Cavanaugh v. Cardinal Local School District

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 05a0728n.06
Filed: August 19, 2005
Case No. 03-4231
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
DAVID and BONNIE CAVANAUGH, for the )
minor child, KYLE CAVANAUGH, )
)
Plaintiffs-Appellants, ) ON APPEAL FROM THE
) UNITED STATES DISTRICT
v. ) COURT FOR THE NORTHERN
) DISTRICT OF OHIO
CARDINAL LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICT, )
)
Defendant-Appellee. )
)
_______________________________________ )
)
BEFORE: SUHRHEINRICH, BATCHELDER and GIBSON*, Circuit Judges.
ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge. Plaintiffs-Appellants David and Bonnie
Cavanaugh (“the Cavanaughs”), on behalf of their minor child, Kyle Cavanaugh, appeal the
Magistrate Judge’s order denying their claim that Defendant-Appellee Cardinal Local School
District (“Cardinal”) did not provide Kyle, who is disabled, with a “Free Appropriate Public
Education” (“FAPE”) as required by the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (“IDEA”),
20 U.S.C. § 1401 et seq. Bonnie Cavanaugh initiated this case on April 2, 2001, by filing a request
for a due process hearing with the Ohio Department of Education, claiming that the Individualized
Educational Plan drafted and implemented by Cardinal failed to provide Kyle with a FAPE. After
holding a hearing, an impartial hearing officer issued a decision finding that Cardinal had not
*
The Honorable John R. Gibson, Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit, sitting
by designation.
provided Kyle with a FAPE during the 2000-2001 school year and awarded the Cavanaughs one
year of compensatory education. The hearing officer also held, however, that complaints occurring
before April 2, 1999, were barred by a two-year statute of limitations and that the Cavanaughs were
not entitled to attorney fees. Both Cardinal and the Cavanaughs appealed to a state level review
officer.
The review officer concluded that Cardinal had provided Kyle a FAPE, and that the
Cavanaughs were entitled to neither compensatory education nor attorney fees. The Cavanaughs
appealed this decision to the United States District Court and on June 30, 2003, Magistrate Judge
David S. Perelman issued an order upholding the decision of the review officer. Applying Ohio’s
two-year statute of limitations on personal injuries, the magistrate judge held that all claims accruing
before April 2, 1999, were time-barred. The court then upheld the review officer’s decision that
Kyle received a FAPE. The Cavanaughs, proceeding pro se, appealed the magistrate’s decision to
this court and filed briefs arguing that Kyle had indeed been denied a FAPE and that the magistrate
erred by applying a two-year statute of limitations. Because non-attorney parents cannot represent
their child in an IDEA action and because Kyle’s right to a FAPE was not a right that he shared
jointly with his parents, we held that the Cavanaughs could not proceed on their son’s behalf and
that their appeal would be dismissed unless they obtained counsel within 30 days. See Cavanaugh
v. Cardinal Local School District, 409 F.3d 753 (6th Cir. 2005). The Cavanaughs retained counsel
and submitted a supplemental brief arguing that Kyle was denied a FAPE because his Individualized
Educational Program was poorly written and did not contain clear standards with which to measure
his progress. They also contend that the magistrate judge erroneously applied a two-year statute of
limitations, but do not specify which limitation period should apply.
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The Cavanaughs further argue that Cardinal violated the procedural requirements of the
IDEA by withholding some of Kyle’s scholastic records and that these procedural violations denied
Kyle a FAPE. The Cavanaughs’ brief, however, neither describes these records nor explains why
they are important. Instead, the brief references an attached affidavit in which Bonnie Cavanaugh
avers that portions of Kyle’s academic record, which she had previously requested in full, began
surfacing in June of 2005. She describes these documents as including, “but . . . not limited to, years
of teachers’ meetings notes regarding my son, medical reports dealing with my son, a history of
regular education intervention attempts concerning my son’s education progress, selected court
documents, outside evaluations of my son by professionals and correspondence and petitions
concerning my son.” Mrs. Cavanaugh’s affidavit does not elaborate on precisely why the records
are important; instead she avers “[h]ad I had copies or been aware of these records, at the
appropriate time, they would have been an important part of the record I would have presented in
my due process actions and my subsequent court appearances.”
On August 10, 2005, the Cavanaughs filed a motion for extension of time to permit the
district court to consider a motion filed under FED. R. CIV. P. 60(b)(3), claiming newly discovered
evidence. Such a motion, we note, is properly brought under Rule 60(b)(2), but the erroneous
designation is immaterial: a motion under either of these subsections of Rule 60(b) must be filed
within one year of the entry of the judgment from which the movant seeks relief, and this motion
was filed more than two years after the judgment. While we have the authority pursuant to the
procedure outlined in First Nat’l Bank of Salem, Ohio v. Hirsch, 535 F.2d 343 (6th Cir. 1976), to
await an order from the district court indicating its inclination to grant a timely Rule 60(b) motion,
we have no reason to await such an order here.
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The Cavanaughs have provided us with neither any copies of the records themselves nor a
sufficiently detailed description of their contents to permit us to determine the significance or the
relevance of these records, and their motion for an extension of time is, as we have explained above,
improper. Accordingly, we will proceed to consideration of the merits of their case.1
When reviewing a district court’s denial of relief under the IDEA, we review the findings
of fact for clear error and the conclusions of law de novo. Berger v. Medina City School District,
348 F.3d 513, 519 (6th Cir. 2003). The district court undertakes a “modified de novo review” of the
administrative decision in an action brought under the IDEA. Board of Education v. Rowley, 458
U.S. 176, 206 (1982). “In doing so, the district court must make an independent examination of the
evidence and base its decision on a preponderance of the evidence contained in the complete record,
while giving due weight to the factual findings made in the state administrative proceedings;
particularly when educational expertise is essential to those findings.” Berger, 348 F.3d at 519
(quotation omitted).
Having carefully considered the record on appeal and the briefs of the parties, we conclude
that the magistrate judge’s order contains no reversible error either in its findings of fact or its
conclusions of law. Because the issuance of a full opinion would serve no jurisprudential purpose
and would be duplicative, we affirm on the basis of the magistrate judge’s well-reasoned opinion
the order denying compensatory education. We note specifically that we agree with the magistrate
judge’s decision to apply Ohio’s two-year statute of limitations on personal injuries, O.R.C. §
2305.10(A), to the Cavanaughs’ IDEA action. As stated in King v. Floyd County Board of
1
We note that on June 30, 2005, Bonnie Cavanaugh, once again acting as a pro se advocate on behalf of her
son, filed a motion requesting that we dely our decision for 21 days so that Cardinal may “correct” the record. Because
a non-attorney parent may not represent her son in an IDEA action, see Cavanaugh, 409 F.3d at 756, and because, in
any event, Cardinal has no duty to supplement the record, we decline to consider Mrs. Cavanaugh’s request.
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Education, “[b]ecause the [IDEA] contains no specific statute of limitations, the most appropriate
[state] statute of limitations must be determined by the Court.” 228 F.3d 622, 624 (6th Cir. 2000)
(quoting Janzen v. Knox County Board of Education, 790 F.2d 484, 486 (6th Cir. 1986)). We look
to the state cause of action that most closely parallels the action brought under the IDEA and then
apply in the federal proceedings the limitations period appropriate to that cause of action. Id. The
limitations period must be determined on a “case-by-case basis,” in view of the “facts, the
circumstances, the posture of the case and the legal theories presented.” Janzen, 790 F.2d at 486-87.
Like a claim for personal injury, the Cavanaughs’ IDEA suit seeks to compensate Kyle for
his injuries by making him “whole.” See Birmingham v. Omaha School District, 220 F.3d 850, 856
(8th Cir. 2000) (applying Arkansas’s statute of limitations on personal injury actions to a claim
brought under the IDEA). We have applied a state statute of limitations on personal injury actions
in analogous situations. We have looked to O.R.C. § 2305.10 for claims brought under 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983, Kuhnle Bros., Inc. v. County of Geauga, 103 F.3d 516, 519-20 (6th Cir. 1997) and K.R.S.
§ 413.140, Kentucky’s one-year statute of limitations on personal injury actions, to claims brought
under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 794, which prohibits the exclusion of
disabled people from federally funded programs. Southerland v. Hardaway Management Co., Inc.
41 F.3d 250, 253-55 (6th Cir. 1994). Borrowing Ohio’s two-year statute of limitations for both §
1983 and IDEA claims also yields a result consistent with Gean v. Hattaway, 330 F.3d 758, 773 (6th
Cir. 2003), in which we held that an IDEA claim may be brought either directly under the statute’s
own provisions or, in some circumstances, under § 1983. See Birmingham, 220 F.3d at 856.
We think that the two-year limitation period allowed the Cavanaughs ample time in which
to assert Kyle’s rights under the IDEA, especially considering that Thomas Stone, an elementary
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principal in the Cardinal School District, provided the Cavanaughs with a statement of Kyle’s rights
under the IDEA in May of 1994. See Strawn v. Missouri State Board of Education, 210 F.3d 954,
958 (8th Cir. 2000) (“A two-year statute of limitations does not frustrate federal policy. A two-year
limitation provides for relatively quick resolution of the claims so that important years of education
are not lost. Two years is also not such a brief period that it undermines the IDEA policy of
providing parents the opportunity to protect their disabled children’s rights”).
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment of the magistrate judge.
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