Moore v. Floro

• Decision Date: 23 July 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84 C 10824.,84 C 10824.
• Citation: 614 F. Supp. 328
• Parties: Paul H. MOORE, Plaintiff, v. Theodore FLORO, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

614 F. Supp. 328

Paul H. MOORE, Plaintiff, v. Theodore FLORO, et al., Defendants.

No. 84 C 10824.

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, E.D.

July 23, 1985.

Kenneth N. Flaxman, Kenneth N. Flaxman, P.C., Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff.

David C. McLauchlan, Lord, Bissell & Brook, Chicago, Ill., Michael T. Caldwell, Caldwell, Berner & Caldwell, Woodstock, Ill., William W. Kurnik, James S. Stephenson, Kurnik & Cipolla, Arlington Heights, Ill., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

DECKER, Senior District Judge.

Paul H. Moore (Moore) brought this civil rights action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Moore alleges that the six defendants violated his constitutional rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The case is before the court on defendants' two motions to dismiss the complaint.

I. Factual Background

The complaint contains the following allegations. Moore was formerly employed as an investigator by the public defender's office of McHenry County, Illinois. In 1979, defendant Theodore Floro (Floro) served as the state's attorney of McHenry County. On December 21, 1979, Moore attended Floro's Christmas party. At the party, Floro angrily told Moore to leave "before I break your skull." Complaint at ¶ 7. After complying with this threat, Moore was beaten by defendants Charles Terrell (Terrell) and Keith Grabrowski (Grabrowski), deputy sheriffs of McHenry County. Id. at ¶ 8. Terrell and Grabrowski acted with the belief that they would be immune from prosecution because of Floro's disdain of Moore. Id. at ¶ 9. As a result of the beating, Moore suffered severe head injuries, including a fractured skull. Id. at ¶ 8.

Immediately after the beating, Moore was taken into custody by officers of the Woodstock police department under the direction of defendant Michael Fischer (Fischer), a police officer. Id. at ¶ 10. While at the police station, Moore requested medical treatment; neither Fischer nor Floro responded. Id. at ¶¶ 11-12. In addition, defendant Steven Bozer (Bozer), another police officer, took a photograph of Moore. Under Fischer's supervision, Bozer only photographed the side of Moore's face unscathed by the beating. Id. at ¶ 13.

As a result of this incident, Moore was charged with aggravated battery. In November, 1980, Moore was acquitted after a criminal trial at which he testified. Id. at ¶ 14. Subsequently, because Moore's successful trial defense embarrassed Floro, defendant Robert Willbrandt (Willbrandt), the public defender of McHenry County, discharged Moore from his employment. Id. at ¶¶ 14-16.

Moore brought this § 1983 action on December 19, 1984. Floro moves to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a cause of action. The remaining defendants separately move to dismiss the complaint on the basis of untimeliness.

II. Discussion

On April 17, 1985, the Supreme Court held for the first time that § 1983 claims are best characterized as personal injury actions for limitations purposes. Wilson v. Garcia, ___ U.S. ___, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 1949, 85 L.Ed.2d 254 (1985). Consequently, in furtherance of the federal policies of uniformity, certainty, and the minimization of unnecessary litigation, the Supreme Court upheld the application of a state personal injury statute of limitations to a § 1983 action. Id. at 1947-49. The threshold question presented by this case is whether Wilson v. Garcia should be applied retroactively to bar Moore's suit.¹

A. Retroactivity

Because prospective-only application is the exception rather than the rule, the party seeking to invoke the principle of nonretroactivity bears the burden of proving that such limited application is justified. See Valencia v. Anderson Bros. Ford, 617 F.2d 1278, 1288 (7th Cir.1980), rev'd on other grounds, 452 U.S. 205, 101 S.Ct. 2266, 68 L.Ed.2d 783 (1981). The Supreme Court has delineated the following tripartite analysis to determine whether a civil, nonconstitutional judicial decision will be denied full retroactive effect:

First, the decision to be applied nonretroactively must establish a new principle of law, either by overruling clear past precedent on which litigants may have relied ... or by deciding an issue of first impression whose resolution was not clearly foreshadowed.... Second, it has been stressed that "we must ... weigh the merits and demerits in each case by looking to the prior history of the rule in question, its purpose and effect, and whether retrospective operation will further or retard its operation".... Finally, we have weighed the inequity imposed by retroactive application, for "where a decision of this Court could produce substantial inequitable results if applied retroactively, there is ample basis in our cases for avoiding the `injustice or hardship' by a holding of nonretroactivity."

Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 106-07, 92 S.Ct. 349, 355, 30 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971) (citations omitted).² This approach has "`consistently been utilized where changes in statutes of limitations or other aspects of the timeliness of a claim are at issue.'" E.E.O.C. v. Gaddis, 733 F.2d 1373, 1377 (10th Cir.1984) (quoting Occhino v. U.S., 686 F.2d 1302, 1308 n. 7 (8th Cir. 1982)). In the Seventh Circuit, all three factors listed in Chevron Oil must favor prospective-only application before a decision will be denied retroactive effect. See, e.g., Valencia, 617 F.2d at 1289; but cf. Jordan v. Weaver, 472 F.2d 985, 996 (7th Cir.1973) (adopting in dicta a "threshold" test), rev'd on other grounds sub nom. Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974).

Under Chevron Oil, retroactivity is appropriate here unless Wilson v. Garcia establishes a new principle of law.³ As defendants concede, Beard v. Robinson, 563 F.2d 331 (7th Cir.1977), cert. denied, 438 U.S. 907, 98 S.Ct. 3125, 57 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1978), stated the law in Illinois prior to Wilson. Resolving a conflict within the circuit, the Seventh Circuit in Beard held that the five-year Illinois residual statute of limitations applied to statutory claims brought under the Civil Rights Acts, including 42 U.S.C. § 1983. 563 F.2d at 338 (reaffirming Wakat v. Harlib, 253 F.2d 59 (7th Cir.1958)). In so holding, the Seventh Circuit squarely rejected the application of the two-year Illinois personal injury statute of limitations later mandated by the Supreme Court because of the "fundamental differences" between a civil rights action and a common law tort. Id. at 336-37. Far from being reversed, Beard was subsequently followed or cited with approval by the Seventh Circuit and numerous federal district courts in Illinois.⁴See, e.g., Kolar v. County of Sangamon, 756 F.2d 564, 567 (7th Cir.1985); Sacks Brothers Loan Co. v. Cunningham, 578 F.2d 172, 176 (7th Cir. 1978); Lawson v. Metropolitan Sanitary District, 102 F.R.D. 783, 794 (N.D.Ill.1983); Killingham v. Board of Governors, 549 F.Supp. 225, 226-27 (N.D.Ill.1982); Hampton v. Hanrahan, 522 F.Supp. 140, 142 (N.D.Ill.1981).

Beard, as well as the cases just cited, was good law in this district when Moore's cause of action accrued in 1979 and when he filed his suit in 1984. Thus, these cases constitute clear past precedent upon which Moore, his attorney, and others similarly situated in Illinois, may have relied.⁵ The new rule announced in Wilson v. Garcia not only effectively overrules this line of precedent, but also makes a "clear break" with the past, see, e.g., U.S. v. Johnson, 457 U.S. 537, 550 n. 12, 551, 102 S.Ct. 2579, 2587 n. 12, 2588, 73 L.Ed.2d 202 (1982); Hanover Shoe, Inc. v. U.S. Shoe Machinery Corp., 392 U.S. 481, 498, 88 S.Ct. 2224, 2234, 20 L.Ed.2d 1231 (1968), and disapproves a practice arguably sanctioned by the Supreme Court in prior cases. Cf. Board of Regents v. Tomanio, 446 U.S. 478, 483-84, 488, 100 S.Ct. 1790, 1794-95, 1797, 64 L.Ed.2d 440 (1980) (courts must identify and apply statute of limitations of the state claim most closely analogous to the particular § 1983 claim at issue, as opposed to § 1983 claims in general); Campbell v. Haverhill, 155 U.S. 610, 616, 15 S.Ct. 217, 219, 39 L.Ed. 280 (1895). Thus, the crucial first step in the Chevron Oil analysis is satisfied here.

Furthermore, Wilson v. Garcia involved an issue of first impression before the Supreme Court whose resolution was not clearly foreshadowed. The dissent in Wilson chastises the majority for "jettisoning" a rule of venerable, though haphazard, application. 105 S.Ct. at 1949, 1951 (O'Connor, J., dissenting). Moreover, the primary rationale for the majority's holding was to remedy the "conflict, confusion, and uncertainty" among courts and practitioners regarding the appropriate statute of limitations to apply to this ubiquitous civil rights statute. E.g., 105 S.Ct. at 1942, 1945 n. 25, 1946 n. 32. Prior to Wilson, opinion differed among and even within federal circuits over the appropriate statute of limitations. In this state of uncertainty, prediction as to which way the Supreme Court would turn was unclear.⁶ Thus, Wilson definitively establishes a new and uniform principle of law.

Second, Wilson weighed the broad remedial purposes of § 1983 as well as the policies of uniformity, certainty, and the minimization of unnecessary litigation. On the one hand, to bar Moore's suit retroactively would be inimical to the beneficent purpose of Congress in enacting § 1983. On the other hand, it would be conducive, in an arbitrary manner, to the federal interests of uniformity and certainty. On balance, the court cannot say that retrospective application in this case would clearly hamper or promote the Supreme Court's goals. Cf. Jackson v. City of Bloomfield, 731 F.2d 652, 654-55 (10th Cir.1984). Thus, the second factor of the Chevron Oil analysis is not alone determinative.⁷

Finally, the court concludes that retroactivity would impose a substantial inquiry in this case. At the time this suit was filed, Beard was clear authority that the five-year Illinois residual statute of...