Opinion ID: 3012606
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Shared Attorney

Text: In Singletary, 266 F.3d at 196, we expressly endorsed the shared attorney method of imputing notice. That case involved a section 1983 action brought by the mother of a prisoner who committed suicide while in a state correctional institution. The original complaint named as defendants the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, the State Correctional Institute at Rockview (“SCIRockview”), the former Superintendent of SCI-Rockview, and “Unknown Corrections Officers.” After the relevant statute of limitations had run and the 120-day period provided in Rule 4(m) had expired, the plaintiff sought to 9. Garvin does not contend that she produced evidence that any of the four officers had actual notice of the action by August 16, 2002. 10. AP refers to the appendix attached to Garvin’s brief. 12 amend her complaint to name a staff psychologist at SCIRockview as a defendant. The district court denied the motion to amend and we affirmed. Id. at 189. In analyzing the shared attorney method of imputing notice, we stated that “[t]he relevant inquiry under this method is whether notice of the institution of this action can be imputed to [the defendant sought to be named] within the relevant 120 day period . . . by virtue of representation [he] shared with a defendant originally named in the lawsuit.” Id. at 196. In considering this point we noted that the case originally had been filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, but was transferred to the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Deputy State Attorney General Gregory R. Neuhauser entered his appearance as “counsel for Defendants,” after the case was transferred and more than 120 days after the case was filed. Inasmuch as Neuhauser’s representation did not begin until after the 120-day period following the filing of the complaint had ended, any later shared representation was irrelevant in the relation back analysis. We stated “even if we were to conclude that Neuhauser in some sense represented and thereby gave notice to [the proposed defendant] before [he] was sought to be named as a defendant, this does not help plaintiff because Neuhauser’s representation of the defendants commenced after the 120 day period.” Id. at 197. The district court here, which was well aware of Singletary and was following it, rejected Garvin’s contention that notice could be imputed to the four individual officers via the shared attorney method. It found that “the four newly named defendants were not and are not currently represented by the City’s attorney.” AP at 20. The district court noted that the applicable test “is not whether new defendants will be represented by the same attorney, but rather whether the new defendants are being represented by the same attorney.” Id. Because the district court found that there was no evidence of shared representation between the City and the officers sought to be named in the amended complaint, it declined to impute notice under the shared attorney method. 13 The circumstances of the case support the district court’s conclusions. After the City received notice of Garvin’s suit, Deputy City Solicitor Sitarski entered her appearance solely on behalf of the City of Philadelphia. Furthermore, she did not represent any of the police officers within the 120-day period after the filing of the complaint and for that matter has not represented them at any time since then. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m).11 Garvin seeks to circumvent these circumstances by arguing that as a policy matter “to require that the City’s attorney actually have entered her appearance for the newly named defendants prior to the amendment of the complaint imposes an insurmountable barrier that would render all John Doe complaints meaningless.” Br. of Appellant at 21. Garvin argues that until a plaintiff seeks to amend his or her complaint to add the real names of the officers, there is no need for the John Doe officers to have an attorney because “John Does don’t file discovery, answer interrogatories, file motions or go to depositions.” Id. at 20 n.5. Garvin, however, has mischaracterized the standard the district court set forth as that court did not require the City’s attorney to enter her appearance on behalf of the officers for the court to recognize the attorney as a shared attorney. Rather, it only required evidence of shared representation so that notice could be imputed to the four officers within the 120-day period. Clearly, an attorney may represent an individual without appearing for him or her in a pending lawsuit. After all, persons who anticipate being sued sometimes consult attorneys with respect to their circumstances. Garvin, however, failed to provide any evidence of such shared representation during the 120-day period or, indeed, any time thereafter.12 11. As we explain above the City is representing its own interests in this appeal even though a collateral consequence of it advancing those interests is to benefit the individual police officers. See supra note 5. 12. At oral argument we asked the attorney for the City whether during the course of the City Solicitor’s representation of the City it was acting as de facto counsel for the four individual officers by objecting to the motion to amend and continuing to oppose the amendment on appeal even though the district court granted summary judgment to the City, which Garvin did not challenge on appeal. It appears, however, that at 14 In the brief she filed on behalf of the City of Philadelphia in opposition to Garvin’s motion to amend before the district court, Deputy City Solicitor Sitarski stated: in the present case, undersigned counsel has not informed the proposed defendants that this lawsuit is pending, nor have the proposed defendants been advised that they might be named as defendants. Undersigned counsel is unaware of any other manner through which the proposed defendants would have learned that this lawsuit is pending. RR at 133 n.2. The district court cited this statement in support of its conclusion that the officers were not represented by the same attorney. While it is true that the time that the district court denied Garvin’s motion to amend on December 6, 2002, and when the court denied the motion to reconsider that order on January 3, 2003, the City was still a party to the case as the district court did not grant the City’s motion for summary judgment until February 24, 2003. The City had an interest in preventing any delay in the litigation which could have been caused by the addition of new parties and consequent enlargement of time for the new parties to conduct discovery. Furthermore, both in the district court and on appeal the City has had a financial interest in preventing any amendment to name the four officers in order to avoid a potential obligation to the officers for indemnification. See 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 8548(a) (West 1998) (providing for indemnification of employees of local agencies who “in good faith reasonably believe[ ] that such act was, within the scope of [their] office[s] or duties.”). As we explained above, we regard this potential obligation to indemnify the officers as one reason to permit the City to participate in this appeal. See supra note 5. In the circumstances, it is apparent that, without regard for any possible relationship with the officers, the City Solicitor had good reason to oppose the amendment to name the officers as defendants and thus we will not treat the City Solicitor as a de facto counsel for the officers. In making these observations with respect to the City Solicitor’s office not representing the four officers we are not suggesting that if it did represent them at a later date our result would have been different. In this regard we point out that Garvin did not make her motion to amend until after the 120 day period provided in Rules 15(c)(3) and 4(m) had expired. Thus, under Singletary, any representation after the 120-day period provided in Rule 4(m) would have come too late to help Garvin in a shared attorney analysis. 15 Deputy City Solicitor Sitarski did not put this statement in the form of an affidavit Garvin has not challenged its accuracy. Nevertheless Garvin contends that the district court and the City have misconstrued the shared attorney method of imputing notice by requiring that the officers have received actual notice of the lawsuit from Deputy City Solicitor Sitarski rather than constructive notice. In support of this argument, Garvin cites to Heinly v. Queen, 146 F.R.D. 102 (E.D. Pa. 1993). In Heinly, after the district court permitted the plaintiff to amend his complaint to add additional defendants, the newly added defendants moved for summary judgment contending that the amendment did not relate back to the filing of the initial complaint and thus the statute of limitations barred the action as to them. Id. at 103. In denying the motion the district court held that: knowledge may be imputed to a government official when the original complaint names other government officers as defendants, the official to be added as a defendant is represented by the same government counsel as the original defendants, and counsel knew or should have known within the relevant time period that joinder of the additional official was a distinct possibility. Id. at 106. The Heinly court only required that the shared attorney have actual notice of the possibility that others would be named in order to impute notice to the laternamed defendants. Heinly cannot help Garvin. In the first place in this case Deputy City Solicitor Sitarski has not represented the four officers and thus they have not shared an attorney with the City. In Heinly the same Deputy Attorney General who represented the original defendants was representing the newly added defendants. Moreover, Heinly’s holding directly conflicts with our analysis in Singletary and is not good law. In Singletary we explained that, “the fundamental issue here is whether the attorney’s later relationship with the newly named defendant gives rise to the inference that the attorney, within the 120 day period, had some 16 communication or relationship with, and thus gave notice of the action to the newly named defendant.” 266 F.3d at 19697 (emphasis added). This condition for the relation back of an amended complaint is entirely appropriate as the plaintiff is seeking damages from the putative defendant and not the shared attorney. Accordingly, a plaintiff must show that there was “some communication or relationship” between the shared attorney and the John Doe defendant prior to the expiration of the 120-day period in order to avail him or herself of the shared attorney method of imputing notice. Id. Here, Garvin has failed to come forth with any evidence of shared representation or communication between Deputy City Solicitor Sitarski and the four officers. We also point out an obvious practical flaw in Heinly. The critical fact supporting the court’s holding there was that the same Deputy Attorney General was representing both the original and newly named defendants. A defendant named after the statute of limitations had run presumably could avoid Heinly’s ruling and preserve his or her statute of limitations defense by either engaging an attorney unrelated to an attorney already in the case or by proceeding pro se. In that event it hardly would be possible to conclude, in the words of Heinly, that “the official to be added as a defendant is represented by the same government counsel as the original defendants.” Heinly, 146 F.R.D. at 106. Of course, here the newly named defendants never have been represented in this case by an attorney or even appeared pro se so that even if we agreed with Heinly, which we do not, their statute of limitations defense would have been preserved. Garvin contends that the imputation standard that we set forth invites defendants such as the City to engage in strategic behavior in order to prevent their attorneys from giving notice to individual police officers involved in alleged incidents of excessive force within the 120-day period after the filing of a John Doe complaint so as to preclude an amended complaint from relating back. She further contends that “the reality in police misconduct cases is that the city or municipality almost always represents the named police officers/defendants.” Br. of Appellant at 21. 17 Therefore, according to Garvin, we should assume that Deputy City Solicitor Sitarski would represent the four individual officers and further assume that she had some communication with those officers during the relevant 120day period so as to impute notice to them even in the face of her statement that she did not advise them of this action. We recognize that, under Pennsylvania law, a public employee has a right to the type of representation Garvin claims the City would have provided and in all likelihood if the district court had permitted amendment in this case the City Solicitor’s Office would have represented the four police officers if such shared representation did not present a conflict of interest.13 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 8547(a) (West 1998). However, this circumstance does not change the fact that Garvin has not come forth with evidence14 that gives rise to the inference that Deputy City Solicitor Sitarski or anyone else in the City Solicitor’s office had any communication or relationship whatsoever with the four officers within the 120-day period so as to justify imputing notice to the officers. See Singletary, 266 F.3d at 196-97. Moreover, while we do not doubt that Deputy City Solicitor Sitarski skillfully has conducted the defense of this case and, in the light of Heinly, acted prudently in not appearing for either officer Doe or any of the newly named defendants, we cannot by reason of these circumstances somehow 13. Garvin argues that if the officers were represented by any attorney in the City Solicitor’s office we should impute notice under the shared attorney method. Br. of Appellant at 21. The City counters that in Singletary we did not view the two different attorneys who represented the defendants, who, according to the City, see Br. of Appellee at 15, both worked in the State Attorney General’s office, as interchangeable in our shared attorney analysis. See Singletary, 266 F.3d at 197. We need not address this issue inasmuch as, even assuming that we could impute notice of any attorney in the City Solicitor’s office, Garvin has not come forth with evidence that the four officers communicated with or were represented by anyone in that office during the relevant period. See Singletary, 266 F.3d at 196-97. 14. Garvin had the opportunity to take discovery on the communications between the City Solicitor’s office and the four officers she sought to substitute for the John Doe named in the original complaint but did not do so. 18 conclude that the statute of limitations does not bar this action as to the four newly named defendants. See Lockwood v. City of Philadelphia, 205 F.R.D. 448, 452 (E.D. Pa. 2002). Instead, we decline Garvin’s invitation to pile assumption on top of assumption to reach a conclusion, counter to the facts, that the officers had some type of notice of this action within 120 days of its institution. We therefore hold that the district court was correct when it declined to impute notice to the four officers under the shared attorney method.