Opinion ID: 2677087
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Accrual of Rosales-Martinez’s Claim

Text: The district court dismissed Rosales-Martinez’s claim as untimely because it was not filed within the two years allowed by Nevada law. Nevada law provides the statute of limitations because, in the absence of a federal provision for § 1983 actions, the analogous state statute of limitations for personal injury claims applies. The applicable statute of limitations in Nevada is two years. Perez v. Seevers, 869 F.2d 425, 426 (9th Cir. 1989); Nev. Rev. Stat. § 11.190(4)(e). However, “[f]ederal law determines when a cause of action accrues and the statute of limitations begins to run for a § 1983 claim.” Bagley v. CMC Real Estate Corp., 923 F.2d 758, 760 (9th Cir. 1991). In the ordinary case, “[a] federal claim accrues when the plaintiff knows or has reason to know of the injury which is the basis of the action.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Applying that rule, the district court evaluated Rosales-Martinez’s claims. The complaint alleges that Rosales-Martinez was injured by the suppression of evidence and his wrongful conviction. Thus, the district court ruled that Rosales-Martinez was aware that Defendants ROSALES-MARTINEZ V. PALMER 13 failed to produce Cortez’s criminal record some time before his sentence was invalidated on December 2, 2008, and therefore more than two years before Rosales-Martinez filed his § 1983 action, on December 1, 2010. However, as we recently held, a prisoner’s claim for relief based on an unlawful sentence does not accrue until his sentence is invalidated, necessarily a later date than when he learned of the prosecutor’s unlawful actions. See Jackson v. Barnes, — F.3d —, Dkt. No. 09–55763, 2014 WL 1424448, at  (9th Cir. April 14, 2014). That decision followed Heck, 512 U.S. 477.6 In Heck, plaintiff Heck, a state prisoner serving time for voluntary manslaughter, filed a § 1983 action in federal court seeking damages for various constitutional violations that he alleged had occurred during his prosecution. Noting “the hoary principle that civil tort actions are not appropriate vehicles for challenging the validity of outstanding criminal judgments,” id. at 486, the Supreme Court dismissed Heck’s case, holding that in order to recover damages for allegedly unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment, or for other harm caused by actions whose unlawfulness would render a conviction or sentence invalid, a § 1983 plaintiff must prove that the conviction or sentence has been 6 Defendants argue that Rosales-Martinez cannot rely on Heck in this Court, because he did not cite it before the district court. But, since Rosales-Martinez argued in the district court that the statute of limitations did not begin to run until his release from prison he preserved the argument, even though he did not expressly cite Heck. 14 ROSALES-MARTINEZ V. PALMER reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court’s issuance of a writ of habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Id. at 486–87. The Supreme Court explained that under its ruling, a § 1983 action challenging a conviction or sentence does not “exist[]” until the conviction or sentence is invalidated. Id. at 489. Since such an action cannot be pursued until the underlying conviction or sentence is invalidated, “a § 1983 cause of action for damages attributable to an unconstitutional conviction or sentence cannot accrue until the conviction or sentence has been invalidated.” Id. at 489–90. Thus, the Heck rule for deferred accrual “delays what otherwise would be the accrual date of a tort action until the setting aside of an extant conviction which success in that tort action would impugn.” Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 393 (2007) (emphasis omitted). To determine whether the Heck rule applies, “the district court must consider whether a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence.” Heck, 512 U.S. at 487 (emphasis added); see also Weilburg v. Shapiro, 488 F.3d 1202, 1206–07 (9th Cir. 2001) (finding Heck inapplicable to a § 1983 action based on an alleged violation of extradition rights, because the “allegations, if proven, would not invalidate [plaintiff’s] incarceration”). If a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would necessarily imply the invalidity of a conviction or sentence, then the cause of action does not ROSALES-MARTINEZ V. PALMER 15 accrue until that conviction or sentence has been invalidated. Heck, 512 U.S. at 487; Wallace, 549 U.S. at 393. This requires an inquiry into what a plaintiff would need to prove in order to succeed on his theory of the case, not an inquiry into whether a plaintiff would be able to succeed on the merits. See Owens v. White, 342 F.2d 817, 819 (9th Cir. 1965) (“Whether [a] plaintiff’s claim has accrued is a question of law . . . [that] does not reach the merits of the claim but instead involves the very existence of the claim itself.”). Rosales-Martinez seeks to recover damages in this civil case because of an unconstitutionally procured conviction in his criminal case. Rosales-Martinez claims that his conviction and imprisonment were invalid because the Defendants failed to disclose in his criminal case the criminal history of Cortez, the main witness against him, thus violating their constitutional obligations and Rosales-Martinez’s right to a fair trial. If Rosales-Martinez were to recover a judgment in his civil case, it would mean that his conviction was invalid. Heck therefore teaches that Rosales-Martinez’s claims did not accrue until the Nevada court vacated those convictions on December 2, 2008. Since Rosales-Martinez commenced his lawsuit on December 1, 2010, less than two years after December 2, 2008, his claim was timely and the district court erred in dismissing it as time-barred. We discuss the remedy for that error later in this decision.