Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-12-55255/USCOURTS-ca9-12-55255-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 360
Nature of Suit: Other Personal Injury
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

MARITZA GALLARDO,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Defendant-Appellee.

No. 12-55255

D.C. No.

2:11-cv-05013-

JFW-PJW

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

John F. Walter, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

January 8, 2014—Pasadena, California

Filed April 15, 2014

Before: William A. Fletcher, Milan D. Smith, Jr.,

and Paul J. Watford, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge W. Fletcher

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2 GALLARDO V. UNITED STATES

SUMMARY*

Federal Tort Claims Act

The panel affirmed in part and vacated in part the district

court’s dismissal, as time-barred, of Martiza Gallardo’s

Federal Tort Claims Act action brought against the United

States.

The Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”)’s statute of

limitations is two years unless tolled. Maritza Gallardo did

not file an administrative claim for negligence against the

U.S. Marine Corps until four years after an alleged sexual

assault. While the appeal was pending, the court decided

Wong v. Beebe, 732 F.3d 1030 (9th Cir. 2013) (en banc),

holding that equitable tolling of the statute of limitations was

available in FTCA actions.

The panel held that Gallardo’s FTCA claim accrued at the

time of the assault, not at the time she learned of the Corps’

negligence, and concluded that the FTCA’s two-year statute

of limitations, absent tolling, had run. The panel also held

that Gallardo’s equitable tolling argument was not waived. 

Finally, the panel held that Wong’s conclusion that 28 U.S.C.

§ 2401(b) is nonjurisdictional and subject to equitable tolling

applied to the entirety of that subsection. The panel

remanded to the district court to consider Gallardo’s equitable

tolling argument in the first instance.

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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GALLARDO V. UNITED STATES 3

COUNSEL

Randall Jonathan Paulson (argued), Law Offices of Randall

J. Paulson, Santa Ana, California, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Adam C. Jed (argued) and Mark B. Stern, United States

Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.; Donald W. Yoo,

Office of the United States Attorney, Los Angeles, California,

for Defendant-Appellee.

OPINION

W. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge:

PlaintiffMaritzaGallardo appeals from the district court’s

dismissal of her Federal Tort Claims Act (“FTCA”) action

against the United States as time-barred. Gallardo’s claim

arose out of an alleged sexual assault committed by a sergeant

in the U.S. Marine Corps (“the Corps”) while he was on a

recruitment detail at her middle school. Gallardo did not file

an administrative claim for negligence against the Corps until

four years after the assault. The FTCA’s statute of limitations

is two years unless tolled. 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b).

While this appeal was pending, we decided Wong v.

Beebe, 732 F.3d 1030 (9th Cir. 2013) (en banc), holding that

equitable tolling of the statute of limitations is available in

FTCA actions. See id. at 1033. We overruled Marley v.

United States, 567 F.3d 1030, 1038 (9th Cir. 2009), which

held that equitable tolling is unavailable. In light of this

change in the law, we vacate the district court’s dismissal of

Gallardo’s FTCA claim and remand for that court to

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4 GALLARDO V. UNITED STATES

determine whether equitable tolling is appropriate in the

circumstances of this case.

I. Background

A. Alleged Sexual Assault

The following narrative is based on allegations by

Gallardo in her complaint and on statements by her mother,

Maria Gallardo, in a declaration submitted to the district court

in connection with its jurisdictional ruling under Federal Rule

of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1). For present purposes, we

assume the truth of these allegations and statements. See

Brown v. Elec. Arts, Inc., 724 F.3d 1235, 1247 (9th Cir.

2013).

In March 2006, middle-school student Maritza Gallardo

met U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Ross Curtis at a civilian

youth disciplinary “boot camp.” While Gallardo was at the

camp, Curtis asked her for her Myspace address. After

Gallardo left the camp, Curtis sent messages to her Myspace

address between March and May, suggesting that they “hang

out” together. Gallardo “resisted” Curtis’s overtures.

In May 2006, Curtis represented the Corps, in his “Dress

Blues” uniform, at Gallardo’s middle school career day. 

During the career day, they acknowledged each other but did

not speak. Gallardo left the school grounds at the end of the

day. Curtis saw her leave and called her, asking her to return

to the school. Gallardo returned, and she and several other

students accepted Curtis’s offer to give them a ride home. 

After Curtis had dropped off everyone except Gallardo, he

“drove around for some time and parked in a nearby

neighborhood.” After he and Gallardo “talked for a while,”

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GALLARDO V. UNITED STATES 5

Curtis “began driving . . . and eventually parked” again. 

Curtis “began . . . kissing her, fondling her breasts, asking her

to tou[c]h his erect penis and eventually attempting sexual

penetration.” Gallardo began to cry. Curtis stopped, told her

not to tell anyone what had happened, and drove her home.

B. Curtis’s Criminal Prosecution

In August 2008, law enforcement officials arrestedCurtis,

now a civilian, for a sexual assault on another minor. While

searching Curtis’s computer, officials found pictures and

Myspace messages that he had sent to Gallardo. Detectives

interviewed Gallardo at her home in the fall of 2008.

The following year, Gallardo and her mother were

subpoenaed for Curtis’s criminal trial. During the trial,

Gallardo’s mother learned from a female member of the

Corps that Curtis had assaulted her, but that her military

superiors had taken no disciplinary action against him after

she reported the assault. Gallardo later learned that in March

2006, two months before Curtis sexually assaulted her on

career day, he had been court-martialed for sexually

assaulting three female members of the Corps. The result of

Curtis’s court-martial was that “the Corps retained his

enlistment, assigned him to recruitment detail, and he was

scheduled to be discharged in June 2006.”

C. Proceedings Below

In May 2010, after learning of Curtis’s history of sexually

assaulting women, and of the Corps’ knowledge of those

assaults at the time it assigned him to the recruitment detail

at her middle school, Gallardo filed an administrative claim

with the Corps and the Department of Defense. The

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6 GALLARDO V. UNITED STATES

gravamen of Gallardo’s claim was that the assault occurred

because of the Corps’ negligence in assigning a known sex

offender to work with middle-school students. Gallardo’s

administrative claim was denied in December 2010.

Gallardo then filed suit in federal district court based on

the same allegations as those in her administrative claim. 

Defendants moved to dismiss Gallardo’s claim as untimely

under the FTCA’s two-year statute of limitations. In

response, Gallardo argued that “her claim did not accrue until

the facts of [Curtis’s] military record became known at the

time of his criminal trial” in 2009.

The district court agreed with defendants, holding under

United States v. Kubrick, 444 U.S. 111 (1979), that

Gallardo’s claim accrued at the time of Curtis’s assault. 

Gallardo timely appealed.

II. Standard of Review

“We review de novo a district court’s interpretation of the

statute of limitations under the FTCA, and its decision as to

whether a statute of limitations bars a claim.” Hensley v.

United States, 531 F.3d 1052, 1056 (9th Cir. 2008) (citations

omitted).

III. Discussion

On appeal, Gallardo makes two arguments. First, she

argues that the district court erred in concluding that her

claim accrued at the time of Curtis’s assault. Second, she

argues that the statute of limitations should be equitably

tolled. We disagree with her first argument. However, her

second argument may have merit. In light of our intervening

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GALLARDO V. UNITED STATES 7

precedent in Wong v. Beebe holding that equitable tolling is

available in FTCA actions, we remand to the district court to

consider Gallardo’s equitable tolling argument in the first

instance.

A. Accrual of Gallardo’s Claim

A plaintiff bringing an FTCA claim against the United

States must first file an administrative claim with the

appropriate agency “within two years after such claim

accrues.” 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b). Otherwise, it is “forever

barred.” Id.

Gallardo argues that her claim did not accrue until 2009,

when she learned of the Corps’ negligence. We disagree. 

Gallardo’s argument is foreclosed by Kubrick. The Supreme

Court held in Kubrick that once a plaintiff becomes aware of

her injury and its immediate cause, her claim accrues. 

444 U.S. at 122. In so deciding, the Supreme Court declined

to “hold that Congress intended that ‘accrual’ of a claim must

await awareness by the plaintiff that [her] injury was

negligently inflicted.” Id. at 123.

Our post-Kubrick precedents are consistent with the

conclusion that Gallardo’s claim accrued at the time of

Curtis’s assault. For example, in Hensley v. United States,

531 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2008), we held that the plaintiffs’

claim against the United States resulting from an accident

involving a vehicle driven by a naval officer “accrued at the

time of the collision and not later when the Attorney General

certified that the [officer] was acting within the scope of his

federal employment at the time of the collision.” Id. at 1054. 

“[A]s a general rule, ignorance of the involvement of

government employees is irrelevant to accrual of a federal

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8 GALLARDO V. UNITED STATES

tort claim.” Id. at 1056. We wrote that Kubrick does not

allow for “delay[ing] accrual of a federal tort claim until

plaintiff knows or has reason to know of the culpability of

federal agents.” Id. (quoting Gibson v. United States,

781 F.2d 1334, 1344 (9th Cir. 1986)). We explained:

At the moment Eich [the naval officer] struck

Mrs. Hensley’s car with his own, the Hensleys

knew both the fact of the injury and its

immediate physical cause. The fact that Mrs.

Hensley suffered an injury was immediately

apparent; the cause (a collision) was

immediately apparent; and even the identity

of the person who inflicted the injury (Eich)

was immediately apparent. Therefore, the

Hensleys’ claim accrued at the time of the

accident.

Hensley, 531 F.3d at 1057 (citation omitted).

Gallardo cannot distinguish her case from Hensley. She

emphasizes on appeal that “she could not have known or had

reason to suspect” that the Corps was “complicit” in her

injury “because the cause known at the time was [Curtis’s]

assault.” But, as we held in Hensley, “ignorance of the

involvement of United States employees is irrelevant.” Id. at

1057 (quoting Dyniewicz v. United States, 742 F.2d 484,

487 (9th Cir. 1984)). Here, Gallardo “knew both the fact of

the injury and its immediate physical cause,” id., in May

2006. Because Gallardo did not file her administrative claim

until four years later, the FTCA’s two-year statute of

limitations, absent tolling, had run.

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GALLARDO V. UNITED STATES 9

B. Equitable Tolling

In the alternative, Gallardo argues that the statute of

limitations should be equitably tolled. When the district court

dismissed Gallardo’s claim, equitable tolling was not

available under the FTCA. See Marley, 567 F.3d at 1038. In

2013, however, we overruled Marley, holding in Wong v.

Beebe that equitable tolling of the statute of limitations is

available in FTCA actions. 732 F.3d at 1033.

The government makes two arguments against equitable

tolling. First, the government argues that Gallardo did not

raise equitable tolling in the district court and has therefore

waived this argument. But at the time the district court ruled

on the motion to dismiss, equitable tolling was foreclosed by

Marley. The argument became available only later, while this

case was on appeal, when we decided Wong. We therefore

hold that Gallardo’s equitable tolling argument is not waived. 

See, e.g., Romain v. Shear, 799 F.2d 1416, 1419 (9th Cir.

1986) (an exception to waiver exists “when a new issue arises

while appeal is pending because of a change in law”).

Second, the government argues that Wong does not

control because that case involved a different provision of the

FTCA’s statute of limitations. The statute imposes two

deadlines:

A tort claim against the United States shall be

forever barred unless it is presented in writing

to the appropriate Federal agency within two

years after such claim accrues or unless action

is begun within six months after the date of

mailing . . . of notice of final denial of the

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10 GALLARDO V. UNITED STATES

claim by the agency to which it was

presented.

28 U.S.C. § 2401(b) (emphasis added). The provision at

issue in Wong was the six-month time limit for filing suit

after agency denial of a claim. See 732 F.3d at 1033–34. The

applicable provision here is the two-year time limit for filing

a claim with the agency. Although these two provisions are

part of the same statutory subsection, the government

contends that our holding in Wong applies only to the sixmonth provision.

Our language and reasoning in Wong foreclose the

government’s argument. We repeatedly stated in Wong that

§ 2401(b) is nonjurisdictional and subject to equitable tolling,

without distinguishing between the six-month and two-year

provisions. See, e.g., id. at 1033 (“We hold that § 2401(b) is

not ‘jurisdictional,’ and that equitable tolling is available

under the circumstances presented in this case.”); id. at 1038

(“Several factors underlie our conclusion that § 2401(b) is

nonjurisdictional.”); id. at 1049 (“[N]othing in § 2401(b)

suggests that it is inconsistent with equitable tolling. To the

contrary, the FTCA goes out of its way in its efforts to treat

the United States the same as private tort defendants.”).

Conclusion

We hold that Wong’s conclusion that 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b)

is nonjurisdictional and subject to equitable tolling applies to

the entirety of that subsection. We therefore vacate the

district court’s decision holding that Gallardo’s FTCA claim

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GALLARDO V. UNITED STATES 11

is time-barred. We remand to the district court to consider

Gallardo’s equitable tolling argument in the first instance. 

We otherwise affirm. Each side shall bear its own costs.

AFFIRMED in part, VACATED in part, and

REMANDED.

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