Rodriguez-Garcia v. Municipality of Caguas

• Decision Date: 07 January 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-1493.,03-1493.
• Citation: 354 F.3d 91
• Parties: Carmen L. RODRÍGUEZ-GARCÍA, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. MUNICIPALITY OF CAGUAS; Hon. William Miranda-Marín, as Mayor of Caguas and in his personal capacity; Wilfredo Puig, as Vice Mayor of Caguas and in his personal capacity, Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

354 F.3d 91

Carmen L. RODRÍGUEZ-GARCÍA, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. MUNICIPALITY OF CAGUAS; Hon. William Miranda-Marín, as Mayor of Caguas and in his personal capacity; Wilfredo Puig, as Vice Mayor of Caguas and in his personal capacity, Defendants, Appellees.

No. 03-1493.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard November 3, 2003.

Decided January 7, 2004.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Godwin Aldarondo-Girald, with whom Aldarondo Girald Law Office was on brief, for appellant.

Kenneth Colon for appellees William Miranda-Marín and Wilfredo Puig.

Grisselle Gonzalez-Negron, with whom Faccio & Pabon-Roca and Luis E. Pabon-Roca were on brief, for appellee Municipality of Caguas.

Before TORRUELLA, LYNCH, and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.

LYNCH, Circuit Judge.

The American common law rule is that generally the filing of a prior judicial action does not toll the statute of limitations. Puerto Rico has chosen a different rule, permitting such tolling. That rule gives rise to this appeal.

The federal civil rights claims brought by Carmen L. Rodríguez-García, a terminated public employee, were not timely unless they were saved by tolling based on an earlier complaint that she filed in the courts of Puerto Rico and later amended. Her claims are tolled only if either her original or her amended complaint in the Puerto Rico courts was timely and stated causes of action identical to those in her later federal complaint. In our federal system of justice built on both federal and state or Commonwealth courts, this case raises interesting questions about the meaning of the "identicality" requirement. Given the generalized pleading rules and the latitude of Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), it is not always easy to tell whether identical claims are stated in different complaints. Here, the district court thought that the claims were not identical and so dismissed the complaint. Mindful of generous pleading rules and Puerto Rico's liberal approach to relation-back rules, we reach the opposite conclusion and reinstate the case.

I.

On October 25, 2000, Rodríguez-García brought suit in Puerto Rico Superior Court in Caguas against the Municipality of Caguas, through its mayor William Miranda-Marín; Luisa Flores, in her capacity as Director of the Department of Beautification, Cleaning, and Urbanism and in her personal capacity; and XYZ Insurance Company. The complaint alleged the following facts.

Rodríguez-García was an executive secretary at the Department of Beautification, Cleaning, and Urbanism of the Municipality of Caguas in Puerto Rico. She was assigned to Flores, who was the Director of the Department. Flores came under investigation by the Office of Government Ethics, and Rodríguez-García testified in that investigation. During January and February of 2000, Rodríguez-García applied to the State Insurance Fund for medical treatment for an emotional condition caused by Flores's "uncouth and rude" behavior toward her. When Rodríguez-García returned to work on February 22, 2000, Wilfredo Puig, vice-mayor of Caguas, informed her that she had been transferred and ordered her to report to the Department of Education. He told her that Flores was under investigation by the Office of Government Ethics and that Rodríguez-García was being transferred because Flores did not feel comfortable working with her.

On February 24, 2000, Rodríguez-García reported to the Department of Education but was told that there was no physical space for her there. She was sent to the Human Resources Office, where director Armando Meléndez told her to go home until a post was found for her. Several days later, Meléndez called Rodríguez-García and instructed her to report to the Human Resources Office and then go to work at the Office of Federal Funds and Affairs. On February 28, when Rodríguez-García went to the Human Resources Office, Meléndez's secretary handed her a letter addressed to the director of the Office of Federal Funds and Affairs. The letter described Rodríguez-García's placement in that office as temporary and referred to her transfer as a move that she had requested. Rodríguez-García informed Meléndez and Puig that she had not requested this transfer. The next day, Rodríguez-García was nonetheless transferred to the Office of Federal Funds and Affairs. No duties were assigned to her there.

On March 8, 2000, Rodríguez-García's attorney sent a letter to Mayor Miranda-Marín requesting that he reinstate Rodríguez-García to her previous post. In a letter dated March 27, 2000, Eileen Herrero, Director of Human Resources for the Municipality of Caguas, replied that if Rodríguez-García wished to be reassigned to her original post, she would be. But then Leslie Rodríguez, Acting Director of the Human Resources Office, met with Flores, who refused to reinstate Rodríguez-García, and Rodríguez-García was not reinstated.

Based on these factual allegations, the complaint asserted that Rodríguez-García had been transferred in retaliation for her statement before the Office of Government Ethics, and that such a retaliatory transfer violated 29 P.R. Laws Ann. § 194a, which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees for providing testimony, statements, or information before a legislative, administrative, or judicial forum in Puerto Rico. The complaint also alleged that "plaintiff's transfer was illegal, arbitrary, whimsical, violates plaintiff's constitutional rights, such as the due process of law, procedural as well as substantive, and violates her record to ownership and to her dignity as a person" (emphasis added). The complaint did not specify whether these constitutional claims were based on the Puerto Rico Constitution or the United States Constitution. Nor did the complaint expressly refer to political discrimination or the right to freedom of speech or affiliation. Rodríguez-García sought damages and injunctive relief reinstating her.

On August 31, 2001, Rodríguez-García amended her complaint. The amended complaint dropped Flores, who had passed away, as a defendant. It also included several new allegations. The amended complaint alleged that the Municipality of Caguas and Mayor Miranda-Marín refused to reinstate Rodríguez-García to her position because she had offered information harmful to the Popular Democratic Party (PDP). It also alleged that Flores remarked that she had no confidence in Rodríguez-García because Rodríguez-García was not a member of the PDP and wanted to harm the party. The amended complaint further alleged that Rodríguez-García was "charged of not being a PDP'er (`belonging to the Popular Democratic Party') and this constitutes a[n act of] political discrimination" (emphasis added).

On November 7, 2001, Rodríguez-García filed a complaint in federal district court in Puerto Rico against the Municipality of Caguas and against Mayor Miranda-Marín and Vice-Mayor Puig in their personal and official capacities. This federal complaint alleged that Rodríguez-García had been discriminated against "because of her political beliefs ... and in reprisal for providing information to the Ethics Office regarding an investigation of the Municipality['s] political affairs." The complaint sought relief under the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution; 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, and 1985; Article II §§ 1, 6, and 7 of the Puerto Rico Constitution; the general tort laws of Puerto Rico, 31 P.R. Laws Ann. §§ 5141 and 5142; and the public policy exception to 29 P.R. Laws Ann. § 185a, see Negrón v. Caleb Brett U.S.A., Inc., 212 F.3d 666, 667 (1st Cir.2000). The complaint sought injunctive relief, damages, attorneys' fees and costs, and a declaratory judgment. In addition to repeating the facts alleged in the amended state complaint, the federal complaint added allegations that the defendants acted intentionally or with deliberate indifference and that Mayor Miranda-Marín and Vice-Mayor Puig approved or ratified the discrimination against Rodríguez-García under color of law. Furthermore, while the original state complaint alleged violations of Rodríguez-García's constitutional rights, such as due process, and her right to record of ownership, the federal complaint replaced this language with allegations that the defendants violated Rodríguez-García's right to "freedom of speech and affiliation."

Two days after filing the federal complaint, Rodríguez-García filed a voluntary dismissal without prejudice of her claims in the Puerto Rico courts. Most likely, that was because jury trials in civil cases are available in federal court but not in the Commonwealth courts. See Grajales-Romero v. American Airlines, Inc., 194 F.3d 288, 293 (1st Cir.1999). On October 4, 2002, the defendants moved for summary judgment in the federal case, arguing that the federal complaint was time-barred because it was filed after the applicable statute of limitations had expired. They also argued in their motion for summary judgment that Rodríguez-García had failed to establish a cognizable claim for political discrimination, that the individual defendants were entitled to qualified immunity, and that §§ 1981 and 1985 do not apply to political discrimination.

On March 12, 2003, the district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment based on the timeliness issue. The court determined that the plaintiff's federal claims borrow Puerto Rico's one-year statute of limitations for tort claims and that Rodríguez-García's November 7, 2001 complaint was untimely because it was filed more than one year after her February 29, 2000 transfer. The court held that the limitations period was not tolled by Rodríguez-García's filing of her state complaint on October 25, 2000. The court noted that the federal claims borrow Puerto Rico law as to tolling, that 31 P.R. Laws Ann. § 5303 provides that the limitations period is "interrupted by [the] institution [of actions] before the courts," and that Rodríguez-García had filed a...