2015 Decisions

Opinions of the United

States Court of Appeals

for the Third Circuit

7-16-2015

Steven Wicks v. Dudley Anderson

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Recommended Citation

"Steven Wicks v. Dudley Anderson" (2015). 2015 Decisions. Paper 748.

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NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

___________

No. 14-4795

___________

STEVEN WICKS; CAROLINE WICKS; GEORGE BIDLESPACHER; 

MARILYN BIDLESPACHER; GREG BROWN; KAREN BROWN,

Appellants

v.

DUDLEY N. ANDERSON; KEVIN WAY; ROBIN A. READ; WILLIAM BURD; 

DANIEL MATHERS; MARC DRIER; MARY E. BUTLER; KENNETH D. BROWN; 

LYCOMING COUNTY; THE 29TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT

____________________________________

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Pennsylvania

(D.C. Civil Action No. 4-14-cv-00143)

District Judge: Honorable C. Darnell Jones, II

____________________________________

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)

July 13, 2015

Before: AMBRO, VANASKIE and SLOVITER, Circuit Judges

(Opinion filed: July 16, 2015)

___________

OPINION*

___________

PER CURIAM

 

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not 

constitute binding precedent.
2

Appellants, proceeding pro se, seek review of the District Court’s order granting 

the defendants’ motions to dismiss a civil rights action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. 

For the following reasons, we will affirm.

As we write only for the parties, who are familiar with the facts and procedural 

history, we will set forth only those facts necessary to our conclusions. In 2009, Steven 

and Caroline Wicks (the Wickses), William Blair, and George Bidlespacher filed an 

action in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania against 

a variety of local government officials, alleging improprieties, including missing 

documents, in connection with their separate state court civil cases. A Magistrate Judge 

recommended that the defendants’ motions to dismiss be granted, and District Judge 

Christopher C. Conner adopted that recommendation. We affirmed. Wicks v. Lycoming 

Cnty., 456 F. App’x 112 (3d Cir. 2012) (not precedential) (Wicks I).

On January 27, 2014, the Wickses and George Bidlespacher, joined now by 

Marilyn Bidlespacher and Greg and Karen Brown, filed a new action in the District 

Court. They named as defendants several parties who had been sued in the 2009 action: 

Lycoming County Common Pleas Court Judges Dudley N. Anderson and Kenneth D. 

Brown; William J. Burd, the Lycoming County Prothonotary; Kevin Way, the Lycoming 

County Court Administrator; Daniel Mathers, Chairman of the Board of Viewers; and 

Lycoming County and the 29th Judicial District of Pennsylvania (“29th District”). The 

plaintiffs added as defendants Judge Conner; Robin Read and Mary Butler, attorneys who 

represented the defendants in Wicks I; and Marc Drier, an attorney who represented 
3

Caroline Wicks in divorce proceedings. The plaintiffs complained again about allegedly 

missing documents, and asserted that the defendants conspired to thwart their state and 

federal court cases. The defendants filed motions to dismiss, arguing, inter alia, that the 

plaintiffs’ claims were barred by the applicable statute of limitations. The District Court 

agreed and dismissed the complaint with prejudice. The plaintiffs appealed.1 

Claims brought under § 1983 are subject to the state statute of limitations for 

personal injury actions. Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 266-67 (1985). For civil rights 

actions originating in Pennsylvania, a two-year statute of limitations applies. Lake v. 

Arnold, 232 F.3d 360, 368 (3d Cir. 2000); 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5524. A § 1983 cause of 

action accrues when the plaintiff knows or has reason to know of the injury that 

constitutes the basis of the cause of action. Sameric Corp. of Delaware, Inc. v. City of 

Philadelphia, 142 F.3d 582, 599 (3d Cir. 1998). The running of the statute of limitations 

is an affirmative defense that generally must be raised by the defendant. See Fed. R. Civ. 

P. 8(c). 

The plaintiffs’ claims pertain to injuries that allegedly occurred in 2007 and 2009, 

during the adjudication of their state court lawsuits and the Wicks I litigation. Therefore, 

 

1 We have appellate jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we exercise plenary review 

over a District Court’s decision to grant a motion to dismiss on statute of limitations 

grounds. See Algrant v. Evergreen Valley Nurseries Ltd. P’ship, 126 F.3d 178, 181 (3d 

Cir. 1997). Because we agree that the plaintiffs’ claims are time-barred, we will not 

consider the District Court’s additional determinations that claims were barred by res 

judicata, that the attorney-defendants did not act under color of state law, that the judicial 

defendants were protected by immunity, and that some of that the plaintiffs’ allegations 

were insufficient under the pleading standards articulated in Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 

550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007).

 
4

as the defendants argued, the two-year statute of limitations expired well before the 

plaintiffs filed the present action on January 27, 2014.2 The plaintiffs seek to avoid the 

statute of limitations bar by asserting that their injuries are ongoing, see Cowell v. Palmer 

Twp., 263 F.3d 286, 292 (3d Cir. 2001) (discussing continuing violations theory), and 

that they “did not learn of the fraud and falsehoods visited upon them until the summer of 

2013”); Schmidt v. Skolas, 770 F.3d 241, 251 (3d Cir. 2014) (discussing Pennsylvania’s 

discovery rule). In support of these claims, the plaintiffs point to letters, emails, and 

handwritten notes pertaining to their state court lawsuits, Wicks I, and a judicial 

complaint against Judge Anderson. The dates of these documents, however, indicate that 

they were generated more than two years before the plaintiffs filed the present lawsuit. 

Although the plaintiffs alleged that their complaint was based on “after-discovered 

information which demonstrates . . . egregious judicial corruption[,]” they fail to identify 

that “information.” Finally, there is no indication in the record that the defendants 

prevented the plaintiffs from discovering their alleged injuries through fraud or 

concealment. See Bohus v. Beloff, 950 F.2d 919, 925 (3d Cir. 1991).

For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm the District Court’s judgment.

 

2 As the District Court noted, the plaintiffs’ claims are untimely even if the statute of 

limitations did not begin to run until we affirmed the dismissal of Wicks I on January 5, 

2012. In addition, Pennsylvania’s two year statute of limitations bars the plaintiffs from 

raising a malpractice claim against Marc Drier, whose representation of Caroline Wicks 

in divorce proceedings ended in 2006. Knopick v. Connelly, 639 F.3d 600, 606 (3d Cir. 

2011) (“Pennsylvania imposes a two-year statute of limitations on tortious conduct, 

including legal malpractice actions.”).