Tomei v. Parkwest Med. Ctr.

• Decision Date: 18 January 2022
• Docket Number: No. 21-5448,21-5448
• Citation: 24 F.4th 508
• Parties: Scott Allen TOMEI, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. PARKWEST MEDICAL CENTER; Covenant Health, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

24 F.4th 508

Scott Allen TOMEI, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.PARKWEST MEDICAL CENTER; Covenant Health, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 21-5448

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: December 7, 2021

Decided and Filed: January 18, 2022

ARGUED: Broderick L. Young, ARNETT, DRAPER & HAGOOD, LLP, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellants. Andrew Rozynski, EISENBERG & BAUM LLP, New York, New York, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Broderick L. Young, Devin P. Lyon, Paul E. Wehmeier, ARNETT, DRAPER & HAGOOD, LLP, Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellants. Andrew Rozynski, David John Hommel, Reyna Lubin, EISENBERG & BAUM LLP, New York, New York, for Appellee.

Before: BOGGS, THAPAR, and BUSH, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

THAPAR, Circuit Judge.

The plaintiff, Scott Tomei, sued Parkwest Hospital and Covenant Health for discrimination under the Affordable Care Act. But Parkwest says Tomei's suit is dead on arrival because it's time-barred. We disagree.

I.

Scott Tomei went to the hospital after he fell and hurt his foot and leg.¹ He is deaf and communicates using American Sign Language (ASL). So when he arrived, he asked for an interpreter. But the hospital—Parkwest—never provided one. Medical staff simply x-rayed his knee, gave him an antibiotic and ibuprofen

, and sent him home.

But the medication didn't help. Tomei's pain got worse. So two days later he went to the emergency room, where doctors determined he had blood clots

in his leg. The doctors sent him back to Parkwest in an ambulance and requested that Parkwest provide an interpreter for Tomei. Yet when he arrived, Parkwest refused. Instead, the hospital offered a Video Remote Interpreting device, which promised to connect Tomei with an off-site interpreter via webcam. But the hospital's firewall made the connection so glitchy that Tomei couldn't effectively communicate.

A Parkwest doctor performed surgery for his blood clots

. Afterward, Tomei continued to suffer from "intense burning and pins-and-needles pains." R. 1, Pg. ID 6. But without an interpreter, he couldn't tell the medical staff about what he was experiencing. And even when the pain became so unbearable that Tomei was screaming in agony, Parkwest refused him an interpreter. After a few nights at the hospital, the doctors sent Tomei home. He was sedated, and his foot was "blue." Id.

The next day, two medical staff from Covenant Health visited Tomei for a physical therapy appointment. But his foot was in such bad shape that they couldn't complete the physical therapy. So they called Tomei's doctor at Parkwest, who advised that Tomei should schedule an appointment with his family doctor.

Tomei's family doctor sent him to another hospital—the University of Tennessee Medical Center. There, a different story unfolded: The hospital immediately provided Tomei with in-person interpreters. The interpreters helped him through a second surgery for his blood clots

(less than one week after his surgery at Parkwest).

But Tomei's condition didn't improve. Doctors amputated nearly one third of his leg. The staff at the new hospital told him through an interpreter that the amputation could have been avoided if he had come to them earlier. This was news to him: Neither Parkwest nor Covenant Health had told Tomei that there was any chance he'd lose his leg.

About fifteen months after he was first denied an interpreter at Parkwest, Tomei sued. He claimed that the defendants, Parkwest and Covenant Health (collectively, Parkwest), had violated § 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). The defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that Tomei waited too long to sue. They say his suit is time-barred. Why? Because they contend that Tennessee's one-year statute of limitations for personal-injury suits applies through the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The district court disagreed. It denied Parkwest's motion to dismiss and held that the standard federal statute of limitations—four years—applied instead. But it certified the question for an interlocutory appeal.

II.

Congress has set a default statute of limitations for federal causes of action. Unless federal law provides otherwise, a civil action "arising under" a federal statute enacted after December 1, 1990, is subject to a four-year statute of limitations. 28 U.S.C. § 1658(a). This presents two questions for us.

First, does Tomei's claim "arise under" a federal statute enacted after 1990? If it doesn't, we end the inquiry—the four-year statute of limitations doesn't apply, and Tomei's suit is untimely under the applicable state statute of limitations. If it does, we ask the second question: Does a federal statute otherwise provide a different statute of limitations?

Some background on the statutes at issue.² Tomei sued under the Affordable Care Act, alleging that Parkwest violated the ACA's nondiscrimination provision by failing to accommodate his disability. That provision bars certain health-related programs from discriminating on the grounds "prohibited under" the Rehabilitation Act. 42 U.S.C. § 18116(a) (referencing 29 U.S.C. § 794 ). It also incorporates "[t]he enforcement mechanisms provided for and available under" the Rehabilitation Act's own nondiscrimination provision. Id. Courts interpreting the latter provision, which was enacted before 1990, have held the law borrows state statutes of limitations. See McCormick v. Miami Univ. , 693 F.3d 654, 662–63 (6th Cir. 2012).

Thus, the fate of Tomei's claim depends on which statute of limitations applies. If the Rehabilitation Act's borrowed statute of limitations applies—here, Tennessee's one-year personal-injury statute of limitations—Tomei's suit is untimely. But if the standard federal four-year statute of limitations applies, his suit may proceed.

A.

Turning to the first question: Does Tomei's claim "arise under" the ACA, which was enacted in 2010, or the Rehabilitation Act, enacted in 1973? To answer it, we look to the text. The ACA explains how it relates to the Rehabilitation Act. It adopts the Rehabilitation Act's prohibited ground for discrimination (disability) and its enforcement mechanisms. And it does so to prescribe the relevant standards governing "violations of this subsection ." 42 U.S.C. § 18116(a) (emphasis added). In specifically identifying violations of the ACA's nondiscrimination provision, the statutory language tells us that violations of that section of the ACA are different from violations of the Rehabilitation Act. The ACA does not, for example, direct litigants to file claims under the Rehabilitation Act itself. Nor does it authorize "Rehabilitation Act claims" for a new set of parties, or amend the Rehabilitation Act in any way. Rather, it cross-references the Rehabilitation Act while creating a new law with its own violations.

This reading reflects our familiar jurisdictional "arising under" inquiry. See 28 U.S.C. § 1331. In general, a "suit arises under the law that creates the cause of action." Am. Well Works Co. v. Layne & Bowler Co. , 241 U.S. 257, 260, 36 S.Ct. 585, 60 L.Ed. 987 (1916). Dictionaries confirm this understanding. To arise means to "originate" or "spring up" from something. Arise , Black's Law Dictionary (6th ed. 1990); see also Jones v. R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. , 541 U.S. 369, 382–83, 124 S.Ct. 1836, 158 L.Ed.2d 645 (2004). So we ask which statute grounds Tomei's action.

Tomei brings his cause of action under the ACA—not the Rehabilitation Act. Indeed, he alleges that Parkwest violated the ACA's nondiscrimination provision—not the Rehabilitation Act's. And he seeks to recover under the ACA—not the Rehabilitation Act. In short, Tomei's claim "arises under" the ACA.

Parkwest resists this conclusion by pointing to the Supreme Court's decision in Jones , which interpreted the general statute of limitations' "arising under" language to require that a new law "ma[kes] possible" the plaintiff's claim. 541 U.S. at 382, 124 S.Ct. 1836 ; Appellants' Br. at 22. As Parkwest sees it, if Tomei could have brought his claim under the Rehabilitation Act, his suit doesn't arise under the ACA.

But Parkwest misses the point. To be sure, a litigant like Tomei may have been able to sue under the Rehabilitation Act before Congress enacted the ACA's nondiscrimination provision. But that does not mean the ACA didn't still make this suit possible. We rely on the claim the plaintiff is bringing—not hypothetical claims he could have chosen instead. And here, Tomei made a choice: He sued under the ACA.

Examining Jones in context also shows how Parkwest's reliance on the case is flawed. Jones asked whether the general four-year statute of limitations applied to a Civil Rights Act suit "made possible" by a post-1990 amendment to that law. 541 U.S. at 382, 124 S.Ct. 1836. The Supreme Court held that it did, because "[a]n amendment to an existing statute is no less an ‘Act of Congress’ than a new, stand-alone statute." Id. at 381, 124 S.Ct. 1836 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1658). The "made possible" inquiry on which Parkwest hangs its hat was designed for use in the statutory-amendment context. If an amendment to an existing law is the reason a plaintiff can sue (in other words, makes the suit possible), then the suit arises under that amendment. But if the plaintiff could have sued under that law before the amendment, then the suit arises under the original statute.³ All that is immaterial here. There is no amendment to parse—Tomei's use of a new statute with its own cause of action itself answers the question.

Counting Tomei's claim as an ACA claim makes practical sense, too. Under Parkwest's broad reading of Jones , prospective plaintiffs couldn't simply sue under the federal law where they find a cause of action. Instead, they would have to research whether any other law could provide a cause of action for the same injury—just to discern the statute of limitations that applies to the suit. Indeed, that task might even mean "rattling through dusty attics of ancient writs" to see if an old common-law cause of action exists. Chauffeurs,...