Title: Johnson v. Mult. Co. Dept. Community Justice
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: S054697
State: Oregon
Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court
Date: February 14, 2008

FILED: February 14, 2008
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
AKILAH JOHNSON,
Respondent on Review,
v.
MULTNOMAH COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY JUSTICE, 
Petitioner on Review,
and
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,
Defendant.
(CC 0406-06577; CA A128667; SC S054697)
En Banc
On review from the Court of Appeals.*
Argued and submitted November 5, 2007.
Jacqueline A. Weber, Assistant County Attorney, Portland, argued the cause and
filed the brief for petitioner on review.  With her on the brief was Agnes Sowle, Attorney
for Multnomah County.
Kevin J. Tillson, of Hunt &amp; Associates, PC, Portland, argued the cause and filed
the brief for respondent on review.  With him on the brief was Lawrence B. Hunt.
Douglas G. Schaller, of Johnson, Clifton, Larson &amp; Schaller, P.C., Eugene, filed a
brief for amicus curiae Oregon Trial Lawyers Association.
GILLETTE, J.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.  The judgment of the circuit
court is reversed and the case is remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings. 
*Appeal from Multnomah County Circuit Court, Michael C. Zusman, judge pro tempore. 210 Or App 591, 152 P3d 927 (2007).
GILLETTE, J.
This case is concerned with the so-called "discovery rule," as it applies to
ORS 30.275(2)(b), a provision of the Oregon Tort Claim Act that requires any person
bringing a tort claim against a public agency to give notice to the agency of the claim
within 180 days of the alleged loss or injury. (1)  Specifically, it asks whether, and to
what extent, the appearance of newspaper articles in local papers suggesting that a public
agency may have had a role in a plaintiff's injury should be deemed to put that plaintiff on
notice of his or her claim against the public agency, and thus trigger the 180-day notice
period.  We do not reject the possibility that, in some circumstances, information
appearing in such media reports may be imputed to a plaintiff as a matter of law. 
However, we conclude that, in the present case, reasonable jurors could disagree whether
plaintiff should have learned about defendant's involvement in her injury from the stories
that appeared in the local newspapers at the time that they appeared.  The Court of
Appeals reached the same conclusion, Johnson v. Mult. Co. Dept. Community Justice,
210 Or App 591, 152 P3d 927 (2007), and we affirm its decision. 
On November 5, 1997, when plaintiff was 14 years old, she was raped by an
unknown assailant, who was identified, years later, as Ladon Stephens.  Stephens had
been released from prison about ten months before the rape, after serving six years for
three separate attempts to kidnap young girls.  At the time that Stephens raped plaintiff,
he was being supervised as a high risk sex offender by the Multnomah County
Department of Community Justice (defendant). 
In April 2002, Stephens was arrested for the rape of another young woman. 
Shortly thereafter, the authorities connected Stephens to the November 5, 1997, rape of
plaintiff by means of DNA evidence.  Authorities also connected Stephens to two other
rapes that occurred earlier in 1997 and, most notoriously, to the 2001 rape and murder of
yet another young girl, Melissa Bittler.  At some point thereafter, and at least by July
2003, plaintiff became aware that Stephens very likely had been her assailant.  
In December 2003, plaintiff's parents told her that Stephens was being
supervised by defendant when he raped her and that defendant's supervision of Stephens
may have been inadequate.  Well within 180 days of that conversation -- on April 28,
2004 -- plaintiff gave notice to defendant that she had been injured as a result of its
negligent supervision of Stephens and that she intended to file a civil action seeking
damages.  A few months later, plaintiff filed the action at issue here, alleging that
defendant was negligent in using parole officers who were not trained in sex offender
management to supervise defendant; in failing to carry out all required home visits; in
failing to act when polygraph tests and other evidence suggested that Stephens was being
untruthful about his activities; in failing to act when Stephens missed scheduled
appointments and examinations; and in sending Stephens for sex offender treatment to a
psychologist who was not qualified to provide such treatment.
Defendant filed an answer, and then moved for summary judgment on the
ground that plaintiff had failed to give notice of her claim within 180 days of her injury,
as ORS 30.275(2)(b) requires.  In its motion, defendant acknowledged that, under this
court's cases, the notice period set out at ORS 30.275(2)(b) does not commence to run
until the plaintiff has had a reasonable opportunity to discover his or her injury and the
identity of the party responsible for that injury.  See Adams v. Oregon State Police, 289
Or 233, 239, 611 P2d 1153 (1980) (so holding).  Defendant noted, however, that that
standard does not allow plaintiffs to ignore pertinent information but, instead, imputes to
them the level of knowledge that a reasonable person would have had under the
circumstances.  Applying that standard to these circumstances, defendant argued, led
inexorably to the conclusion that plaintiff's April 28, 2004, notice of claim was untimely: 
as a matter of law, defendant argued, a reasonable person in plaintiff's shoes would have
learned about defendant's allegedly inadequate supervision of Stephens long before
October 28, 2003 (180 days before April 28, 2004, when plaintiff gave notice of her claim
to defendant).  
In so arguing, defendant relied primarily on the fact that numerous articles
about Stephens, his crimes, and his history with the county justice system had appeared in
The Oregonian in 2002 and 2003.  Defendant submitted eight of those articles with its
summary judgment motion.  The first article appeared on the front page of the
Oregonian's May 30, 2002, edition -- shortly after Stephens was arrested in April 2002 --
and stated that Stephens had been linked through DNA evidence to the 2001 rape and
murder of Melissa Bittler and to three other rapes in 1997.  The article described the date,
location, and circumstances of each crime, but did not disclose the names of victims other
than Bittler.  The article noted that Stephens had been released from prison in 1996, but
did not mention his parole status.  Another similar article that appeared in the local
section the next day (May 31, 2002) did mention that Stephens had been on high level
supervision "until his April arrest."  
The next article, which appeared in the local section of the paper on June 1,
2002, focused on attempts by Portland police to process a backlog of evidence collected
in other rape cases.  The article described how police had linked Stephens to earlier
crimes, including a rape on November 5, 1997 -- the date on which plaintiff had been
raped.  The article noted that Stephens had been on supervision since his December 1996
release and described some of the terms of his supervision. 
A third article, an editorial, appeared in the Sunday Oregonian on June 2,
2002.  It argued for expanded DNA testing of convicted felons and described how DNA
evidence had been used to link the Bittler murder to a rape that had occurred on
November 5, 1997 -- again, a clear reference to the day on which plaintiff had been raped.
Thus far, however, no newspaper article had intimated that Stephens's
freedom during the time period in question was attributable to any lack of care on
defendant's part.  An article that appeared in the local section on July 28, 2002, was the
first to describe defendant's supervision of Stephens with any degree of detail.  Toward
the end of that article (which was devoted primarily to the inadequate investigation of
Stephen's 1997 crimes by Multnomah County police), the author noted that Stephens
committed his crimes while he was being supervised as a high risk sex offender by
defendant.  The article noted that Stephens had failed some polygraph tests, but then
reported that defendant had "reviewed Stephens'[s] parole supervision and concluded that
'procedures were followed.'"  
Only three Oregonian articles that defendant submitted with its motion
were directly critical of defendant's supervision of Stephens.  A December 7, 2002,
article, entitled "Report Rips Parole Oversight of Suspect," reported the results of a
Multnomah County internal review:  Stephens's case had been passed among at least six
different parole officers; not all of Stephens's parole officers had been trained in sex
offender management; parole officers had failed to follow up when Stephens failed
polygraph tests; and parole officers had not raised alarms when they could not contact
Stephens at home.  A December 26, 2002, editorial repeated much of the information
contained in the December 7 article and then went on to call for "thorough soul-searching
by the parole and probation department and a full public accounting early next year of
everything that has changed, or is going to change as a result of this case."  Finally, an
October 3, 2003, article described changes that defendant had made in its procedures for
supervising sex offenders in the wake of the Stephens case and, in the process, described
various errors that (in the opinion of the authors of the article) defendant had made in
supervising Stephens. 
Defendant submitted other material with its summary judgment motion,
including: (1) transcripts of news stories about Stephens that aired on Portland television
stations, two of which reported (in October and December 2003) concerns about
defendant's supervision of Stephens; (2) an affidavit by the Multnomah County Chief
Deputy of Corrections, stating that plaintiff had been incarcerated in various Multnomah
County jail facilities between December 30, 2002 and July 18, 2003, and that she had had
reasonable access to local newspapers and television news programs during that time; (3)
a partial transcript of plaintiff's testimony at Stephens's trial, in which plaintiff stated that
she had concluded that Stephens was her attacker when "he got arrested and it was in all
the newspapers and stuff"; and (4) plaintiff's deposition testimony acknowledging that
police had talked to her about a possible connection between her case and Melissa
Bittler's murder before Stephens was arrested and that she had heard about Stephens's
arrest from "other people" at the time that it was reported in the news.      
Plaintiff responded to defendant's motion by arguing that the dispositive
issue was not when plaintiff did or should have known that Stephens was her attacker, but
when she should have known about defendant's role in her injury.  Plaintiff then argued
that that issue could not be decided on summary judgment, because a rational trier of fact
could find that plaintiff reasonably did not discover defendant's involvement in her injury
until her parents told her about defendant's negligent supervision of Stephens in
December 2003.  In an affidavit submitted with her response, plaintiff acknowledged that,
"on or around July of 2003," she knew that Stephens could have been her assailant.  She
also averred that she had been incarcerated from December 31, 2002 until October 20,
2003; that she did not watch television or read the newspaper during her incarceration;
and that her parents had informed her, in December 2003, that defendant had committed
errors in its supervision of Stephens.
The trial court rejected plaintiff's arguments and granted defendant's
motion.  On plaintiff's appeal, the Court of Appeals reversed, holding that defendant was
not entitled to summary judgment because (1) a rational juror could conclude that a
reasonable person in plaintiff's circumstances would not necessarily have been aware of
media reports questioning defendant's supervision of Stephens before October 28, 2003;
and (2) any duty to inquire into defendant's role in the rape did not arise until plaintiff
knew that Stephens was under defendant's supervision at the time of the rape, and a
triable issue remained as to when plaintiff acquired that knowledge.  Johnson, 210 Or
App at 597-600.  We allowed defendant's petition for review.
There is no dispute that the "discovery rule" that this court has applied to
many statutory limitations periods since Berry v. Branner, 245 Or 307, 421 P2d 996
(1966), also applies to the 180-day notice of claim requirement at ORS 30.275(2)(b).  See
Adams, 289 Or at 237-39 (so stating).  Neither is there any dispute about the parameters
of the discovery rule.  At least in theory, the parties agree that the discovery rule does not
require actual discovery or knowledge of the claim but, instead, imputes to the plaintiff
the level of knowledge that an exercise of reasonable care would have disclosed.  See,
e.g., Forest Grove Brick v. Strickland, 277 Or 81, 86, 559 P2d 502 (1977) (stating that
rule).  Finally, the parties agree that "discovery" of an injury involves actual or imputed
knowledge of three separate elements:  harm, tortious conduct, (2) and causation. 
Gaston v. Parsons, 318 Or 247, 255, 864 P2d 1319 (1994).  In other words, the notice of
claim period does not commence to run, under the discovery rule, until a plaintiff knows
or, in the exercise of reasonable care should know, that he or she has been injured and
that there is a substantial possibility that the injury was caused by an identified person's
tortious conduct.  Adams, 289 Or at 239 (so stating).
In the present case, plaintiff's knowledge of her injury is not an issue.  The
controversy pertains, instead, to when plaintiff "discovered," or reasonably should have
discovered, defendant's involvement in her injury -- that is, when she knew or should
have known that defendant had acted tortiously (by failing to supervise Stephens
adequately) and that that tortious conduct had "caused" her injury (by allowing Stephens
to remain on the streets, free to commit crimes against plaintiff and other young women). 
The question whether and when a plaintiff knew or should have known that
his or her injury was caused by a particular defendant's tortious conduct ordinarily is a
question of fact for the jury; it may be decided on summary judgment as a matter of law
only if the record on summary judgment presents no triable issue of fact.  See generally
Gaston, 318 Or at 256-62 (discussing when genuine issue of fact exists as to when
plaintiff discovered defendant's tortious conduct in medical malpractice case).  
Defendant contends that, in light of the uncontroverted evidence in the record of media
coverage of Stephens's crimes and, later, of defendant's supervision of Stephens, plaintiff
has no room to argue that she reasonably did not discover defendant's role in her injury
until October 28, 2003, or later.  
In that regard, defendant's arguments follow two separate lines.  First,
defendant focuses on the idea that plaintiff failed to make a reasonable inquiry into the
causes of her injury at the appropriate time.  It argues that plaintiff was on "inquiry
notice" (3) by July 2003, at the very latest, and that a reasonable inquiry at that time
would have led to media reports about defendant's negligent supervision of Stephens:
"Plaintiff admits in her affidavit that she was aware '[o]n or around July of
2003 that Ladon Stephens could have been the man that raped me.' * * *
Beginning in May 2002, numerous news articles appeared in the local
media discussing the [defendant's] supervision of Stephens.  Plaintiff
testified that, although she did not read any news articles herself, or see [the
reports] on the [television] news, she was aware of the media attention to
the case, because other people told her about it.  Therefore, as of July 2003,
plaintiff had full access to sufficient information to trigger reasonable
inquiry that would have lead to the discovery that [defendant's] supervision
of Stephens was in question."
Defendant is correct insofar as it suggests that the discovery rule does not
protect plaintiffs who fail to make a further inquiry when a reasonable person would do
so.  Gaston, 318 Or at 256.   But when, in these circumstances, can we say that a
reasonable person would have made a further inquiry? (4)  Defendant suggests, in the
material quoted above, that that moment arrived when plaintiff learned that Stephens may
have been her attacker and that the local media had been covering Stephens's crimes.  
We do not agree.  The victim of an intentional crime perpetrated by an
unknown assailant would have no reason even to speculate that his or her injury might
have been caused in part by the tortious conduct of a parole agency or any other third
party.  Learning the identity of the perpetrator of the crime and that the perpetrator is the
subject of local news reports would not necessarily change anything in that regard.  The
crime victim still would have no reason to suppose that the actions of a third party might
be involved.  Certainly, a rape victim who learns that her attacker is in the news might be
motivated by general curiosity to inquire into that news coverage and, in the process,
might acquire information suggesting that the person was negligently supervised by a
parole agency.  But that is a far cry from saying that, as a matter of law, a reasonable rape
victim with that information would inquire into the possibility that tortious conduct by a
third party somehow had caused her injury.  
Put differently:  A duty to inquire must arise from circumstances stronger
than the mere drifting possibility that something of interest might come to light.  The facts
that defendant relies on -- plaintiff's knowledge of Stephens's identity and her knowledge
that Stephens was being discussed in the media -- might raise a question in the mind of a
reasonable person about the involvement of a parole agency in plaintiff's injuries, but
would not necessarily do so.  We reject defendant's theory that, as a matter of law, the
record on summary judgment establishes that, by July 2003 at the latest, a reasonable
person in plaintiff's circumstances would have made inquiries that would have led to the
knowledge that defendant's supervision of Stephens in 1997 might have been
deficient. (5) 
Defendant argues, in the alternative, that the fact of extensive news
coverage relevant to plaintiff's claim between May 2002 and October 3, 2003, is
sufficient by itself to establish, as a matter of law, that plaintiff should have known of her
claim before October 28, 2003.  In that regard, defendant proposes that, for purposes of
the discovery rule, an objectively reasonable person should be assumed to be aware of
readily available media publications relevant to his or her tort claim.  Defendant contends
that that proposal is consistent with the idea that, to take advantage of the discovery rule,
plaintiffs must "exercis[e] the diligence expected of a reasonable person."  Gaston, 318
Or at 256. (6)  Defendant notes, moreover, that some federal courts have applied that
rule, concluding that defendants were entitled to summary judgment on statute of
limitations grounds when defendants had submitted evidence of widespread publicity
about events underlying the plaintiffs' claims.  See, e.g., Hughes v. Vanderbilt University,
215 F3d 543 (6th Cir 2000) (publicity in 1994 and 1995 about university's experiments on
human subjects in the 1940's was sufficient to charge the plaintiff with constructive
knowledge of the events underlying her tort claim against the university, which was based
on assertion that she had been subjected to experiments in 1945 when she was eight years
old).  See also Rakes v. U. S., 442 F3d 7 (1st Cir 2006) and Moseley v. Wyeth, 2002 WL
32991341) (W D Okla 2002) (reaching analogous conclusions). 
However, assuming that the opinions of federal courts might carry any
weight in our analysis, it is worth noting that at least as many federal cases have reached
an opposite result.  In Bibeau v. Pacific Northwest Research Foundation, 188 F3d 1105
(9th Cir 1999), for example, a plaintiff who had been subjected to radiation experiments in 
the 1960s, while he was imprisoned at the Oregon State Penitentiary, brought an action in
1995 against the research foundation that conducted the experiments -- within two years
of reading a news report referring to similar experiments.  The defendant moved for
summary judgment, arguing that the statute of limitations period had passed.  The trial
court granted the motion but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed.  The defendant
had submitted "a litany of news reports and other public revelations regarding the * * *
experiments," most of which were published in the mid-1980s, but the court concluded
that, particularly in light of certain aspects of plaintiff's history and education, the
reasonableness of the plaintiff's failure to discover his claim at the time those news
reports were published was an issue for the jury.  Id. at 1110.  Other federal courts have
taken a similar view.  See, e.g., In Re Swine Flu Products Liability Litigation, 764 F2d
637 (9th Cir 1985) (in spite of evidence that local paper reported in late 1976 that
government's swine flu vaccination program had been suspended because of connection
to neurological problems, additional fact-finding was necessary to determine whether the
general community awareness of the connection was sufficient to find that the plaintiff
should reasonably have known at that time that vaccination caused his wife's death).
In the end, defendant's proposal -- that all plaintiffs should be deemed to
know all information relating to their claim that has been published in the local media --
involves a leap of faith that we are not prepared to make.  The fact that news about some
event was available at a particular time does not, by itself, resolve whether a reasonable
person would have read or heard that news, much less what a reasonable inquiry based on
that news would have uncovered. 
In the present case, defendant demonstrated that local media outlets had
issued stories mentioning defendant's supervision of Stephens as early as June 2002 and 
directly addressing possible inadequacies in that supervision by December 2002.  We are
not prepared to say that a juror would be required to conclude, from the mere fact of that
coverage, that an objectively reasonable person would have or should have known
sufficient facts to trigger the 180-day notice period before October 28, 2003.  Although it
is true that plaintiff's responsive submissions primarily addressed her actual knowledge
(or lack thereof) of defendant's involvement in her injury, the fact remains that
defendant's submissions were insufficient to establish, as a matter of law, the level of
awareness that an objectively reasonable person would have had under the
circumstances. (7)  We agree with the Court of Appeals that there is a triable issue of
fact as to when plaintiff should have known of defendant's connection to her injury.  It
follows that the trial court erred in granting defendant's motion for summary judgment.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.  The judgment of the
circuit court is reversed and the case is remanded to the circuit court for further
proceedings. 
1. ORS 30.275 provides, in part:
"(1) No action arising from any act or omission of a public body or
an officer, employee or agent of a public body * * * shall be maintained
unless notice of claim is given as required by this section.
"(2) Notice of claim shall be given within the following applicable
period of time, not including the period, not exceeding 90 days, during
which the person injured is unable to give the notice because of the injury
or because of minority, incompetency or other incapacity:
"* * * * * 
"(b) For all other claims, within 180 days after the alleged loss or
injury." 
2. It may be argued that there is a fourth element, viz., the probable
identity of the tortfeasor.  We think that that element inheres in the concept
of "tortious conduct" -- someone, after all, must have carried out the
"conduct."
3. "Inquiry notice" is a confusing and imprecise label.  "Notice" may
cause an "inquiry" based on it, but the inquiry is not one made on "inquiry
notice."  We specifically disapprove of the use of that term.  See Greene v. Legacy Emanuel Hospital, 335 Or 115, 123, 60 P3d 535 (2002) (to the same
effect).
4. And -- perhaps even more importantly -- when can we say that a
reasonable further inquiry would have led to the discovery of further
evidence that would give plaintiff knowledge of her claim?
5. Of course, before the plaintiff may be charged with responsibility for
the passage of time, it also must be true that the inquiry that plaintiff would
have conducted would have brought the pertinent facts to light.  See Doe v.
American Red Cross, 322 Or 502, 910 P2d 364 (1996) (illustrating
proposition).
6. Defendant also argues that the rule is consistent with the approach
taken by the legislature in many "notice" statutes -- statutes that "presume[]
that a reasonable person reads the local newspaper for purposes of notice." 
Defendant cites, as examples, ORCP 7 D(6) (providing for court order for
service of summons by, among other methods, publication in a newspaper
of general circulation) and ORS 113.155 (notice of initiation of estate
proceedings can be accomplished by publishing information once a week
for three consecutive weeks in a newspaper published in the county in
which the estate proceeding is pending).  In fact, however, those statutes are
irrelevant to the issue at hand, viz., the plaintiff's actual or presumed state of
awareness.  Such statutes, which declare that, as a matter of law, publication
itself qualifies as notice, are designed to further the ability of courts to
consider various forms of legal proceedings.  They cannot by their own
terms realistically be expanded to encompass the different issues associated
with the question of potential plaintiffs' imputed knowledge of, e.g., the
identify of one who harmed them. 
7. There may be cases in which news coverage of a topic is so
widespread that a general community awareness (and, thus, the awareness
of any objectively reasonable person) can be determined as a matter of law. 
However, this is not such a case.