Opinion ID: 200653
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Accrual Standard

Text: 38 In Kubrick, the plaintiff's knowledge of his injury (deafness) and its probable cause (the administration of neomycin) provided the factual basis for his claim. See Kubrick, 444 U.S. at 114, 100 S.Ct. 352. This knowledge alone triggered the two-year statute of limitations because, with knowledge of the injury and its probable cause, the plaintiff need only have made inquiry among doctors with average training and experience in such matters to have discovered that he probably had a good cause of action [for medical malpractice]. Id. at 123, 100 S.Ct. 352. In the medical malpractice context, where the personal identity of the treating physician is usually known to the patient, knowledge of the legal status of the physician as a federal employee is not required for claim accrual. Absent extraordinary circumstances, [t]he statute of limitations under the FTCA ... does not wait until a plaintiff is aware that an alleged tort-feasor is a federal employee. 13 Gould, 905 F.2d at 745; see Gonzalez, 284 F.3d at 292 (rejecting argument that the statute of limitations should be tolled on the ground that the plaintiff was unaware of the defendants' status as federal employees); Gould, 905 F.2d at 743 (Nowhere in Kubrick is any reference to the legal identity of the tort-feasor.). Presumably, a reasonably diligent plaintiff, once he is aware of his injury and its probable medical cause, can discover within the two-year statute of limitations period the employment status of his treating physician, as well as the negligence basis for a legal claim. Therefore, in the medical malpractice context, where there is often a direct relationship between the patient and doctor, one need not know of a governmental causal connection for a claim to accrue under the FTCA. 39 Outside the medical malpractice context, however, the identity of the individual(s) responsible for an injury may be less evident, and a plaintiff may have less reason to suspect governmental involvement. Not surprisingly, courts of appeals have been slightly more forgiving in these cases, deferring the accrual of claims until a reasonably diligent plaintiff has reason to suspect a governmental connection with the injury. For example, Gloria Garza Regalado was murdered by her husband shortly after he had escaped from the City of Faith halfway house in Monroe, Louisiana. The administrator of Regalado's estate filed suit in state court against the City of Faith, alleging negligence in the home's failure to notify law enforcement and Regalado of her husband's escape. Over the course of discovery, the administrator learned that the person responsible for notifying law enforcement of the escape was a federal Bureau of Prisons employee. The administrator subsequently filed suit in federal court against the Bureau under the FTCA. According to the Eighth Circuit, the estate's claim did not accrue when the administrator knew of the injury (i.e., death) and its cause (i.e., murder). Rather, the court indicated that a claim would accrue once the plaintiff has reason to believe he ha[s] been injured by an act or omission by the government.  Garza, 284 F.3d at 934 (emphasis added). 40 The Eleventh Circuit has formulated its accrual standard in similar terms, holding that a wrongful death action accrues when the plaintiff knows, or exercising reasonable diligence should know, both of the decedent's death and its causal connection with the government.  Diaz, 165 F.3d at 1340 (emphasis added). We agree with these courts that, outside the medical malpractice context, 14 the proper subject of knowledge for accrual purposes under the FTCA is (1) the fact of injury and (2) the injury's causal connection with the government. As the preceding quote from Diaz makes clear, there is, of course, a reasonable diligence component to this knowledge requirement. A plaintiff may not bury her head in the sand. Id. at 1339. If she fails to undertake a reasonably diligent investigation into the cause of injury, the law will impute to her an awareness of any knowledge that she would have uncovered if she had undertaken that inquiry. See Kubrick, 444 U.S. at 123-24 & n. 10. 41 Having determined the knowledge content that triggers accrual outside the medical malpractice context (knowledge of injury by an act or omission of the government), we must next ask how certain this knowledge must be. The Supreme Court indicated in Kubrick that definitive knowledge of the cause of injury is not required to trigger the accrual of a medical malpractice claim: It is undisputed in this case that in January 1969 Kubrick was aware of his injury and its probable cause, and that knowledge, according to the Court, formed the factual predicate for a claim. Kubrick, 444 U.S. at 118, 100 S.Ct. 352 (emphasis added); see also id. at 114, 100 S.Ct. 352 (Dr. Sataloff ... in January 1969[] informed Kubrick that it was highly possible that the hearing loss was the result of the neomycin treatment.) (emphasis added). 42 Following Kubrick, we have similarly indicated that something less than definitive knowledge is required. For example, we have also stated that a medical malpractice claim has accrued [o]nce a plaintiff knows of the injury and its probable cause. Gonzalez, 284 F.3d at 289 (emphasis added); see also id. at 291 n. 10 (indicating that claim accrues when plaintiff was on notice of the injury and its potential cause) (emphasis added). Outside the medical malpractice context, courts have similarly indicated that something less than definitive knowledge is required. In Garza the court stated that a claim accrues once the plaintiff had reason to believe that the government was responsible for the injury. Garza, 284 F.3d at 935. The court in Diaz said that in order for the claim to accrue, a plaintiff must have some indication that there may have been a government cause of the injury. Diaz, 165 F.3d at 1340. In Ramming v. United States, 281 F.3d 158 (5th Cir.2001) (per curiam), the Fifth Circuit said that a claim accrues once a plaintiff has knowledge of facts that would lead a reasonable person [] to conclude that there was a causal connection. Id. at 163. 43 In assessing these varying formulations, we are mindful of the emphasis in Kubrick that the knowledge which triggers accrual (and hence the running of the statute of limitations) is the discovery of sufficient facts about the injury and its cause to prompt a reasonable person to inquire and seek advice preliminary to deciding if there is a basis for filing an administrative claim against the government: A plaintiff such as Kubrick, armed with the facts about the harm done to him, can protect himself by seeking advice in the medical and legal community. 15 Kubrick, 444 U.S. at 123, 100 S.Ct. 352. The degree of knowledge of injury and cause that would prompt a reasonable person to take these protective steps will vary with the circumstances of the case, but, in any event, conclusive knowledge is not necessary. Hence, in line with the best precedents, we hold that, outside the medical malpractice context, a claim accrues under the FTCA once a plaintiff knows, or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should know, (1) of her injury and (2) sufficient facts to permit a reasonable person to believe that there is a causal connection between the government and her injury. 44 Our dissenting colleague claims that this holding contravenes Kubrick and its progeny — described as a clear, unbroken line of authority that has firmly established that the baseline threshold for accrual under the discovery rule is knowledge of an injury and its cause, with cause defined as the immediate physical basis for the injury. Respectfully, there is no such unbroken line of authority that supports this formula. Courts of appeals have, in fact, struggled to apply the discovery rule of Kubrick outside the medical malpractice context, see Szypszak, supra, at 30, and cases cited therein (However useful courts may have found Kubrick in deciding cases with similar facts, they continue to apply the diligence discovery rule to dissimilar cases in an ad hoc manner.), and a rule that may seem forgiving in one scenario can be harsh in another. The case primarily relied upon by the dissent for its formula, Dyniewicz v. United States, 742 F.2d 484 (9th Cir.1984), illustrates these difficulties well. 45 The Dyniewicz plaintiffs' parents were killed during a flash flood on a highway that the plaintiffs claimed should have been closed due to hazardous conditions. Despite actively pursuing a claim against the state, the plaintiffs did not learn of possible federal governmental responsibility until over two years after their parents' deaths. The Ninth Circuit, affirming the district court's dismissal of the case, imposed a strict rule that once the immediate physical cause of the injury is discovered, an FTCA plaintiff's claim accrues even if the involvement of the federal government in the injury is unknown. Dyniewicz, 742 F.2d at 486. Since there was no dispute that the immediate physical cause of the parents' injury was drowning, the Ninth Circuit held that the plaintiffs' claim was time-barred. Id. at 487. Under the rule we articulate today, however, the plaintiffs' claim would not necessarily have been time-barred. Moreover, in a subsequent case, the Ninth Circuit indicated that the rule we find in the cases is supported by the language of Kubrick. See Gibson v. United States, 781 F.2d 1334, 1344 (9th Cir.1986) (quoting Kubrick, 444 U.S. at 122, 100 S.Ct. 352 ([T]he prospect is not so bleak for a plaintiff in possession of the critical facts that he has been hurt and who has inflicted the injury.) (emphasis added)). The Gibson court, however, rejected the plaintiffs' request for such a rule, indicating that Dyniewicz, as binding precedent, forced the imposition of the harsher rule. See Gibson, 781 F.2d at 1344 ([B]inding circuit precedent forecloses us from considering such an extension of Kubrick. ). 46 Moreover, the Dyniewicz rule proposed by the dissent is inconsistent with our holding in Attallah. In that case, a courier transporting currency on behalf of the plaintiffs was abducted, robbed, and murdered in Puerto Rico in September 1982 shortly after arriving at the local international airport. Attallah, 955 F.2d at 778. The decomposed body of the courier was found in a nearby rain forest soon thereafter, and the local police advised the plaintiffs that they had no leads as to who was responsible for the criminal acts. Almost five years later, in May 1987, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against two former agents of the U.S. Customs Service, alleging that they were responsible for the murder and robbery of the courier. In January 1988 the plaintiffs filed an administrative claim for the loss of the currency possessed by the courier at the time of his abduction. 47 On appeal, the government argued that the plaintiffs' claim was time-barred since it was filed almost six years after the plaintiffs knew of their injury. The government, advocating for a rule such as that found in Dyniewicz, argued that the plaintiffs were aware of their injury and its cause on or about September 20, 1982, when the body of the murdered courier was found; hence, the claim accrued at that point. Rejecting this argument, we concluded that under the circumstances of that case, the plaintiffs' claim accrued at the time of the indictment against the former agents because the plaintiffs did not know, nor in the exercise of reasonable diligence could have known of the Customs agents' criminal acts until the time of their indictment. Id. at 780. 16 By way of contrast, if, as our dissenting colleague posits, knowledge of cause for accrual purposes means knowledge of the immediate physical basis for the injury, then Attallah was wrongly decided since the plaintiffs in Attallah knew that their employees had been murdered and robbed within days of their disappearance. See Attallah, 955 F.2d at 778. We held otherwise, however, since the plaintiffs had no indication that government employees were responsible for their loss until an indictment had been filed. Here, unlike the plaintiffs in Attallah, the Skwira family had indications of government involvement well before investigators told them definitively that Gilbert had poisoned Skwira.