Martin v. Somerset County ( 2023 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 23-1021
YVONNE MARTIN, as personal representative of the Estate of Paul
McDonald,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
SOMERSET COUNTY ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE
[Hon. Nancy Torresen, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Kayatta, Selya, and Gelpí,
Circuit Judges.
Kristine C. Hanly, with whom Garmey Law was on brief, for
appellant.
Peter T. Marchesi, with whom Michael D. Lichtenstein and
Wheeler & Arey, P.A., were on brief, for appellees Somerset County
and related parties.
John J. Wall, III, with whom Monaghan Leahy, LLP was on brief,
for appellees Craig Meunier and Gerard Madore.
Benjamin J. Wahrer, with whom Thompson Bowie & Hatch LLC was
on brief, for appellees MedPro Associates and Cheryll Needham.
November 21, 2023
SELYA, Circuit Judge. On the six-year anniversary of
her son's death, plaintiff-appellant Yvonne Martin invoked 42
U.S.C. § 1983 and sued on behalf of his estate. She alleged a
deprivation of her late son's rights at the hands of jail staff
and a medical contractor. Specifically, she claimed that while
her son was detained in the Somerset County Jail, the defendants
failed to recognize his serious mental illness, leading to his
death after a suicide attempt. The district court — in two
separate orders — ruled that the suit was time-barred as to all
defendants. After careful consideration, we affirm.
I
We briefly rehearse the relevant facts and travel of the
case. Two dispositive orders are involved: one granting a motion
to dismiss and the other granting a pair of motions for judgment
on the pleadings. In reviewing both the grant of a motion to
dismiss and the grant of a motion for judgment on the pleadings,
we take as true the well-pleaded facts. See Álamo-Hornedo v. Puig,
745 F.3d 578, 579 (1st Cir. 2014); A.G. ex rel. Maddox v. Elsevier,
Inc., 732 F.3d 77, 79 (1st Cir. 2013).
A
Paul McDonald, whom we sometimes shall call "the
decedent," was arrested in Somerset County, Maine on July 2, 2015.
The arrest was for possession of drug paraphernalia in violation
of the conditions of his probation. After arresting officers found
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McDonald in an unresponsive state, they transported him to a local
hospital, where he was cleared medically and discharged later that
day. He was then taken to the Somerset County Jail.
During the booking procedure, jail staff identified
McDonald as a high suicide risk individual with over a dozen
recorded suicide attempts. McDonald rated his own suicide risk as
a ten out of ten. Jail staff ordered a suicide-risk assessment,
which was conducted by Cheryll Needham of MedPro Associates
(MedPro), a contract health-professional firm, on July 6, 2015.1
Based on the results of that assessment, McDonald was placed in a
smock and given special oversight while incarcerated.
The next day, Needham reexamined McDonald and made
another suicide-risk assessment. This time, Needham recommended
that McDonald wear regular clothing. A day later — on July 8 —
Needham cleared McDonald for release into the jail's general
population and recommended no further follow-up risk assessments.
Less than twenty-four hours later — on July 9 — McDonald
attempted suicide by hanging himself in his cell. For some unknown
reason, a corrections officer had failed to conduct a security
check of the area in which McDonald was housed. This failure left
For the most part, record references to Needham spell her
1
first name as "Cheryll." Even so, there are indications in the
record, including a facsimile of her signature that the correct
spelling of her name uses a single "l." In the interest of
uniformity, we use the spelling that predominates in the record.
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McDonald unsupervised in his cell for roughly ten minutes, during
which time he tied one end of a sheet to a window beam and the
other end to his neck. When jail staff approached McDonald's cell
for a medical check-in, they found him unconscious. The jail staff
performed chest compressions and rescue breaths, but to no avail.
Emergency medical personnel then returned McDonald to
the hospital. McDonald remained in a coma and never regained
consciousness. Medical scans confirmed that he had suffered severe
brain damage due to oxygen deprivation. On July 16 — ten days
after receiving his initial suicide-risk assessment and seven days
after his suicide attempt — McDonald died.
The plaintiff alleged that County officials conducted an
internal investigation into the circumstances of McDonald's death,
but the pleadings offer no further insight into either the scope
or the outcome of the investigation.
B
Six years later to the day — on July 16, 2021 — the
plaintiff, in her capacity as personal representative of
McDonald's estate, filed suit in the United States District Court
for the District of Maine. The complaint, which was premised upon
42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleged infringement of McDonald's Eighth and
Fourteenth Amendment rights.
MedPro and Needham were among the named defendants, and
they moved to dismiss the suit against them. See Fed. R. Civ. P.
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12(b)(6). They argued that the plaintiff's cause of action was
time barred and that, alternatively, the plaintiff failed to state
plausible claims against them. The district court granted the
motion to dismiss, concluding that the cause of action against
MedPro and Needham was time barred.
The plaintiff's suit also named as defendants Somerset
County, the County's sheriff, and a number of members of the jail
staff. Following the grant of MedPro's and Needham's motion to
dismiss, those defendants — who already had answered the complaint
— moved for judgment on the pleadings. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c).
Because two of the County defendants were independently
represented, two separate motions were filed. Both motions
asserted that the plaintiff's suit was untimely. The district
court agreed and granted their motions.2
This timely appeal ensued.
II
We review the grant of a motion to dismiss for failure
to state a claim de novo. See SEC v. Tambone, 597 F.3d 436, 441
(1st Cir. 2010) (en banc); Garita Hotel Ltd. P'ship v. Ponce Fed.
2 Although the plaintiff filed an opposition to the motion to
dismiss, she did not file oppositions to the motions for judgment
on the pleadings. The district court nonetheless treated the
motions for judgment on the pleadings as opposed. Treating the
motions as opposed was within the district court's discretion.
See Delgado v. Pawtucket Police Dep't, 668 F.3d 42, 50 (1st Cir.
2012) (explaining that "[d]istrict courts enjoy broad discretion
in managing their dockets").
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Bank, F.S.B., 958 F.2d 15, 17 (1st Cir. 1992). We take the well-
pleaded facts contained in the complaint as true and draw all
reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff's cause. See
Tambone, 597 F.3d at 441.
Reviewing a motion for judgment on the pleadings "bears
a strong family resemblance to [reviewing] a motion to dismiss."
Id. Once again, our review is de novo. Shay v. Walters, 702 F.3d
76, 79 (1st Cir. 2012). We take as true all well-pleaded facts in
the plaintiff's complaint, and we draw all reasonable inferences
to the plaintiff's behoof. Kando v. R.I. State Bd. of Elections,
880 F.3d 53, 58 (1st Cir. 2018). In addition to the well-pleaded
facts, we may also consider facts drawn from any documents that
were "fairly incorporated" in the complaint. Id. (quoting R.G.
Fin. Corp. v. Vergara-Nuñez, 446 F.3d 178, 182 (1st Cir. 2006)).
In the end, a judgment on the pleadings should be upheld as long
as the "facts conclusively establish that the movant is entitled
to the relief sought." Id. Entering a judgment on a motion to
dismiss or on a motion for judgment on the pleadings "based on a
limitations defense is entirely appropriate when the pleader's
allegations leave no doubt that an asserted claim is time-barred."
LaChapelle v. Berkshire Life Ins. Co., 142 F.3d 507, 509 (1st Cir.
1998).
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III
In the court below, the plaintiff offered two theories
as to why her suit was timely. First, she argued that the cause
of action could not have accrued until she had standing, that is,
until the date of the decedent's death. Second, she argued that
the running of the statute of limitations should be equitably
tolled. She rested this latter argument — without much elaboration
— mainly upon the "unique" facts of the case together with an
assertion that the causal connection between the defendants'
wrongful acts and the decedent's injury was not readily
ascertainable until the decedent's records were furnished to the
plaintiff.
The district court found neither ground sufficient to
warrant a finding of timeliness. Instead, the court concluded
that the suit was time-barred. The court proceeded to dismiss the
case as to some defendants and later entered judgment on the
pleadings in favor of all the remaining defendants.
IV
The plaintiff challenges the district court's rulings —
both on the motion to dismiss and on the motions for judgment on
the pleadings — that her claims were time-barred. We first examine
the anatomy of her challenge and then resolve it.
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A
Federal law creates a cause of action under 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983, which allows a plaintiff to sue persons acting under color
of state law for constitutional transgressions or other violations
of federal law. See Evans v. Avery, 100 F.3d 1033, 1036 (1st Cir.
1996). Even so, the limitations period for such an action is
borrowed from state law. See Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 387
(2007).
Here, the parties agree that the appropriate limitations
period for the plaintiff's section 1983 action is that specified
in Me. Stat. tit. 14, § 752, which prescribes that "[a]ll civil
actions shall be commenced within 6 years after the cause of action
accrues." Thus, if the plaintiff's cause of action accrued on the
date of the decedent's death (as she urges), her suit is not time-
barred: the plaintiff filed suit on July 16, 2021, which comes,
though barely, within six years of McDonald's death on July 16,
2015. But if the cause of action accrued on an earlier date when
the decedent first became aware or should have become aware of the
injury (as the defendants urge), the plaintiff's suit is time-
barred. And that is true regardless of whether the "earlier date"
is deemed to be July 8, 2015 (the date when Needham made the
negative suicide-risk assessment) or July 9, 2015 (the date when
McDonald hanged himself in his cell). We turn, then, to a
determination of the date of accrual.
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We start with the plaintiff's assertion that her section
1983 claim accrued when the decedent died. In support, the
plaintiff notes that under Maine's wrongful death statute, she had
standing to sue on McDonald's behalf only after he died and she
became the personal representative of his estate. Her cause of
action, she says, could not have accrued before she had standing
to bring it.
The plaintiff's view of the accrual date flies in the
teeth of existing precedent. "[T]he accrual date of a [section]
1983 cause of action is a question of federal law that is not
resolved by reference to state law." Wallace, 549 U.S. at 388(emphasis in original). Any aspect of a section 1983 claim that
is not governed by reference to a specific state law instead is
governed by federal common law principles. See id. "Under those
principles, . . . 'the standard rule [is] that [accrual occurs]
when the [injured party] has a complete and present cause of
action.'" Id. (second alteration in original) (quoting Bay Area
Laundry & Dry Cleaning Pension Tr. Fund v. Ferbar Corp. of Cal.,
522 U.S. 192, 201 (1997)). A cause of action becomes complete and
present on the date of knowledge of the injury. See Nieves v.
McSweeney, 241 F.3d 46, 52 (1st Cir. 2001). ("[A] section 1983
claim accrues at the moment the plaintiff knows, or has reason to
know, of the injury that is the basis for the claim.").
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To be sure, the parties disagree as to the date on which
the decedent had knowledge of the injury. On the one hand, the
plaintiff contends that this date should be when the effects of
the decedent's injury were fully felt, that is, the date that he
died. On the other hand, the defendants contend that this date
should be the date when the act that caused the injury occurred
(that is, either the date on which the decedent received an overly
optimistic suicide-risk assessment or the date on which McDonald's
suicide attempt occurred).
Precedent teaches that, in section 1983 cases, "[the]
plaintiff is deemed to know or have reason to know [of the injury]
at the time of the act itself and not at the point that the harmful
consequences are felt." Morán Vega v. Cruz Burgos, 537 F.3d 14,
20 (1st Cir. 2008) (quoting Guzman-Rivera v. Rivera-Cruz, 29 F.3d
3, 5 (1st Cir. 1994)). This means, of course, that the plaintiff's
position in this case is untenable. At the latest, knowledge of
the injury took place at the time of the decedent's suicide
attempt,3 not at the later time that the harmful consequences came
3 It is arguable whether the date of knowledge and, thus, the
accrual date was the date that the negative suicide-risk assessment
was made or the date of the suicide attempt. Cf. Brockman v. Tex.
Dep't of Crim. Just., 397 F. App'x 18, 22 (5th Cir. 2010)
(evaluating these alternatives and concluding that decedent
"should have known the quality of the [mental health] treatment he
was receiving [before his suicide]"). Here, however, that debate
is academic: whichever of these dates obtains, the plaintiff's
suit is time-barred.
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to full fruition, that is, the time of the decedent's demise. Even
assuming that the decedent was not — nor should have been — aware
of his injuries until that time, the plaintiff's filing date of
July 16, 2021, was beyond the six-year limitations period.
B
1
In the district court, the plaintiff made a cursory
argument that the limitations period should be equitably tolled.
She mentioned equitable tolling — a doctrine that empowers a court,
in appropriate circumstances, to extend the limitations period for
a particular action — and suggested that it should apply based on
the "unique fact pattern" of the case.
Although equitable tolling may be available in
"exceptional circumstances," Vistamar, Inc. v. Fagundo-Fagundo,
430 F.3d 66, 71 (1st Cir. 2005) (quoting Neverson v. Farquharson,
366 F.3d 32, 40 (1st Cir. 2004)), it is "the exception rather than
the rule," Delaney v. Matesanz, 264 F.3d 7, 14 (1st Cir. 2001).
To gain the assistance of the doctrine, a plaintiff must show "that
[s]he has been pursuing [her] rights diligently, and [] that some
extraordinary circumstance stood in [her] way and prevented [her]
timely filing." Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. 631, 649 (2010)
(quoting Pace v. DeGuglielmo, 544 U.S. 408, 418 (2005)). And
equitable tolling may also be available if a plaintiff can show
that a defendant has prevented or discouraged her from uncovering
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the facts required to bring a cause of action. See Vistamar, 430
F.3d at 72.
2
We have "left open the question of whether the equitable
tolling of § 1983 actions is governed by state or federal law."
Id. at 71-72. This case does not require us to visit that
unanswered question. Under either regime, the plaintiff's
argument founders.
Federal law "pauses the running of . . . a statute of
limitations when a litigant has pursued [her] rights diligently
but some extraordinary circumstance prevents [her] from bringing
a timely action." Arellano v. McDonough, 598 U.S. 1, 6 (2023)
(quoting Lozano v. Montoya Alvarez, 571 U.S. 1, 10 (2014)). When
a plaintiff is mentally incapacitated, there is no "absolute rule
of tolling," and instead "[r]elief from limitations
periods . . . remains subject to careful case-by-case scrutiny."
Nunnally v. MacCausland, 996 F.2d 1, 4 (1st Cir. 1993) (emphasis
in original); see Gyamfi v. Whitaker, 913 F.3d 168, 174 (1st Cir.
2019) ("[T]he decision to apply equitable tolling is a judgment
call.").
Maine law points in the same direction. Under it, "the
statute of limitations is tolled when strict application of the
statute of limitations would be inequitable," Dasha v. Me. Med.
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Ctr., 665 A.2d 993, 995 n.2 (Me. 1995), an essentially case-
sensitive inquiry.
3
Below, the plaintiff made only glancing references to
equitable tolling. To flesh out her "unique fact pattern" theory,
she first mused that she experienced a period of delay in obtaining
the decedent's medical records because they were unavailable until
the decedent's death. In this regard, she suggested that the
records were under the control of one or more of the defendants
prior to the internal investigation (which started and ended at
times she did not specify). Next — in a single sentence in her
opposition to the motion to dismiss — the plaintiff wrote: "[T]he
combination of the injury immediately resulting in a period of
unconsciousness preceding death, with the necessity of the records
under control of the actor to show the causal connection warrant
such an application of the tolling doctrine."
The district court rejected these arguments, and we
discern no error. As we have said, "[t]he 'heavy burden' of
establishing entitlement to equitable tolling rests on the
plaintiff," Vázquez-Rivera v. Figueroa, 759 F.3d 44, 50 (1st Cir.
2014) (quoting Farris v. Shinseki, 660 F.3d 557, 563 (1st Cir.
2011)), and the plaintiff did not hoist that burden here.
To begin, the plaintiff did not cite any statute or case
that might enable equitable tolling based on the defendants'
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actions with respect to the decedent's medical records. Moreover,
she did not describe any conduct on the part of the defendants
that either hampered her efforts to obtain the decedent's records
or hindered her recourse to suit. Nor did she explain how the
alleged unavailability of the records impacted her ability to
enforce her rights. A plaintiff who seeks to invoke equitable
tolling must effectively argue for its application, not merely
mention its name and refer cryptically to scattered facts that
populate the record. In other words, the plaintiff must not only
have identified the legal theory on which she stakes her claim but
also must have given that theory sufficient shape to alert the
court to its proposed application. See Iverson v. City of Bos.,
452 F.3d 94, 102 (1st Cir. 2006).
To cinch the matter, the plaintiff provided nothing to
indicate that she had been diligently pursuing her rights. Her
argument rested almost exclusively on the unelaborated assertion
that a "unique fact pattern" furnished a sufficient basis for the
application of equitable tolling. On this barebones record, we
cannot say that the district court erred in refusing to attach
decretory significance to the status of the medical records and
declining — on that basis — to salvage the plaintiff's time-barred
suit through the medium of equitable tolling. See Clauson v.
Smith, 823 F.2d 660, 663 (1st Cir. 1987); cf. United States v.
Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990) (holding, in waiver-of-
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argument context, that "[i]t is not enough merely to mention a
possible argument in the most skeletal way, leaving the court to
do counsel's work, create the ossature for the argument, and put
flesh on its bones").
C
On appeal, the plaintiff advances a more refined
equitable tolling argument. With a stronger gust filling her
sails, she insists that the fact that the decedent was in a coma
should itself give rise to equitable tolling. If one becomes
incapacitated as a result of a defendant's alleged negligence, her
thesis runs, it would be inequitable to expect the incapacitated
person to know of the harm. Thus — she argues — equity demands
the exclusion from the limitations period of the interval of
incapacitation (here, the time during which the decedent was
comatose).
Assuming, without deciding, that this argument was
preserved for appeal,4 it is nonetheless futile: the decedent's
4 Although we do not resolve the issue, we note that the
equitable tolling argument made by the plaintiff on appeal bears
only a modest resemblance to the equitable tolling argument that
she made below. An argument not advanced in the district cannot
be broached for the first time in the court of appeals. See
Teamsters Union, Local No. 59 v. Superline Transp. Co., 953 F.2d
17, 21 (1st Cir. 1992) ("[A]bsent the most extraordinary
circumstances, legal theories not raised squarely in the lower
court cannot be broached for the first time on appeal.). An
appellant must have done more than use the same labels in both the
district court and the court of appeals in order to avoid waiver.
See McCoy v. Mass. Inst. of Tech., 950 F.2d 13, 22 (1st Cir. 1991).
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five-day period of unconsciousness is not enough to bring equitable
tolling into play. Even if we were to set aside the five days
that the decedent spent in a coma, the plaintiff still had more
than five years and eleven months within which to bring a timely
suit. Nowhere does she explain why, had she exercised ordinary
diligence, she would not have been able to conform to this
deadline. She does not allege that she was "prevented from
complying with [the statutory deadline] through no fault . . . of
[her] own." Gyamfi, 913 F.3d at 174. Nor does she allege any
facts suggesting that she was assured that she had as much time as
she now claims was available to her.
That ends this aspect of the matter. "[T]he equitable
tolling doctrine is not available as a means of rescuing a party
who has failed to exercise due diligence." Pineda v. Whitaker,
908 F.3d 836, 842 (1st Cir. 2018). And so — even if we assume
that the plaintiff has preserved this equitable tolling argument
on appeal — she has not shown that application of the statute of
limitations to her claim would result in an unjust outcome.
The result might be different if a mental incapacitation
had occurred near the end of the limitations period and a plaintiff
could show that she had otherwise been prepared to file her
"[I]f a claim is 'merely insinuated' rather than 'actually
articulated,' that claim is ordinarily deemed unpreserved for the
purposes of appellate review." Iverson, 452 F.3d at 102 (quoting
McCoy, 950 F.2d at 22).
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complaint on time. In such circumstances, it might well be
inequitable to hold a plaintiff to the strict statutory deadline,
where — but for the extraordinary circumstance of the plaintiff's
incapacity — she would have been within the limitations period.
Suffice it to say that those are not the facts before us today.
D
The plaintiff has two more shots in her sling. First,
she points to a Maine tolling statute, Me. Stat. tit. 14, § 853,
and suggests that it operates to rescue her suit. The statute
permits persons who are "mentally ill" to bring action "after the
disability is removed." Id.Second, the plaintiff notes that survivorship actions
brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), 28 U.S.C.
§§ 1346(b), 2671-2680, entail a different accrual date. See Rakes
v. United States, 442 F.3d 7, 20 (1st Cir. 2006) ("[A] claim does
not accrue under the FTCA until a person in the plaintiff's
position, that is, one who knew or should have known as much as
the plaintiff knew or should have known, would believe that he had
been injured and would know 'sufficient facts to permit a
reasonable person to believe that there is a causal connection
between the government and [the] injury.'" (second alteration in
original) (quoting Skwira v. United States, 344 F.3d 64, 78 (1st
Cir. 2003))). She strives to persuade us that the accrual date
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for a survivorship action under section 1983 should be determined
in the same manner.
These shots are wide of the mark. The plaintiff did not
raise either argument below and, thus, she cannot pursue them for
the first time on appeal. See Superline Transp. Co., 953 F.2d at
21.
V
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above,
the judgment of the district court is
Affirmed.
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