Sullivan v. LaMunyon
| Decision Date | 05 October 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 80-1897,83-1256.,80-1897 |
| Citation | 572 F. Supp. 753 |
| Parties | Jimmy W. SULLIVAN, Plaintiff, v. Richard LaMUNYON, Chief of Police, Wichita, Kansas, Police Department; Vern Miller, District Attorney of Sedgwick County, Kansas; and The City of Wichita, Kansas, Defendants. Elsie Dee WINTER, Plaintiff, v. SEDGWICK COUNTY, Kansas; Jonnie Darr; Sam Davison; John Monahan; Lyman Reese; Richard Gadberry; and Jerry King, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Kansas |
Jimmy W. Sullivan, Robert L. Mitchell, Wichita, Kan., for Jimmy W. Sullivan.
H.E. Jones, John Dekker, Wichita, Kan., for City of Wichita, Kan.
Patrick L. Connolly, Miller, Connolly, Gribble & Parker, Wichita, Kan., for Vern Miller.
S.A. Issinghoff, Asst. City Atty., Wichita, Kan., for Richard LaMunyon.
Phelps-Chartered, Margie J. Phelps, Topeka, Kan., for Elsie Dee Winter.
Edward L. Keeley, Sedgwick County Counselor, Wichita, Kan., for Sedgwick County, Kan., Jonnie Darr, Sam Davison, John Monahan, Lyman Reese, Richard Gadberry and Jerry King.
These are civil rights cases. Sullivan's case is based on substantive violations of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Fourteenth Amendment, with jurisdiction predicated on 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1343(3). Winter's case is based on substantive violations of 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments, with jurisdiction predicated on 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1343(3). Both cases are before the Court on motions by the defendants to dismiss on the grounds that the applicable statutes of limitations expired before the complaints were filed. This opinion will deal only with the statute of limitations questions. Other matters properly before the Court in Sullivan's case will be dealt with in a separate opinion filed concurrently with this one.
Sullivan's pro se complaint was filed on November 24, 1980. Sullivan alleges that his constitutional rights were violated by acts of the defendants in the nature of false arrest, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution. According to the complaint, the acts on which this case is based began with Sullivan's arrest on December 5, 1978 and culminated with a verdict of not guilty of the crime charged on February 27, 1979, and reinstatement of federal parole on March 2, 1979.
Shortly after the complaint was filed, the defendants moved to dismiss on the ground that the applicable statute of limitations barred the suit. This Court overruled that motion in a four-page Memorandum and Order, filed October 1, 1981, holding that the three-year statute of limitations found at K.S.A. § 60-512(2) controlled the case.
Defendants City of Wichita and Richard LaMunyon renewed their motion to dismiss on September 20, 1982, by moving for summary judgment on the ground that the statute of limitations had expired. In support of this motion these defendants cited the recent case of Miller v. Overland Park, Kansas, 231 Kan. 557, 646 P.2d 1114 (1982), in which the Kansas Supreme Court applied the one-year statute of limitations found at K.S.A. § 60-514 to a case similar to this one.
Winter was employed as a law enforcement officer by the defendant Sedgwick County from 1975 until April 6, 1980, when she resigned. According to the complaint, Winter's job performance was exemplary, but she was nevertheless forced to resign because of sexual and racial harassment. She filed her complaint on March 16, 1983.
The defendants moved, on April 12, 1983, to dismiss on the ground that the statute of limitations had expired. The defendants argue that the two-year statute of limitations found at K.S.A. § 60-513 should control this case. Winter argues that either the three-year statute found at K.S.A. § 60-512 or the five-year statute found at K.S.A. § 60-511 should control.
These two actions are only the latest examples of a long line of troublesome cases concerning the appropriate statute of limitations to apply to civil rights cases. They are, however, typical of these statute of limitations disputes. Between the two cases, sixty pages of briefs are devoted to the statute of limitations question, exclusive of the briefs provided to the Court when the statute of limitations issue was originally raised in Sullivan's case. Even though both cases are predicated, at least in part, on § 1983, the limitations periods for which the parties argue are widely divergent, ranging from one year to five years.
As a preliminary matter, the Court would note that such heated disputes can only occur when the controlling law and the precedential case law interpretations of it are either nonexistent or confusing and contradictory. The particular question with which these cases are concerned is cursed on both counts. On the one hand, Congress, for some unarticulated reason, neglected to incorporate a statute of limitations into the statutory scheme presently codified at 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981-88.1 Thus, even though the federal protection of civil rights is a statutory area, there is no federal statute of limitations to which the civil rights statutes are subject. In this sense, the controlling law for these cases is nonexistent. On the other hand, the precedential case law in this area, on which both litigants and the courts must rely for guidance, is hopelessly confusing and contradictory.
The environment created by the lack of explicit statutory commandments and the irreconcilability of the case law precedents is, as might be expected, conducive to particularly chaotic and unprincipled motion-making. The lifeblood of these civil rights cases, instead of flowing through the merits of the disputes, is wholly diverted into the utterly unproductive area of which statute of limitations to apply. As a consequence, the substantive charges often wither from neglect. A tremendous amount of resources, both on the part of litigants and the court system, is frittered away in what amounts to nothing more than a glorified exercise in conceptual futility. This Court can perceive no element of principled decisionmaking that is served by these disputes or by their detailed resolution. The ends of justice would be immeasurably better served by a single bright-line test in the form of a single, uniform statute of limitations to be applied to all actions under §§ 1981-88, providing to litigants, lawyers, and the courts alike a predictable limitations period engendering few disputes that could be easily and economically resolved.
Of course, the best means to achieve this goal lies not with the courts, but with the United States Congress. An explicit federal statute of limitations passed by Congress and signed by the President for civil rights cases would clearly settle the matter. Absent that, the next-best solution would be an opinion from the United States Supreme Court that establishes a uniform nationwide period of limitations. The third-best solution, at least from this Court's perspective, would be an en banc opinion from the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that establishes a uniform period of limitations. Absent that, there is no solution, because the problem itself is the fragmented, unpredictable, and wasteful case-by-case analysis currently performed by the United States District Courts in this Circuit. Because neither Congress nor the Supreme Court has seen fit to remedy a situation that has now become intolerable, this Court sees no alternative but to raise a plaintive plea to the Tenth Circuit to establish a just, fair, and workable uniform limitation period for civil rights cases. This opinion is such a plea.
No one disputes that Congress has failed to provide an explicit statute of limitations applicable to the civil rights statutes, or that this Court is obligated, under that circumstance, to apply the most appropriate limitations period provided by state law. See Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160, 96 S.Ct. 2586, 49 L.Ed.2d 415 (1976); Johnson v. Railway Express, Inc., 421 U.S. 454, 95 S.Ct. 1716, 44 L.Ed.2d 295 (1975); Chattanooga Foundry and Pipe Works v. City of Atlanta, 203 U.S. 390, 27 S.Ct. 65, 51 L.Ed. 241 (1906); Campbell v. City of Haverhill, 155 U.S. 610, 15 S.Ct. 217, 39 L.Ed. 280 (1895). It is the method by which the "most appropriate" period is to be selected, and, of course, the particular period itself, that are disputed in these cases.
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