Case Name: Tom U.U. OKURE, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Javan OWENS and Daniel G. Lessard, Defendants-Appellants
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1987-04-06
Citations: 816 F.2d 45
Docket Number: No. 171, Docket 86-7343
Parties: Tom U.U. OKURE, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Javan OWENS and Daniel G. Lessard, Defendants-Appellants.
Judges: Before VAN GRAAFEILAND, MESKILL and NEWMAN, Circuit Judges.
Reporter: Federal Reporter 2d Series
Volume: 816
Pages: 45–54

Head Matter:
Tom U.U. OKURE, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Javan OWENS and Daniel G. Lessard, Defendants-Appellants.
No. 171, Docket 86-7343.
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.
Argued Sept. 25, 1986.
Decided April 6, 1987.
Charles R. Fraser, Asst. Atty. Gen., State of N.Y., New York City (Robert Abrams, Atty. Gen. of the State of N.Y., Peter H. Schiff, Deputy Sol. Gen., Howard L. Zwickel, Chief, Litigation Bureau, Judith T. Kramer, Asst. Atty. Gen., State of N.Y., New York City, of counsel), for defendants-appellants.
Joseph M. Brennan, Albany, N.Y. (Stephen J. Rehfuss, Sullivan, Rehfuss, Cunningham & Brennan, Albany, N.Y., of counsel), for plaintiff-appellee.
Burt Neuborne, Jack D. Novick, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, New York City; Steven Shapiro, New York Civil Liberties Union, New York City; Linda Flores, Kenneth Kimerling, Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Educ. Fund, Inc., New York City, of counsel, for amici curiae of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Educ. Fund, The American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Civil Liberties Union.
Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr., Corp. Counsel of the City of New York, John Woods, Donna Hill, Ellen Henak, Nora Freeman, Edward F.X. Hart, Office of the Corp. Counsel of the City of New York, New York City, of counsel, for amicus curiae City of New York.
Before VAN GRAAFEILAND, MESKILL and NEWMAN, Circuit Judges.

Opinion:
MESKILL, Circuit Judge:
The plaintiff complained in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York that defendants Owen and Lessard, State University of New York police officers, battered and beat him during an arrest on the SUNY campus in Albany. Okure v. Owens, 625 F.Supp. 1568 (N.D.N.Y.1986). The arrest and alleged beating took place on January 27, 1984, and this civil rights action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1982) was filed twenty-two months later. The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint as barred by the claimed applicable one year New York statute of limitations, N.Y.C.P. L.R. § 215(3) (McKinney 1972). Upon denial of the motion by Judge McCurn, we permitted this interlocutory appeal, taken pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) (1982) and Fed.R.App.P. 5(a). We agree with the district court and all parties that the choice of New York statutes of limitations established in Pauk v. Board of Trustees of the City University of New York, 654 F.2d 856 (2d Cir.1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 1000, 102 S.Ct. 1631, 71 L.Ed.2d 866 (1982), is no longer appropriate in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 85 L.Ed.2d 254 (1985). We agree with the district court, and with the plaintiff, that the proper limitation to apply to all section 1983 claims in New York is three years, based on the state's general personal injury statute, N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 214(5). Accordingly, we affirm.
DISCUSSION
In Wilson v. Garcia, the Supreme Court decided that federal law governs selection of a statute of limitations for application to section 1983 claims and that a single limitations period in each state is to be selected from among existing statutes of limitations. Wilson characterizes section 1983 claims as general personal injury actions sounding in tort and bids us to select a limitations period in accord with that view.
The Wilson Court first reviewed 42 U.S.C. § 1988, which directs the application of common law and state statutes to fill gaps in the structure of federal civil rights legislation. 471 U.S. at 267-69 & nn. 13 & 16, 105 S.Ct. at 1942-43. It concluded, as we did in Pauk, 654 F.2d at 865-66, that the characterization of section 1983 claims for statute of limitations purposes is a matter of federal law and that only the length of the limitation period is governed by state law. Wilson, 471 U.S. at 269, 105 S.Ct. at 1943. Once the state legislature has applied state standards to choose limitation periods for various causes of action, the courts must apply federal principles to choose the cause of action most appropriate to the governance of section 1983 claims. Id. at 269-70, 105 S.Ct. at 1943-44.
The Court next decided that the choice of a limitations period should be singular and applied uniformly in order to approximate, though imperfectly, the numerous and diverse claims catalogued under section 1983. Id. at 272-73, 105 S.Ct. at 1945-46. It rejected ad hoc selection of a particular statute of limitations to correspond to the gravamen of each individual section 1983 complaint, because such tailoring would be contrary to the imputed congressional preference for uniformity, simplicity and certainty. Id. at 273-75,105 S.Ct. at 1946-47. Having concluded that section 1988 "is fairly construed as a directive to select, in each State, the one most appropriate statute of limitations for all § 1983 claims," id. at 275,105 S.Ct. at 1946, the Court went on to explore the range of available statutes.
The Court found it unlikely that the Forty-Second Congress in adopting section 1983 intended to apply either a catchall period of limitations for claims based on violations of statutory rights or a period designed to limit actions for wrongs committed by state officials. Id. Rather, the Court looked to the circumstances in 1871 surrounding passage of section 1983 and decided that Congress was most directly interested in restoring peace and justice to the postbellum South. The Court noted that the section 1983 remedy, initially directed at the tortious atrocities committed by the Ku Klux Klan, today has evolved to encompass "a broad range of potential tort analogies, from injuries to property to infringements of individual liberty." Id. It concluded that both the nature of the section 1983 remedy and the federal interest in ensuring that the state limitations period not discriminate against that remedy demand characterization of all section 1983 claims as general personal injury actions, sounding in tort. Id. at 280, 105 S.Ct. at 1949.
1. The Nature of the Section 1983 Remedy
The issue crisply presented here is what limitations period Wilson commands for section 1983 actions where the forum state has two statutes of limitations governing personal injury claims. The defendants have argued forcefully that the Forty-Second Congress and the Wilson Court would find the proper analog of section 1983 claims to be claims for intentionally inflict ed personal injuries. Taking their lead from the Supreme Court's retrospective survey of the Ku Klux Klan's purposeful campaign to deny "decent citizens their civil and political rights," 471 U.S. at 276, 105 S.Ct. at 1947, the defendants urge the conclusion that the archetypal section 1983 claim is the intentional tort, whose limitations period is provided in New York by N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 215(3). See Trott v. Merit Dep't Stores, 106 A.D.2d 158, 484 N.Y.S.2d 827, 829 (1st Dep't 1985).
Even though civil rights violations are typically, and perhaps necessarily, intentional, that characterization is not controlling. We believe that the Wilson Court's choice of the term "general" to describe personal injury torts analogous to section 1983 claims was neither casual nor superfluous. Rather, we read therein a command that our choice of statute of limitations from New York law be expansive enough to accommodate the diverse personal injury torts that section 1983 has come to embrace so as not to exclude claims that stray from a precisely drawn analogy.
The defendants argue that the intentional torts addressed by the one year limitation in N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 215(3) are just as general as those addressed by the three year limitation of N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 214(5), which the defendants characterize as unintentional. Reply Br. of Appellants at 3. However, we cannot ignore the plain structure of the New York statutes which gives plaintiffs three years to commence "an action to recover damages for a personal injury except [section 215(3), which provides one year for] an action to recover damages for assault, battery, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, libel, slander, false words causing special damages, or a violation of the [statutory] right of privacy...." N.Y.C.P.L.R. §214(5), 215(3). By nature, section 214(5) is general; section 215(3) is more specific and exceptional. This dichotomy survives no matter how many similar intentional torts are judicially added to those enumerated in section 215(3).
Wilson instructs us to look beyond the nature of the section 1983 claim to the federal interest in ensuring that the borrowed period of limitations not discriminate against the federal claim. 471 U.S. at 276, 105 S.Ct. at 1947. Having been guided in this case to the general personal injury action of N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 214(5) as fairly analogous by nature to the section 1983 claim, we turn to the federal interest.
2. The Federal Interest
The Wilson Court has already eliminated the most likely sources of discrimination by rejecting limitations designed to protect state officials and limitations associated with privileges extended to the people by state legislatures. 471 U.S. at 279, 105 S.Ct. at 1949. Proper consideration of the federal interest moves us also to ensure that the limitations period of section 214(5) is long enough to effectuate the policies embedded in section 1983.
We are not persuaded that because personal injuries actionable under section 1983 are typically intentional, they are necessarily apparent to the victim at the time they are inflicted. Many injuries to personal rights are less visible than the simple battery alleged here. We need only consider the examples of valid section 1983 claims catalogued in Wilson: impermissible demands for loyalty oaths, restraints on freedom of speech or association and bans on interracial marriage are injuries to personal rights in which the tortious nature may not be immediately obvious. See 471 U.S. at 273-74 n. 31, 105 S.Ct. at 1946 n. 31.
Even where the injury itself is obvious, the constitutional dimensions of the tort may not be. This situation might arise where it is unclear that the tortfeasor acted under color of state law or that the act was illegal. It may be that the legality of the act complained of has not previously been adjudicated. Because recognition prob lems such as these are endemic in section 1983 litigation, we believe that there must be time for plaintiffs to reflect and to probe. The three year period of limitations provided by N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 214(5) accommodates the many complex section 1983 claims.
CONCLUSION
New York has determined that the rights of its citizens as plaintiffs and defendants in personal injury tort actions are properly balanced by applying a three year statute of limitations to all claims other than those enumerated in section 215(3). We conclude that section 214(5) is the general personal injury statute most analogous to section 1983 claims. Further, the three year limit of section 214(5) more faithfully represents the federal interest in providing an effective remedy for violations of civil rights than does the restrictive one year limit of section 215(3).
The order denying the motion to dismiss is affirmed.
. The following actions shall be commenced within one year:
3. an action to recover damages for assault, battery, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, libel, slander, false words causing special damages, or a violation of the right of privacy under section fifty-one of the civil rights law.
N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 215 (McKinney 1972).
. The following actions must be commenced within three years:
5. an action to recover damages for a personal injury except as provided in sections 214-b and 215.
N.Y.C.P.L.R. § 214 (McKinney Supp.1986).
. Judge Van Graafeiland in his dissenting opinion suggests that we rejected this argument in Fiesel v. Board of Education of the City of New York, 675 F.2d 522 (2d Cir.1982). In selecting an appropriate statute of limitations here, we are not abandoning Fiesel, in which we held that a valid limitations period is not disturbed by later shifts in controlling law. Id. at 524-25. There, a plaintiff alleging constitutional torts by a municipal body claimed that she had been prevented from timely asserting her section 1983 claim by Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961), overruled in part, Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978), which provided municipalities with immunity from such actions. Fiesel had promptly recognized her injury and its constitutional dimensions, but elected not to risk the legal expense of arguing that Monroe should be overruled. When the Supreme Court subsequently held in Monell that municipalities were no longer immune from suit under section 1983, the limitations period for Fiesel's claim had long since expired. Fiesel did not argue that she was prejudiced by the brevity of the statutory period, but rather that no statute of limitations could begin to run until the law changed in a way that was favorable to her cause of action.