Kurt Danysh v. Eli Lilly Co , 461 F. App'x 75 ( 2012 )


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  • GLD-088                                                         NOT PRECEDENTIAL
    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
    FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
    ___________
    No. 11-3883
    ___________
    KURT DANYSH,
    Appellant
    v.
    ELI LILLY and COMPANY
    ____________________________________
    On Appeal from the United States District Court
    for the Middle District of Pennsylvania
    (D.C. Civil No. 10-2116)
    District Judge: Honorable John E. Jones, III
    ____________________________________
    Submitted for Possible Dismissal Pursuant to 
    28 U.S.C. § 1915
    (e)(2)(B)
    or Summary Action Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 27.4 and I.O.P. 10.6
    January 12, 2012
    Before: FUENTES, GREENAWAY, JR., AND STAPLETON, Circuit Judges
    (Opinion filed : January 31, 2012)
    _________
    OPINION
    _________
    PER CURIAM
    Pro se appellant Kurt Danysh appeals the District Court’s order granting summary
    judgment to the defendant, Eli Lilly and Company (“Lilly”). We have jurisdiction under
    
    28 U.S.C. § 1291
     and exercise a plenary standard of review. See State Auto Prop. & Cas.
    Ins. Co. v. Pro Design, P.C., 
    566 F.3d 86
    , 89 (3d Cir. 2009). For the reasons set forth
    below, we will summarily affirm the District Court’s judgment.
    This action concerns Lilly’s drug Prozac. A doctor prescribed Prozac for Danysh
    on April 8, 1996. On April 25, 1996, a few days after discontinuing his use of the drug,
    Danysh shot and killed his father.
    Danysh confessed to the crime, and almost immediately attributed his behavior to
    Prozac. He said that the medication caused him to “act differently,” so that “when
    something bother[ed] [him], it bother[ed] [him] to extreme.” However, despite Danysh’s
    suspicions, he was unable to find evidence to support his theory, and he ultimately
    pleaded guilty in Pennsylvania state court. In November 1997, the trial court sentenced
    him to 22.5 to 60 years’ imprisonment, and the Superior Court affirmed.
    In May 2003, Danysh filed a petition pursuant to Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction
    Relief Act (PCRA). He claimed that he had discovered new evidence linking Prozac to
    violent behavior. In support of his petition, he presented a letter from Donald H. Marks,
    M.D., Ph.D., stating that “a wide body of scientific literature” showed that Prozac “would
    be capable of interfering with thought and judgment to enough a degree to interfere with
    your ability to understand the significance of a violent act.” Danysh also submitted
    records of adverse reactions associated with Prozac and an article by three psychiatrists
    concerning side effects of antidepressant drugs. He continued to supplement his petition,
    and in July 2004, presented 31 additional exhibits that purportedly “highlight[ed]
    Prozac’s ability to cause violent/suicidal behavior in individuals” and “indicate[d] that
    2
    the manufacturers of Prozac . . . have purposely hid[den] the dangers associated with
    these drugs, including their potential to cause violent behavior.”
    The PCRA courts denied all relief to Danysh. Nevertheless, he continued to
    research his theory. In August 2008, he allegedly learned that he was a “poor
    metabolizer of Prozac,” which caused him to be “abnormally susceptible to the negative
    side effects of Prozac.” Then, in 2009, he read an article reporting, based on Lilly’s
    internal documents, that the company had known since 1988 that Prozac could cause side
    effects like the ones that he allegedly experienced.
    On August 16, 2010, Danysh instituted this civil action. He claimed, under state
    law, that Lilly had committed fraud and negligence, violated the Pennsylvania Unfair
    Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law (UTPCPL), and breached an express
    warranty. Danysh alleged, at bottom, that Lilly had unlawfully failed to warn him that
    Prozac could cause violent behavior.
    A magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation concluding that Lilly was
    entitled to summary judgment because Danysh’s action was barred by the applicable
    statutes of limitations. The District Court approved and adopted the report and
    recommendation, and Danysh then filed a timely notice of appeal to this Court.
    We agree with the District Court’s disposition of this case. Pennsylvania law,
    which governs this diversity action, see Mest v. Cabot Corp., 
    449 F.3d 502
    , 510 (3d Cir.
    2006), provides varying statutes of limitations for Danysh’s different causes of actions.
    These limitation periods range from two years (fraud and negligence, see Ash v. Cont’l
    3
    Ins. Co., 
    932 A.2d 877
    , 879 (Pa. 2007)) to six years (the UTPCPL, see Lesoon v. Metro.
    Life Ins. Co., 
    898 A.2d 620
    , 627 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2006)). For the sake of simplicity, and
    because it does not affect the result of this case, we will proceed as if all of Danysh’s
    claims were subject to the six-year statute of limitations.
    The statute of limitations begins to run on the date that “the cause of action
    accrued.” 
    42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5502
    (a). A cause of action accrues “when the injury is
    inflicted.” Fine v. Checcio, 
    870 A.2d 850
    , 857 (Pa. 2005). Danysh’s causes of action
    therefore accrued in 1996, when he was allegedly injured by the defendant’s failure to
    warn him of Prozac’s possible side effects. See generally id.; see also William A.
    Graham Co. v. Haughey, 
    646 F.3d 138
    , 150 (3d Cir. 2011) (“the ‘accrual’ of a cause of
    action occurs at the moment at which each of its component elements has come into
    being as a matter of objective reality”). Therefore, the statute of limitations
    presumptively began to run in 1996 and expired long before Danysh filed his August
    2010 complaint.
    Danysh argues that the statute of limitations should be tolled pursuant to the
    discovery rule or the doctrine of fraudulent concealment. We agree with the District
    Court that these doctrines do not help Danysh here.
    Under the discovery rule, the statute of limitations “does not begin to run until the
    injured party discovers or reasonably should discover that he has been injured and that his
    injury has been caused by another party’s conduct.” Fine, 870 A.2d at 859. More
    specifically, the limitations period commences upon the plaintiff’s “actual or constructive
    4
    knowledge of at least some form of significant harm and of a factual cause linked to
    another’s conduct, without the necessity of notice of the full extent of the injury, the fact
    of actual negligence, or precise cause.” Gleason v. Borough of Moosic, 
    15 A.3d 479
    , 484
    (Pa. 2011).
    Here, the undisputed evidence shows that Danysh knew of his injury and Lilly’s
    alleged role in July 2004, when he provided a wealth of evidence to the PCRA court in
    support of his claim that Prozac had caused him to behave violently and that Lilly had
    fraudulently withheld its knowledge of the drug’s side effects. While Danysh contends
    that the discovery rule should toll the limitations period until August 2008 when he
    discovered that he was a “poor metabolizer of Prozac” or sometime in 2009 when he
    learned of the defendants’ internal documents, he had unquestionably
    “discover[ed] . . . that he ha[d] been injured and that his injury ha[d] been caused by
    another party’s conduct” well before those dates. Fine, 870 A.2d at 859; see generally
    Zeleznik v. United States, 
    770 F.2d 20
    , 23 (3d Cir. 1985) (explaining that the limitations
    period is “not postponed until the injured party knows every fact necessary to bring his
    action”). Therefore, the District Court correctly rejected Danysh’s discovery-rule
    argument as a matter of law.
    Likewise, we agree with the District Court that the doctrine of fraudulent
    concealment does not render Danysh’s claim timely. Under this doctrine, “the defendant
    may not invoke the statute of limitations, if through fraud or concealment, he causes the
    plaintiff to relax his vigilance or deviate from his right of inquiry into the facts.” Fine,
    5
    870 A.2d at 860. However, even if a limitation period is tolled by virtue of fraudulent
    concealment, it will begin “to run when the injured party knows or reasonably should
    know of his injury and its cause.” Id. at 861. As discussed above, reasonable minds
    would not differ in finding that Danysh knew of his injury and its alleged cause, at the
    latest, in July 2004, more than six years before he instituted this action. Hence, his
    claims are time barred.
    Accordingly, we will summarily affirm the District Court’s order granting
    summary judgment to the defendant. See 3d Cir. L.A.R. 27.4; I.O.P. 10.6.
    6