Earlier this week, the Fourth Circuit released an unpublished per curiam opinion in Zeno v. United States that affirms the dismissal of claims under the FTCA and state law. The Fourth Circuit held that the FTCA claims were filed late and that the state claims were barred by collateral estoppel. The panel that issued the per curiam opinion consisted of Judges Duncan and Agee, and Senior Judge Keith (of the Sixth Circuit).
One part of the ruling that may have benefited from additional elaboration was the discussion of the dismissal of the FTCA claims. The district court dismissed the FTCA claims for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction upon concluding that the plaintiffs alleged only intentional torts. The Fourth Circuit did not address this basis of the district court’s opinion, but instead affirmed on the alternative ground that the claims were filed too late. The panel treated this late filing as a defect in subject-matter jurisdiction. By doing so, the panel avoided the need to address whether the federal government’s motion to dismiss for untimeliness, filed just one week before oral argument, was itself untimely.
The Fourth Circuit relied on circuit precedent, Gould v. United States, 905 F.2d 738 (4th Cir. 1990) (en banc), that treats filing outside of the FTCA statute of limitations as a jurisdictional defect. The Gould decision, however, predates a series of cases in the past several years in which the Supreme Court has reconsidered the “jurisdictionality” of various rules.
I have not undertaken extensive independent research, but this analysis by Adam Bain (Senior Counsel, Environmental Torts Section, Torts Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice) indicates that, as of November 2010, the circuits were split on the jurisdictionality of the FTCA statute of limitations. The closest on-point Supreme Court precedent appears to be John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, 552 U.S. 130 (2008). In John R. Sand, the Supreme Court held that the statute of limitations for bringing claims against the United States in the United States Court of Federal Claims was jurisdictional.
It very well could be that a thorough analysis of the continuing viability of Gould in light of intervening Supreme Court jurisdictionality precedent (or even some quick research identifying a controlling precedent containing such analysis) would reveal that the panel’s decision to treat the FTCA statute of limitations as jurisdictional was correct. But the casual invocation of Gould appears to be too quick.
It is obviously much easier, as an academic observer, to suggest that more analysis would have been helpful, than it is to decide, as a judge, how much analysis to provide. But when a court of appeals affirms on alternate grounds, and particularly when the decision on the alternate ground lets the government off the hook for a late-filed claim of untimeliness, an in-depth analysis would appear to be particularly warranted. Because those more familiar with the case could have had many reasons for concluding otherwise, I flag the jurisdictionality issue more for the purpose of bringing attention to the issue going forward than to second-guess this particular decision looking backward.
An examination of this issue by the Fourth Circuit may be warranted in an appropriate case. A quick search as I was writing this post revealed a thorough discussion of the jurisdictionality of the FTCA statute of limitations in an opinion by Magistrate Judge Auld of the Middle District of North Carolina issued this past Friday in Smith v. United States. The issue in that case is the availability of equitable tolling, not waiver or forfeiture by the government through an untimely raising of the statute of limitations, but the “jurisdictionality” characterization is important to both analyses. Guidance from the Fourth Circuit on this issue could have obviated the need for such an extensive legal analysis.
hi Ronald Podolsky here, attorney….constitutional law…argued before supreme court twice….please note that in henderson v sinisceki, march 11,2011 the u.s. supreme court held that the statute of limitations is an affirmative defense and should not be misbranded as jurisdictional…in October in there was a summary grant of certiorari and summary reversal in Trues v sensicki based on Henderson. I am currently handling a case in 2d circuit where district court dismissed an ftca case on the grounds that the statute of limitations is jurisdictional, when in fact it is an affirmative defense and certain cases are subject to case specfic extensions such as medical malpractice under U.S. v Kubrick. I expect the case to eventually wind up in supreme court….i argued there twice with good results…google me. zubeey at aol.com
Good luck with your Second Circuit appeal. The treatment of the FTCA SOL as jurisdictional has comfortably co-existed for a while with the recognition that SOLs generally are an affirmative defense. It will be interesting to see if any of the more recent jurisdictionality precedents are understood to require a different conclusion.