Opinion ID: 1610379
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Prescription Issue

Text: A cause of action based on age discrimination is a delictual action subject to a one year prescriptive period which commences the day the injury or damage is sustained. La. Civ.Code Ann. art. 3492. Under the two seminal United States Supreme Court cases, Chardon v. Fernandez, 454 U.S. 6, 102 S.Ct. 28, 70 L.Ed.2d 6 (1981) and Delaware State College v. Ricks, 449 U.S. 250, 101 S.Ct. 498, 66 L.Ed.2d 431 (1980), and their progeny, it is well settled that the damage is sustained in any employment discrimination case at the earlier of the date the employee is informed of his termination or his actual separation from employment. Chardon, 454 U.S. at 8, 102 S.Ct. 28; Ricks, 449 U.S. at 258, 101 S.Ct. 498; Sturniolo v. Sheaffer, Eaton, Inc., 15 F.3d 1023, 1025 (11th Cir.1994); Williams v. Conoco, Inc., 860 F.2d 1306 (5th Cir.1988); Merrill v. Southern Methodist Univ., 806 F.2d 600 (5th Cir.1986); Morris v. Government Development Bank of Puerto Rico, 27 F.3d 746 (1st Cir.1994); Rivera-Muriente v. Agosto-Alicea, 959 F.2d 349, 352 (1st Cir.1992); Winbush v. Normal Life of Louisiana, 599 So.2d 489, 491 (La.App. 3 Cir.1992). These courts have correctly reasoned that the discriminatory act and, hence, the damages occur upon the employee's first notice of the adverse employment action. Ricks, 449 U.S. at 258, 101 S.Ct. 498. [3] In both Ricks and Chardon, the United States Supreme Court determined that suits brought more than one year from the date of notice of the termination are time barred as the proper focus is on the time of the discriminatory act not the point at which the consequences of the act become painful. Ricks, 449 U.S. at 258, 101 S.Ct. 498; Chardon, 454 U.S. at 8, 102 S.Ct. 28. Therefore, under the Ricks/Chardon analysis, prescription begins to run when the termination decision has been made and conveyed to the employee, even if the employment does not cease until a future date. Id. For the above reasons, we adopt the Ricks/Chardon rule that the plaintiff sustains damage in a non-continuing discrimination case when the discriminatory decision is made and communicated to the employee. Consequently, in the instant case, the prescriptive period of one year began to run for each of the Eleven Plaintiffs on the dates each of them were notified of their respective terminations. Therefore, the claims of all Eleven Plaintiffs are prescribed on the face of the petition as they each waited more than one year from the date the allegedly discriminatory decisions were made and communicated to them before joining the suit. When an exception of prescription is filed, ordinarily, the burden of proof is on the party pleading prescription. Lima v. Schmidt, 595 So.2d 624, 628 (La.1992). However, if prescription is evident on the face of the pleadings, as it is in the instant case, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to show the action has not prescribed. Id.; Younger v. Marshall Ind., Inc., 618 So.2d 866, 869 (La.1993); Williams v. Sewerage & Water Bd. of New Orleans, 611 So.2d 1383 (La.1993). Barring any tolling, the Eleven Plaintiff's claims are prescribed. Plaintiffs argue that they could not know of the discrimination until they knew of the defendants' illegal motives, or the animus, behind their terminations. In Morris, 27 F.3d 746, the plaintiff made the same argument and the Morris court rejected this contention, stating: The rule in an employment discrimination case is that the limitations period begins to run when the claimant receives unambiguous and authoritative notice of the discriminatory act (which is another way of saying that the period begins to run when the employee learns of the adverse employment action). Thus, the key question to be answered here is temporal: at what juncture did appellant reliably know of the injury to which this lawsuit relates?    [T]he point in time at which the consequences of the act become hardest to bearwhich may or may not coincide with the occurrence of the act itself has no relevance for purposes of framing the limitations period ... [Plaintiff's argument] rests on the notion that appellant's claim did not accrue until he knew of both the suspension and the defendants' discriminatory animus. Stated a different way, [plaintiff] contends that his cause of action existed in what amounts to a state of suspended animation until he became aware of the ... motives behind the adverse employment decision. We cannot countenance this contention. It is by now well established that, in employment discrimination actions, limitations periods normally start to run when the employer's decision is made and communicated to the affected employee. This rule of law is grounded on a solid foundation: when an employee knows that he has been hurt and also knows that his employer has inflicted the injury, it is fair to begin the countdown toward repose. And the plaintiff need not know all the facts that support his claim in order for countdown to commence. 27 F.3d at 749-51(Parenthetical information and emphasis in original, internal citations omitted). While this reasoning squarely addresses when prescription begins to run in the instant case, we recognize that the federal law does not provide a remedy which exactly replicates our doctrine of contra non valentem. Therefore, we now turn to a discussion of this doctrine under our jurisprudence.