974) (a well-pleaded complaint may proceed even if it appears "that a recovery is very remote and unlikely")). The Court's major change, however, came in departing from certain oft-quoted language from Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 78 S.Ct. 99, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957). In Conley, Justice Black wrote of "the accepted rule that a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." Conley, 355 U.S. at 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99. The Court explained the history of the language, with some courts reading it "in isolation as saying that any statement revealing the theory of the claim will suffice unless its factual impossibility may be shown from the face of the pleadings" and others eschewing a literal construction "of the Conley passage as a pleading standard." Bell Atlantic, 127 S.Ct. at 1968-69. The latter interpretation was correct, the Court concluded, as the former interpretation would permit "a wholly conclusory statement of claim [to] survive a motion to dismiss whenever the pleadings left open the possibility that a plaintiff might later establish some `set of [undisclosed] facts' to support recovery." Id. at 1968.

The Conley language "is best forgotten as an incomplete, negative gloss on an accepted pleading standard: once a claim has been stated adequately, it may be supported by showing any set of facts consistent with the allegations in the complaint.... Conley, then, described the breadth of opportunity to prove what an adequate complaint claims, not the minimum standard of adequate pleading to govern a complaint's survival." Id. at 1969 (internal citations omitted).

Accordingly, the Court now turns to the pending motion, taking all facts alleged in the complaint as true, and considering whether, under the recently-clarified standard for 12(b)(6) motions described above, Lucht's discrimination and wrongful termination claims may proceed. See id.; Ripplin Shoals Land Co., LLC v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 440 F.3d 1038, 1042 (8th Cir.2006).

II DISCRIMINATION CLAIMS

Defendants seek dismissal of Lucht's state and federal discrimination claims, alleging she failed to bring the instant case within the required time period. The requirement that a claimant file suit within ninety days of the administrative release is common to the ADA, 42 U.S.C. § 12117 (citing 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5), the ADEA, 29 U.S.C § 626(e), and the ICRA, Iowa Code § 216.16(3).

Under the ICRA, the ninety days begin to run when the administrative release is issued, that is, the date the letter is mailed. Saemisch v. Ley Motor Co., 387 N.W.2d 357, 359 (Iowa 1986); see also Westin v. Mercy Med. Servs., Inc., 994 F.Supp. 1050, 1058 (N.D.Iowa 1998) (ninety days began to run "the date the Iowa Civil Rights Commission mailed a closure letter and administrative release to [plaintiff] at her current address by certified mail"). The ICRC administrative release was issued July 28, 2006. Lucht filed her state court petition November 1, 2006, more than ninety days after the issue date.

The EEOC issued Lucht a right-to-sue letter on May 2, 2006. Other than indicating doubt about when this letter was received by Lucht, and asserting a copy of the letter was not sent to counsel, the authenticity of this administrative document is not challenged. "Generally, the ninety-day filing period begins to run on the day the right to sue letter is received at the most recent address that a plaintiff has provided the EEOC." Hill v. John Chezik Imports, 869 F.2d 1122, 1123 (8th Cir.1989). See also Johnson v. Henderson, 234 F.3d 367, 368 (8th Cir. 2000) ("the time for filing the complaint began when Johnson received the complaint form and the filing instructions, not when he retained counsel and furnished the materials to him") (citing Irwin v. Dep't of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89, 92, 111 S.Ct. 453, 112 L.Ed.2d 435 (1990) (time for filing Title VII suit runs from claimant's or claimant's attorney's receipt of EEOC letter, whichever comes first)); Le-Clair v. Wells Fargo Bank Iowa, N.A., 291 F.Supp.2d 873, 877 (S.D.Iowa 2003) ("a claimant generally must file a cause of action in district court within 90 days of receiving her `right-to-sue' letter from the EEOC").

Lucht did not state when she received the EEOC administrative release. Counsel admitted at hearing that the release contains the correct address but stated Lucht has no recollection of when it was received. It is presumed that "a properly mailed document is received by the addressee." Davis v. U.S. Bancorp, 383 F.3d 761, 766 (8th Cir.2004). The document is presumed received three days after mailing. See Baldwin County Welcome Ctr. v. Brown, 466 U.S. 147, 148 n. 1, 104 S.Ct. 1723,...