Opinion ID: 186014
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Equitable tolling of the Privacy Act limitation

Text: 9 In litigation between private parties, courts have long invoked waiver, estoppel, and equitable tolling to ameliorate the inequities that can arise from strict application of a statute of limitations. See Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89, 95, 111 S.Ct. 453, 457, 112 L.Ed.2d 435 (1990). The applicability of those doctrines in suits against the United States, however, has been complicated by the sovereign immunity of the defendant. At least until 1990, it was not uncommon for a court to deem a time limit for suing the Government jurisdictional and hence not subject to judicial malleation. See, e.g., Action on Smoking & Health v. C.A.B., 724 F.2d 211, 225 (D.C.Cir.1984) (Courts have consistently held that a statutory time limitation is an integral condition of the sovereign's consent. Compliance with that condition is a prerequisite to jurisdiction); Soriano v. United States, 352 U.S. 270, 276, 77 S.Ct. 269, 273, 1 L.Ed.2d 306 (1957) (Congress was entitled to assume that the limitation period it prescribed meant just that period and no more). 10 Prior to 1990 the Supreme Court had not spoken consistently to the issue — a failing the Court sought to remedy in Irwin. That case involved the provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that allows an aggrieved employee to file suit [w]ithin thirty days of receipt of notice of final action taken by ... the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(c). The Fifth Circuit had found the limitation jurisdictional insofar as it applied to suits against the Government and held that the district court lacked authority to consider the petitioner's equitable claims. 498 U.S. at 93, 111 S.Ct. at 456. After noting the tension among its previous holdings, and expressing its dissatisfaction with the unpredictability inherent in an ad hoc approach, the Court announced a general rule to govern the applicability of equitable tolling in suits against the Government, namely, that the same rebuttable presumption of equitable tolling applicable to suits against private defendants should also apply to suits against the United States. Id. at 95, 111 S.Ct. at 457. 11 As a guarantor of predictability, the Irwin presumption has its shortcomings. The Court reasoned that the Congress, legislating against the backdrop of private litigation, should be presumed to have included equitable tolling as a component of its waiver of sovereign immunity. The question necessarily arises, therefore, whether the Court intended to limit its general rule to statutes, such as Title VII, under which both private and governmental parties may be liable. The district court thought so, Chung, slip op. at 9, and the Government urges that point upon us here. See also Becton Dickinson & Co. v. Wolckenhauer, 215 F.3d 340, 349 (3d Cir. 2000) (`making the rule of equitable tolling applicable to suits against the Government, in the same way that it is applicable to private suits' has no meaning in the context of a statute that creates only a cause of action against the government). 12 We think that too narrow a reading of Irwin. Because much litigation against the Government arises under statutes that do not apply to private parties, a rule that excluded such litigation would hardly be a general rule to govern ... suits against the Government. Although the Court pointed out that [t]ime requirements in lawsuits between private litigants are customarily subject to `equitable tolling,' 498 U.S. at 95, 111 S.Ct. at 457, we do not believe it thereby intended to make the presumption it was announcing contingent upon the presence of a parallel cause of action against a private party in the statute at issue. Rather, we believe the Court meant simply that it is reasonable to presume the Congress, unless it said otherwise, expected the Government to face equitable tolling in litigation because equitable tolling is a traditional feature of the procedural landscape. Cf. United States v. Texas, 507 U.S. 529, 534, 113 S.Ct. 1631. 1634-35, 123 L.Ed.2d 245 (1993) (citing presumption favoring the retention of long-established and familiar principles, except when a statutory purpose to the contrary is evident). We take the Court at its word when it said it was announcing a general rule establishing a presumption in favor of equitable tolling in suits against the Government, subject to one qualification to which the Court alluded in a subsequent case. 13 In United States v. Brockamp, the Court — before assessing whether the Government had rebutted the presumption in favor of equitable tolling — assumed, for argument's sake, that a tax refund suit and a private suit for restitution are sufficiently similar to warrant the presumption in the first place. 519 U.S. 347, 350, 117 S.Ct. 849, 851, 136 L.Ed.2d 818 (1997). With that assumption, the Court suggested that the type of litigation at issue must not be so peculiarly governmental that there is no basis for assuming customary ground rules apply. The similarity inquiry of Brockamp, however, must be conducted at a fairly high level of generality if we are not to undermine the Court's goal in Irwin of simplifying the equitable tolling issue; the question we ask, therefore, is not whether the elements of, and remedies available in, the action against the Government mimic those of a private claim, but whether the injury to be redressed is of a type familiar to private litigation. See Brice v. Sec'y of Health & Human Servs., 240 F.3d 1367, 1372 (Fed. Cir.2001) (a claim under the Vaccine Act is similar to a traditional tort claim in the sense that it seeks monetary recovery from an injury that traditionally was redressed by tort law). A petition for review of an informal agency rulemaking would not likely meet the test; a claim to recover damages caused by the Government's unwarranted disclosure of personal information does. See id.; cf. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652D (1977) (Publicity Given to Private Life). We conclude, therefore, that a Privacy Act claim for unlawful disclosure of personal information is sufficiently similar to a traditional tort claim for invasion of privacy to render the Irwin presumption applicable. 14 Having determined that Irwin 's rebuttable presumption in favor of equitable tolling applies to this action under the Privacy Act, we turn to the question whether that presumption has been rebutted by the Government. Or, as the Supreme Court phrased the question in Brockamp : Is there good reason to believe that Congress did not want the equitable tolling doctrine to apply? 519 U.S. at 350, 117 S.Ct. at 851 (emphasis in original). The Government says yes. It reasons that because the limitations period is by the statute tolled under specified circumstances — when an agency has materially and willfully misrepresented any information required under this section to be disclosed, 5 U.S.C. § 552a(g)(5) — the Congress has already effectively allowed for equitable tolling, United States v. Beggerly, 524 U.S. 38, 48, 118 S.Ct. 1862, 1868, 141 L.Ed.2d 32 (1998), and should not be presumed to have intended more than it provided. 15 That there is an express provision in the statute for tolling is, to be sure, a factor that weighs against tolling for any reason not specified in the statute. 524 U.S. at 48, 118 S.Ct. at 1868. But neither the Supreme Court nor any other court has deemed that negative implication alone sufficient to defeat the presumption established in Irwin. In Brockamp, the plaintiff's claim was defeated by a combination of factors: the statute's detail, its technical language, the iteration of the limitations in both procedural and substantive forms, and the explicit listing of exceptions, taken together, as well as the Court's concern that excusing late-filed tax refund claims for equitable reasons could create serious administrative problems. 519 U.S. at 352, 117 S.Ct. at 852. In Beggerly, which involved the Quiet Title Act, the Court refused to allow equitable tolling in light of the special importance of repose in the area of real property rights. 524 U.S. at 48-49, 118 S.Ct. at 1868-69. 16 The additional factors present in Brockamp and Beggerly are conspicuously absent from this case. Section 552a(g)(5) is phrased much like an ordinary statute of limitations, not as part of a technical timing scheme with substantive implications. There is no threat of administrative havoc, nor any heightened need for repose. In the absence of those or any other reason for which it would be inconsistent with congressional intent equitably to toll the Privacy Act, we conclude that the Government has not overcome the Irwin presumption.  17