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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 14-3292 

DIANNE KHAN, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

No. 2:14-cv-00285-LA — Lynn Adelman, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED NOVEMBER 18, 2015—DECIDED DECEMBER 23, 2015 

____________________ 

Before POSNER, MANION, and SYKES, Circuit Judges. 

POSNER, Circuit Judge. In 2006, twelve U.S. Marshals arrested Dianne Khan in her apartment for making false 

statements to the federal Department of Housing and Urban 

Development. (She was found guilty of the offense later that 

year and sentenced to five years’ probation.) The marshals 

were waiting for her in the apartment, and when she entered 

they confronted her at gunpoint. Why twelve marshals with 

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drawn guns were thought necessary to arrest a woman for a 

nonviolent offense has not been explained. When she asked 

to use the bathroom, a marshal first patted her down and 

then watched her pull down her underwear, urinate, and 

wipe and cleanse herself according to a Muslim ritual that 

she observes. The marshals handcuffed her and refused to 

allow her to cover her head. And while attempting to buckle 

her seatbelt in the back seat of the squad car that was to take 

her to jail, a marshal touched her breasts three or four times, 

though apparently this was attributable to his clumsiness, 

rather than being intentional. 

In June, three months after her arrest, Khan wrote to the 

Marshals Service Office of Inspection (now called the Office 

of Professional Responsibility) describing the indignities to 

which she’d been subjected during the arrest and complaining about the absence of any female agents, her having to 

expose herself to a male agent in her bathroom, being patted 

down, and having her breasts touched by a male agent because he didn’t know how to fasten the seat belt on her. 

The letter did not ask the Office of Inspection to discipline the marshals who had arrested her or pay her compensation for the way she’d been treated—which, if her allegations are true (a big if, since we have only her allegations), 

seems indeed improper. The Office replied to the letter 

about two weeks later, stating that it took her complaint of 

mistreatment by the arresting marshals “very seriously.” But 

in a second letter, sent three months later, the Chief of the 

Office of Inspection told her she was “not entitled to know 

the outcome of the investigation” because of “privacy issues.” Three years later, however, through the intercession 

of a Senator, Khan learned that the Marshals Service had in 

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No. 14-3292 3 

2006 “reviewed the incident and found no evidence of misconduct” and had therefore “closed the case.” 

Six years passed before she wrote another letter to the 

Marshals Service, this one insisting that it “settle this matter.” Again she did not request compensation. The Service 

did not respond to the letter or pay any further attention to 

the matter. 

In September 2013—more than seven years after the arrest—Khan mailed the Marshals Service an administrative 

claim on Standard Form 95 (the form routinely used to present tort claims against the United States) requesting $4 million in damages. The Service replied that the Federal Tort 

Claims Act places a two-year limit on filing claims alleging 

misconduct by federal officers, 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b), and 

therefore her claim was untimely. 

Six months later she filed this lawsuit against both the 

United States and the arresting marshals, suing the United 

States under the Federal Tort Claims Act and the marshals 

under the Bivens doctrine, which allows suits against federal 

employees for violation of constitutional rights. Bivens v. Six 

Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 

U.S. 388 (1971). The district court dismissed the suit as timebarred. Although generally a plaintiff is not required to 

plead around an affirmative defense, such as a statute of limitations, the district court can dismiss a complaint as untimely if the plaintiff has admitted all the elements of the affirmative defense, see Cancer Foundation, Inc. v. Cerberus Capital 

Management, LP, 559 F.3d 671, 674–75 (7th Cir. 2009), as the 

plaintiff in this case had. 

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A plaintiff who sues a federal agency under the Tort 

Claims Act must first submit her claim to the agency; not until it’s denied can she sue. 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a). The Act establishes deadlines for filing claims, both with the agency and 

(if denied) in a court. Khan’s principal argument on appeal 

is that the June 2006 letter to the Marshals Service was an 

administrative claim that satisfied the requirement of filing a 

claim with the agency within two years. See 28 U.S.C.

§ 2401(b). She also argues that she sued within six months of 

the agency’s final denial of the claim and thus satisfied the 

second deadline (the deadline for suing) in that section. 

We start with her second contention. Three years after 

sending her first letter Khan learned that the Marshals Service had decided that her claim of having been mistreated by 

the arresting marshals had no merit. If that 2009 letter is 

deemed a claim denial, Khan is out of luck, not having sued 

within six months of the denial, the deadline in section 

2401(b). But she’d learned of the denial of her claim 

secondhand, through the intervention of the Senator. The 

Service had failed (indeed refused) to notify her of the denial; perhaps then there was no final denial. But even we 

therefore treat the letter denying the claim for damages that 

she made later, in September 2013, as the definitive denial of 

her claim—in which event her suit was filed within the sixmonth deadline—the suit was untimely because of Khan’s 

failure to comply with the requirement in section 2401(b) 

that the administrative claim be presented to the federal 

agency within two years of its accrual. Though her June 2006 

letter had been filed within two years of her arrest, and the 

date of the arrest was the date of the accrual, that letter was 

not a proper administrative claim because it had not demanded any damages, as required by a regulation, 28 C.F.R. 

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No. 14-3292 5 

§ 14.2(a), the validity of which she doesn’t challenge. The 

regulation states, so far as pertains to this case, that “a claim 

shall be deemed to have been presented when a Federal 

agency receives from a claimant, his duly authorized agent 

or legal representative, an executed Standard Form 95 or 

other written notification of an incident, accompanied by a 

claim for money damages in a sum certain for injury to or 

loss of property, personal injury, or death alleged to have 

occurred by reason of the incident.” 

Failure to specify a “sum certain” is not fatal, however, 

see Kanar v. United States, 118 F.3d 527, 529 (7th Cir. 1997), as 

it is unlikely to derail the settlement process, which the regulation is designed to facilitate, and as the claimant may not 

yet have been able to calculate her precise loss. Id. at 529, 

531. All that must be specified, therefore, is “facts plus a demand for money;” if those two things are specified, “the 

claim encompasses any cause of action fairly implicit in the 

facts.” Murrey v. United States, 73 F.3d 1448, 1452 (7th Cir. 

1996). But as “facts plus a demand for money” must be specified, failure to ask for any damages—any money—is fatal. 

See Smoke Shop, LLC v. United States, 761 F.3d 779, 787–88 

(7th Cir. 2014). As it should be. Khan’s first letter would 

have created the impression that the “claimant” was seeking 

something other than money—such as an apology for the 

misconduct of the arresting marshals, or punishment of 

them, or better training of marshals. It would not have been 

apparent that she was contemplating suit. The Marshals Service might have been deceived into thinking it needn’t prepare a defense or attempt to negotiate a settlement. 

Khan’s suit is thus untimely under section 2401(b), but 

she has an argument that it’s timely under 28 U.S.C. 

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§ 2401(a). That section provides that “every civil action 

commenced against the United States shall be barred unless 

the complaint is filed within six years after the right of action 

first accrues.” The plaintiff argues that her right of action 

first accrued in September 2013, when the Marshals Service 

denied her claim, and if this is correct then her suit, filed the 

next year, was of course timely under section 2401(a). The 

Service counters that if as Khan contends her June 2006 letter 

was the claim, her right of action first accrued late in 2006, 

when six months had elapsed with no response from the 

Marshals Service. It points to 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a), which says 

that when an agency fails to decide a claim within six 

months, its failure shall “at the option of the claimant any 

time thereafter, be deemed a final denial of the claim.” She 

did not sue by December 2012, six years after that final denial.

Though the foregoing analysis of section 2401(a) is plausible, we don’t need or want to decide when a right of action 

accrues under that section because the section turns out to be 

inapplicable to this case. Although it establishes a six-year 

limitations period for “every civil action commenced against 

the United States,” section 2401(b), discussed earlier in this 

opinion, refers specifically to tort claims: “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, by certified 

or registered mail, of notice of final denial of the claim by the 

agency to which it was presented.” The plaintiff’s claim was 

unquestionably a tort claim, as it alleged assault—pointing 

guns at her gratuitously—and battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. And United States v. Glenn, 231 

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No. 14-3292 7 

F.2d 884, 886 (9th Cir. 1956), noting that section 2401(b) originated in the Federal Tort Claims Act, holds sensibly that (b) 

rather than (a) governs tort suits against the federal government. The reasoning in Glenn has been followed in Pittman v. 

United States, 341 F.2d 739, 740 (9th Cir. 1965); Schuler v. 

United States, 628 F.2d 199, 201 (D.C. Cir. 1980); Conn v. United States, 867 F.2d 916, 920 (6th Cir. 1989); and Carter v. United States, 55 Fed. App’x 464, 465 (9th Cir. 2003). The analysis 

in the cases we’ve just cited is persuasive. 

Parenthetically we note that even if section 2401(a) were 

applicable to claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act, it 

would not come into play in all FTCA suits. The Act incorporates the substantive law of the state where the tort occurred, Midwest Knitting Mills, Inc. v. United States, 950 F.2d 

1295, 1297 (7th Cir. 1991), and many states have statutes of 

repose for tort actions, statutes that would cut off a plaintiff’s right to sue before the time bar in section 2401(a) kicked 

in. Cf. Augutis v. United States, 732 F.3d 749, 752–53 (7th Cir. 

2013).

As for the Bivens defendants, the plaintiff’s claim against 

them clearly is time-barred. Because her arrest was in Wisconsin, the applicable statute of limitations is Wisconsin’s 

six-year statute of limitations for a variety of tort suits. Wis. 

Stat. § 893.53; Reget v. City of La Crosse, 595 F.3d 691, 694 (7th 

Cir. 2010); Malone v. Corrections Corp. of America, 553 F.3d 

540, 542 (7th Cir. 2009). The statute of limitations begins to 

run when a plaintiff knows she’s been injured. See, e.g., 

Leavell v. Kieffer, 189 F.3d 492, 495 (7th Cir. 1999). That was in 

2006 in this case. Khan didn’t file suit until 2014—eight years 

later. 

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The judgment of the district court is 

AFFIRMED. 

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