RodrÍguez v. Municipality of San Juan

• Decision Date: 20 October 2011
• Docket Number: No. 09–1769.,09–1769.
• Citation: 32 IER Cases 1770,659 F.3d 168
• Parties: Emma Velázquez RODRÍGUEZ; Ricardo Ríos, Plaintiffs, Appellants,v.MUNICIPALITY OF SAN JUAN; Jorge Santini, Mayor of San Juan, in his official and personal capacities; Zenaida Díaz, former Assistant to the Mayor of San Juan, in her official and personal capacities; John Doe; Jane Doe, Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

659 F.3d 168

32 IER Cases 1770

Emma Velázquez RODRÍGUEZ; Ricardo Ríos, Plaintiffs, Appellants,

v.MUNICIPALITY OF SAN JUAN; Jorge Santini, Mayor of San Juan, in his official and personal capacities; Zenaida Díaz, former Assistant to the Mayor of San Juan, in her official and personal capacities; John Doe; Jane Doe, Defendants, Appellees.

No. 09–1769.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard Nov. 1, 2010.Decided Oct. 20, 2011.

Carlos M. Sánchez La Costa for appellants.Ricardo Pascual–Villaronga, with whom Mercado & Soto, PSC was on brief, for appellee Municipality of San Juan.Michael Craig McCall, with whom Eliezer Aldarondo–Ortiz and Aldarondo & López Bras, PSC were on brief, for appellee Jorge Santini.Antonio Montalvo Nazario, with whom ´Angel A. Valencia–Aponte was on brief, for appellee Zenaida Díaz.Before TORRUELLA, LEVAL,^* and THOMPSON, Circuit Judges.THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.

PRELUDE

As Ricardo Ríos tells it, his professional life as a purchasing officer for the municipality of San Juan became a nightmare when Jorge Santini became San Juan's mayor in 2001. Ríos is an ardent supporter of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP). Santini belongs to a rival political party, the New Progressive Party (NPP). So does Zenaida Díaz, Ríos's one-time supervisor. Santini, Díaz, and other NPP operatives there pursued a purely political vendetta against him, Ríos says, doing things like diminishing his responsibilities, paying him less than similarly situated colleagues, taunting him about his colon cancer, and menacing him with strange comments and gestures— e.g., during a May 2006 political rally Santini screamed at Ríos, “You are alone and I am going to cut your head off,” and then ran a finger across his throat, which led Ríos to file a complaint with the police. Building to a crescendo, Ríos contends that NPP-clique members falsely accused him of disciplinary infractions as a trumped-up excuse to fire him in July 2006 for his political leanings and for his speaking out on matters of public concern ( e.g., his telling others about Santini's sub-par job performance and the frightening encounter at the May 2006 rally)—making sure, of course, to rig the pre-termination hearing to reach a predetermined conclusion.¹

As Santini and Díaz tell it, Ríos was a nightmare employee—a vulgar person who routinely humiliated and terrorized coworkers and supervisors alike, by word and action. Arrogant and defiant, Ríos, they say, lied through his teeth about Santini's shouting and throat-slashing motion at the May 2006 rally. Ríos, not Santini, was the real villain, they insist. Giving Santini the middle finger, Ríos yelled, “You are going down.” No one bought Ríos's story, they quickly add, because, after an investigation, prosecutors found no reason to charge Santini with anything. Ríos had a record of disciplinary problems as long as the proverbial arm, but everyone always treated him above-board, all the way through the pre-termination hearing and firing—or so their argument goes.

PROCEEDINGS

Convinced that he had been let go because of his PDP membership and his exercise of free-speech rights, Ríos and his domestic partner, Emma Velázquez Rodríguez, filed this federal-court suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.² Having apparently lived together since 2000, the two consider themselves married for all intents and purposes, though no one has officially married them. No party has made anything of this, and so we follow their lead, treating her claims as derivative of his and referring to him as if he were the only plaintiff.

Skipping over non-essentials, Ríos first sued the municipality, Santini, and two unnamed defendants in April 2007, alleging that his dismissal offended the First Amendment—a catch-all covering Count 1's claims of political harassment, discrimination, and retaliation. He also alleged that his firing infracted the Fourteenth Amendment—an umbrella encompassing Count 2's procedural-due-process and Count 3's equal-protection claims. Invoking the district court's supplemental jurisdiction, he also asserted claims arising under local law in Counts 4 (negligence) and 5 (retaliatory employment discrimination). He later filed a notice voluntarily dismissing that complaint without prejudice, which the district judge noted in June 2007. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 41(a)(1).

In August 2007 Ríos filed a second complaint, which was identical in all relevant respects to the first. He then amended that complaint in January 2008, adding Díaz as a defendant and a separate free-speech-retaliation count against all defendants. That count became Count 2, with the old Count 2 renumbered 3, the old Count 3 renumbered 4, and so on.

A word about Ríos's pleading style is appropriate. As pled, the political-retaliation component of Count 1 pivots off his contention that defendants fired him to retaliate for (a) his political affiliation and (b) his protected-speech activity. Allegation (a) is subsumed in Count 1's political-discrimination claim. Allegation (b) is subsumed in Count 2's free-speech-retaliation claim. See generally Mercado–Berrios v. Cancel–Alegría, 611 F.3d 18, 22–26 (1st Cir.2010) (discussing the elements of each claim). And that is how we will deal with these allegations. See generally Alpine Bank v. Hubbell, 555 F.3d 1097, 1107–08 (10th Cir.2009) (explaining that courts cannot “rely solely on labels in a complaint” but instead must “probe deeper and examine the substance”) (quoting Minger v. Green, 239 F.3d 793, 799 (6th Cir.2001)) (internal quotation marks omitted); Minger, 239 F.3d at 799 (stressing that “the label which a plaintiff applies to a pleading does not determine the nature of the cause of action which he states”) (quoting United States v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 221 F.2d 698, 701 (6th Cir.1955)) (internal quotation marks omitted); 5 Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1286, at 748–50, 758 (3d ed.2004) (noting that courts must “make a determined effort to understand what the pleader is attempting to set forth and to construe the pleading in his or her favor, whenever the interest of justice so requires,” adding too that “[a] pleading will be judged by the quality of its substance rather than according to its form or label”) (footnotes omitted).

Now on to the rulings at issue here. After some discovery, the parties moved for summary judgment—Ríos on the due-process claim, and Santini, the municipality, and Díaz on the entire gamut of federal and state claims. The judge denied Ríos's motion and granted the defendants'. His reasoning ran this way:

Ríos complains about events that happened between January 2001 or so (when Santini became mayor) and July 2006 (when Ríos got fired), which triggered a statute-of-limitations protest from Santini and the municipality. A § 1983 claim is a federal claim, but the limitations period is drawn from state law—here, Puerto Rico's one-year statute of limitations for personal-injury actions. See, e.g., Centro Medico del Turabo, Inc. v. Feliciano de Melecio, 406 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir.2005). State-law tolling provisions apply too (unless they clash with federal interests, which is not the case here). See, e.g., Rodríguez–García v. Municipality of Caguas, 354 F.3d 91, 100 (1st Cir.2004). Under Puerto Rico law, the filing of a lawsuit tolls the limitations period. See, e.g., Rodríguez v. Suzuki Motor Corp., 570 F.3d 402, 407 (1st Cir.2009) (discussing P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 31, § 5303). If the plaintiff voluntarily dismisses the suit without prejudice, the limitations clock resets and “run[s] anew from th[at] date.” See Rodríguez–García, 354 F.3d at 96–97; accord Rodríguez, 570 F.3d at 407. Also, the earlier suit will toll the limitations period as to a later-filed suit if the two suits allege “identical” causes of action. See, e.g., Rodríguez, 570 F.3d at 409. And tolling a statute of limitations against one defendant tolls it against all “solidarily liable” defendants—“solidarily liable” is a civil-law concept that is a close cousin to the common-law doctrine of “joint and several liability.” Tokyo Marine & Fire Ins. Co., v. Pérez & Cía., de Puerto Rico, Inc., 142 F.3d 1, 4 & n. 1 (1st Cir.1998). Above and beyond all that, there is the continuing-violations doctrine, which (to oversimplify slightly) lets one put off suing until a series of acts by the future defendant “blossoms” into a wrongful “injury on which suit can be brought.” Pérez–Sánchez v. Public Bldg. Auth., 531 F.3d 104, 107 (1st Cir.2008) (quoting Morales–Tañon v. Puerto Rico Elec. Power Auth., 524 F.3d 15, 18 (1st Cir.2008)) (internal quotation marks omitted). One of the best examples happens to be a hostile-work-environment case “based on the cumulative effect of individual acts,” none of which is necessarily actionable on its own, that reveals itself over time, not “discrete discriminatory acts” that occur on a “particular day.” See Nat'l R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, 536 U.S. 101, 113, 115, 122 S.Ct. 2061, 153 L.Ed.2d 106 (2002).

Applying these principles, the judge concluded that Ríos's causes of action had to have arisen from events occurring between April 2006 and April 2007.³ Given this range, only claims tied to Ríos's May 2006 run-in with Santini and his later firing survived, the judge ruled. Ríos could not use the continuing-violation doctrine to get other events in beyond the limitations period, the judge added—each complained-of act was a separate actionable wrong. And Ríos's free-speech-retaliation count—which he unveiled for the first time in his January 2008 amended complaint—fell because it failed the identicality requirement when measured against his earlier, voluntarily-dismissed suit.

As for the merits, the judge tossed the political-discrimination and - harassment claims, finding that Ríos presented no evidence that Santini (a) knew Ríos's political affiliation, (b) abused Ríos or encouraged or tolerated Ríos's abuse, or (c) had a hand in...