Shay v. Walters

• Decision Date: 18 December 2012
• Docket Number: No. 12–1494.,12–1494.
• Parties: Nancy SHAY, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Barbara WALTERS, Defendant, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

702 F.3d 76

Nancy SHAY, Plaintiff, Appellant,

v.Barbara WALTERS, Defendant, Appellee.

No. 12–1494.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Dec. 18, 2012.

Mark Ellis O'Brien on brief for appellant.

Orin Snyder, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, William F. Benson, and Sugarman, Rogers, Barshak & Cohen, P.C. on brief for appellee.

Before TORRUELLA, SELYA and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This is a tort case that pits a Massachusetts woman who claims to have been wronged against a nationally known celebrity. Although the allegations of the plaintiff's complaint paint a poignant picture, we conclude—as did the district court—that the defendant is entitled to judgment on the pleadings. Accordingly, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Inasmuch as the district court decided this case by entering judgment on the pleadings, seeFed.R.Civ.P. 12(c), we rehearse the complaint's well-pleaded facts as if they were true, view those facts in the light most hospitable to the party opposing the motion (here, the plaintiff), and draw all reasonable inferences in that party's favor. R.G. Fin. Corp. v. Vergara–Nuñez, 446 F.3d 178, 182 (1st Cir.2006).

In the early 1980s, plaintiff-appellant Nancy Shay attended Wykeham Rise, a boarding school located in Washington, Connecticut. At the time (and presently), defendant-appellee Barbara Walters was a world-famous television personality and journalist. Her daughter Jackie attended Wykeham Rise. Jackie and the plaintiff cultivated a friendship. In 1983, the two young women engaged in conduct that resulted in the school suspending both of them. The plaintiff alleges that the reason for this disciplinary action was that the two women were found arm-in-arm in the plaintiff's bed.

In the aftermath of her suspension, the plaintiff alleges that she and the defendant spoke by telephone. As she recounts it, the defendant told her, “Don't say anything about this to anybody. You'll ruin your name. Never mind, you'll ruin my name and my daughter's name.”

The school expelled the plaintiff, but not Jackie, later that year. Following her expulsion, the plaintiff went into a “deep depression,” which led to substance abuse and emotional instability. She professes to have “generally lost her way” as her “life became a revolving door of rehabilitation centers, jails, and unhappiness.”

We fast-forward to the year 2008. At that time, the defendant published a memoir entitled Audition, which chronicled her life and career. Chapter 38 deals with the defendant's relationship with her daughter and focuses specifically on difficulties encountered during the latter's childhood. In this chapter, the defendant writes about her daughter's scholastic problems. Her manuscript includes a reference to a friend of her daughter's at Wykeham Rise named “Nancy” “whom the school kicked out midterm for bad behavior.” It explains that “[Nancy] and Jackie had been found in the nearby town, high on God-knows-what.” The defendant adds that, in the wake of the suspensions, she “told the school that Jackie was never to be allowed to visit [Nancy] again.”

When the plaintiff learned of these statements, she was living in Massachusetts. She filed suit for money damages against the defendant in a Massachusetts state court. The defendant, a citizen of New York, removed the case to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts based on diversity of citizenship and the existence of a controversy in the requisite amount. See28 U.S.C. §§ 1332, 1441.

The plaintiff's complaint contains three statements of claim. Count 1 alleges that the defendant tortiously interfered with the plaintiff's contract with Wykeham Rise by inducing the school to expel her. Count 2 alleges that the statements in Audition about her are defamatory. Count 3 asserts a claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress premised on the same statements.

The defendant answered the complaint. She then moved for judgment on the pleadings, seeFed.R.Civ.P. 12(c), contending that Count 1 was time-barred and that the remaining counts failed as a matter of law. The district court granted the motion. This timely appeal ensued.

II. ANALYSIS

The grant or denial of a motion for judgment on the pleadings engenders de novo review. Grajales v. P.R. Ports Auth., 682 F.3d 40, 44 (1st Cir.2012). “In conducting this review, we accept the truth of all well-pleaded facts and draw all reasonable inferences therefrom in the pleader's favor.” Id. Using this yardstick, we take the measure of the plaintiff's three claims.

Before proceeding further, we consider choice of law. As a federal court sitting in diversity jurisdiction, we are constrained to apply state substantive law. Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 78, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1938). Here, however, events relevant to the plaintiff's claims occurred in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and perhaps elsewhere (e.g., where Audition was published). Ordinarily, these variations would create some doubt as to which state's law applies. But the parties' briefs assume, albeit sub silentio, that Massachusetts law controls. “Where[ ] the parties have agreed about what law governs, a federal court sitting in diversity is free, if it chooses, to forgo independent [choice of law] analysis and accept the parties' agreement.” Borden v. Paul Revere Life Ins. Co., 935 F.2d 370, 375 (1st Cir.1991); accord Jones v. Secord, 684 F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir.2012). We follow that praxis here and proceed on the basis that the governing state law is the law of Massachusetts.

With this preface in place, we examine the three causes of action asserted by the plaintiff.

A. Tortious Interference.

In Massachusetts, there is a general three-year statute of limitations for tort actions. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 260, § 2A. “[T]he statute of limitations starts to run when an event or events have occurred that were reasonably likely to put the plaintiff on notice that someone may have caused her injury.” Bowen v. Eli Lilly & Co., 408 Mass. 204, 557 N.E.2d 739, 741 (1990). The doctrine of equitable tolling may postpone this date “if a plaintiff exercising reasonable diligence could not have discovered information essential to the suit.” Bernier v. Upjohn Co., 144 F.3d 178, 180 (1st Cir.1998) (citing Protective Life Ins. Co. v. Sullivan, 425 Mass. 615, 682 N.E.2d 624, 635 (1997)).

Wykeham Rise expelled the plaintiff in 1983. She did not file this suit until April of 2011 (more than twenty-seven years later). It is, therefore, obvious that, absent tolling, the suit is time-barred.

To bridge this temporal gap, the plaintiff labors to invoke equitable tolling. She argues that she had no notice of her injury until the 2008 publication of Audition, which she says made clear for the first time the defendant's motivations and potential involvement in her expulsion. The plaintiff insists that she was prevented from learning the truth earlier because of her alcoholism and the defendant's importuning to remain silent about what happened at Wykeham Rise.

This argument is unpersuasive. The plaintiff's complaint acknowledges that shortly after her expulsion from Wykeham Rise, a faculty member told her that her rights had been violated and offered her the services of an attorney who specialized in civil rights. The plaintiff knew of her injury (that is, her expulsion), and the faculty member's offer put the plaintiff squarely “on notice that someone may have caused her injury.” Bowen, 557 N.E.2d at 741. A reasonably diligent investigation would, at that point, have led to the discovery of information (to the extent that it exists) regarding the defendant's involvement in the expulsion.

The mitigating circumstances lamented by the plaintiff, while regrettable, do not relieve her from the burden of conducting a reasonable investigation. The weight of authority teaches that alcoholism is generally not a basis for equitable tolling. See51 Am.Jur.2d Limitations of Actions §§ 195, 209 (2011) (collecting cases); see also Andrews v. Arkwright Mut. Ins. Co., 423 Mass. 1021, 673 N.E.2d 40, 41 (1996) (holding that equitable tolling is available only when plaintiff is “excusably ignorant” or when defendant “affirmatively misled” plaintiff). Indeed, the plaintiff offers no authority for the proposition that alcoholism, without more, justifies tolling—and she does not embellish this claim in any meaningful way. By the same token, the defendant's plea for silence, if made, was simply that: a plea. It had no legal force and, in all events, it cannot be said to have prevented the plaintiff from discovering information “essential to the suit.” Bernier, 144 F.3d at 180. If anything, the plea might have given the plaintiff reason to suspect that the defendant was involved in her expulsion from Wykeham Rise.

Statutes of limitations are critically important in the due administration of justice. They should not lightly be discarded. In this case, we discern no error in the district court's determination that the statute of limitations must be honored and that, perforce, the plaintiff's tortious interference claim is time-barred.

B. Defamation.

We turn next to the plaintiff's defamation claim, which the district court rejected because the complaint did not allege the essential elements of such a claim.

To establish a defamation claim under Massachusetts law, four elements are required: (1) that “[t]he defendant made a statement, concerning the plaintiff, to a third party”; (2) that the statement was defamatory such that it “could damage the plaintiff's reputation in the community”; (3) that “[t]he defendant was at fault in making the statement”; and (4) that “[t]he statement either caused the plaintiff economic loss ... or is actionable without proof of economic loss.” Ravnikar v. Bogojavlensky, 438 Mass. 627, 782 N.E.2d 508, 510–11 (2003). In the case at hand, the district court found the second and third elements wanting.

The question of whether a statement is reasonably...