Robinson v. Caulkins Indiantown Citrus Co.

• Decision Date: 30 August 1991
• Docket Number: No. 83-8655-Civ.,83-8655-Civ.
• Citation: 771 F. Supp. 1205
• Parties: John H. ROBINSON, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CAULKINS INDIANTOWN CITRUS CO., et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida

771 F. Supp. 1205

John H. ROBINSON, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CAULKINS INDIANTOWN CITRUS CO., et al., Defendants.

No. 83-8655-Civ.

United States District Court, S.D. Florida.

August 30, 1991.

I. Jeffrey Pheterson, Palm Springs, Fla., Pamela S. Wynn, Lake Worth, Fla., David M. Lipman, Lipman & Weisberg, Miami, Fla., Myoshi Smith, Fla. Rural Legal Services, Searcy, Denney, Scarola, Barnhart & Shipley by John Scarola, West Palm Beach, Fla., for plaintiffs.

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius by Sarah A. Kelly, Philadelphia, Pa., pro hac vice, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius by Terence G. Connor, Miami, Fla., Hughes Hubbard & Reed by Laura H. Allen, Nicholas Swerdloff & Stephanie Young, New York City, for defendants VIA Tropical Fruits VIA North America, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION & ORDER

HOEVELER, District Judge.

THIS CAUSE IS before the court upon Plaintiffs' Objections to the Magistrate's January 25, 1991 Report and Recommendation in which the Magistrate recommended this court establish a two-year statute of limitations for all claims in this action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1981.

Discussion

In this cause Plaintiffs have brought charges of employment discrimination on the basis of race under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. The suit was initiated by Plaintiff John Robinson in December 1983 as an individual action. A year later, on December 14, 1984, an amended complaint was filed, changing the suit to a class action with Robinson serving as one of the class representatives.¹

Two and a half years after the class filed its complaint the Supreme Court announced in Goodman v. Lukens Steel Co., 482 U.S. 656, 107 S.Ct. 2617, 96 L.Ed.2d 572 (1987), that federal courts should use state statutes of limitations for personal injury actions in determining the limitations period for § 1981 claims. Prior to Goodman, federal courts, often with widely varying results within each state, had attempted to select the most analogous state statute of limitations to apply to § 1981 claims. See Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 421 U.S. 454, 462, 95 S.Ct. 1716, 1721, 44 L.Ed.2d 295 (1975). Defendants, in moving for summary judgment on the § 1981 statute of limitations issue, argue for the imposition of a two-year limitations period, contending that such a period was the applicable statute of limitations in Florida for § 1981 employment discrimination claims prior to Goodman and that Goodman should not be given retroactive effect. Plaintiffs argue for the retroactive application of Goodman to this action for it would allow them to assert § 1981 claims up to four years prior to the filing of their complaint. See Florida Statutes § 95.11(3)(o) (1989).

Though the general principle is that new judicially created rules will be applied retroactively as well as prospectively, Gulf Offshore Co. v. Mobil Oil Corp., 453 U.S. 473, 486 n. 16, 101 S.Ct. 2870, 2879 n. 16, 69 L.Ed.2d 784 (1981), under certain circumstances, retroactive application of a newly-announced rule may prove overly harsh as to a given case. In Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 92 S.Ct. 349, 30 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971), the Supreme Court established a three-part test for courts to apply in determining whether creation of an exception to retroactivity is warranted:

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, ... the merits and demerits of each case must be weighed 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, ... the inequity imposed by retroactive application must be evaluated, and if the decision could produce substantial inequitable results if applied retroactively, ... injustice or hardship should be avoided by a holding of nonretroactivity.

Chevron, 404 U.S. at 106-07, 92 S.Ct. at 355 (citations omitted). With this test in mind, the court turns to the cause at hand.

I. The Existence of Prior Clear Precedent

Prior to issuance of the Goodman decision, sufficiently clear precedent existed in the Eleventh Circuit to indicate that all § 1981 employment discrimination actions brought in Florida were governed by the two-year statute of limitations applied to actions "to recover wages or overtime or damages or penalties concerning payment of wages and overtime." Florida Statutes § 95.11(4)(c). McGhee v. Ogburn, 707 F.2d 1312 (11th Cir.1983); McWilliams v. Escambia County School Board, 658 F.2d 326 (5th Cir.1981).

Plaintiffs unpersuasively contend that McGhee and McWilliams only concern straightforward "loss of wages" discrimination claims and do not govern their case, which also raises allegations of racial defamation and emotional distress "at least partially sounding in tort." Plaintiffs' Objections at 4, 14. The breadth of the § 1981 claims for relief in addition to payment of lost wages to which the former Fifth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit applied Florida Statutes § 95.11(4)(c) illustrates that all, and not just some, § 1981 employment discrimination claims in Florida were subject to the two-year limitations period. See McWilliams, 658 F.2d at 330 (two-year period applies to § 1981 claims for back pay, reinstatement, and injunctive relief, actual damages and punitive damages) (citations omitted).

Plaintiffs have cited no authority from any Circuit where, in a § 1981 employment discrimination case, a limitations period was determined on the basis of the emotional harm or defamation suffered by the plaintiffs.² Nor is the court aware of any district or appellate case in this Circuit which ever suggested that McGhee and McWilliams applied to some employment discrimination actions but not to others.

Moreover, the fact that decisions preceding McGhee and McWilliams established that damages for emotional harm fall within the ambit of compensatory damages under § 1981, see e.g., Garner v. Giarrusso, 571 F.2d 1330, 1339 (5th Cir.1978); McCrary v. Runyon, 515 F.2d 1082, 1089 (4th Cir.1975), affirmed on other grounds, 427 U.S. 160, 96 S.Ct. 2586, 49 L.Ed.2d 415 (1976), fully supports a reading that McGhee's and McWilliams' applicability to all § 1981 employment discrimination cases involving claims for "actual damages" and "other remedies" encompassed actions involving emotional and other compensatory harm. See McWilliams, 658 F.2d at 330. Likewise, the application of a two-year statute of limitations to § 1981 employment discrimination cases involving punitive damage claims, id., equally demonstrates this Circuit's prior unequivocal application of Florida's wage claim limitations statute to actions involving the type of intentional, willful, and wanton discriminatory conduct which Plaintiffs have alleged here.

Even assuming that an exception theoretically existed when Plaintiffs filed suit that would have called for application of tort-like statutes of limitations in Florida for tort-like § 1981 employment claims, the little authority which does exist uniformly suggests that Plaintiffs' case would have been undeserving of such exceptional treatment.

It must be conceded that Plaintiffs' claims of emotional anguish and "racial defamation" are only peripherally related to their case. Plaintiffs have not, for instance, brought any state law intentional tort claims against the Defendants to address these harms specifically. Moreover, Count II, the § 1981 count, expressly alleges only that Defendants "intentionally deprived plaintiffs and their class of their rights to make contracts of employment," Third Amended Complaint at para. XIX, "discriminated against plaintiffs and their class," id., "denied plaintiffs and their class equal employment opportunity," id., and rendered Plaintiffs "unable to enforce their employment contracts as white persons." Id. at XX. Plaintiffs' Prayer for Relief under Count II seeks compensatory and punitive damages, but makes no specific mention of damages for mental anguish.

Though Plaintiffs can recover under § 1981 for humiliation and emotional distress as a measure of their claim for compensatory damages, Stallworth v. Shuler, 777 F.2d 1431, 1435 (11th Cir.1985), it is clear that the overwhelming focus of their claims for compensatory relief is on the economic harm suffered from Defendants' alleged employment discrimination. Of the few § 1981 or employment discrimination cases of which the court is aware where a party argued for establishing a limitations period based on the plaintiff's alleged emotional harm or defamatory harm — cases which were established law by the time Plaintiffs filed suit — such arguments were rejected as implicating harm entirely too peripheral to the plaintiff's claims of economic discrimination. In Meyers v. Pennypack Woods Home Ownership Ass'n, 559 F.2d 894 (3rd Cir.1977), for instance, the Third Circuit rejected application of a defamation or intentional infliction of emotional distress statute of limitations to the plaintiff's § 1981 claim. The court reasoned that:

Plaintiff's complaint may peripherally encompass the emotional or psychic injury which he may have suffered, but its averments are directed to a specific concrete injury.... Plaintiff complains not so much from an emotional or mental trauma as he does from the actual denial of his right to lawfully pursue his business, employment, or personal affairs.

Id. at 901-02.³ See also McNutt v. Duke Precision Dental & Orthodontic Laboratories, 698 F.2d 676, 679 (4th Cir.1983) (rejecting alleged defamation as proper basis for determining applicable statute of limitations for plaintiff's § 1981 claims where focus of complaint concerned "discriminatory discharge following discriminatory harassment in employment"); Webster v. Great American Ins. Co., 544 F.Supp. 609, 612 n. 3 (E.D.Pa.1982) (...