Opinion ID: 1038217
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Louisiana’s Continuing-Tort Doctrine

Text: For the purpose of determining when prescription starts to run, Louisiana distinguishes between injuries resulting from continuous operating causes and 7 See 28 U.S.C. §§ 2401(b), 2675. 8 In re Fema Trailer Formaldehyde Prods. Liab. Litig., 646 F.3d at 190 (citing Ramming v. United States, 281 F.3d 158, 165 (5th Cir. 2001)). 9 Bush v. United States, 823 F.2d 909, 911 (5th Cir. 1987). 10 See, e.g., Hoery v. United States, 324 F.3d 1220, 1223-24 (10th Cir. 2003); Arcade Water Dist. v. United States, 940 F.2d 1265, 1269 (9th Cir. 1991); Gross v. United States, 676 F.2d 295, 300 (8th Cir. 1982); Kennedy v. United States, 643 F. Supp. 1072, 1079 (E.D.N.Y. 1986). 11 See In re Fema Trailer Formaldehyde Prods. Liab. Litig., 646 F.3d at 189 (evading the question whether a state’s continuing-tort doctrine may delay accrual of an FTCA claim and noting only that the plaintiff “ha[d] not cited any Fifth Circuit caselaw indicating that accrual should be delayed when the plaintiff knows about the injury and could have discovered, with a reasonable inquiry, the . . . Government’s[] potential liability”). 5 Case: 13-30094 Document: 00512349949 Page: 6 Date Filed: 08/21/2013 No. 13-30094 those that result from discontinuous operating causes. In Hogg v. Chevron USA, Inc.,12 the Louisiana Supreme Court stressed this point: When the operating cause of the injury is continuous, giving rise to successive damages, prescription begins to run from the day the damage was completed and the owner acquired, or should have acquired, knowledge of the damage. When the operating cause of the injury is discontinuous, there is a multiplicity of causes of action and of corresponding prescriptive periods.13 Thus, whether the government’s alleged negligence would be a continuing tort is, in part, “a conduct-based [inquiry, with the court] asking whether the tortfeasor perpetuates the injury through overt, persistent, and ongoing acts.”14 In Hogg, the court was building on its earlier statement in Crump v. Sabine River Authority15 that “a continuing tort is occasioned by [continuing] unlawful acts, not the continuation of the ill effects of an original, wrongful act.”16 In any case, it is clear that both the injury and the wrongful conduct that caused it must be continuous.17 12 45 So. 3d 991 (La. 2010). 13 Id. at 1003 (citations omitted) (quoting Official Revision Comments (c) to LA. CIV. CODE art. 3493 (1983)). 14 Id. at 1003. 15 737 So. 2d 720 (La. 1999). 16 Id. at 728. 17 See Terrebonne Parish Sch. Bd. v. Columbia Gulf Transmission Co., 290 F.3d 303, 323 (5th Cir. 2002) (“For a continuing tort to exist [under Louisiana law] . . . there must generally be continuing wrongful conduct, coupled with continuing damage.”); Roberts v. Murphy Oil, 577 So.2d 308, 311 (La. App. 4th Cir. 1991) (“[T]he doctrine of continuing tort applies only when both the alleged wrongful act and the damages caused by it are continuous.”) (citing S. Cent. Bell Tel. Co. v. Texaco, Inc., 418 So. 2d 531 (La. 1982)); FRANK L. MARAIST AND THOMAS C. GALLIGAN, 1-10 LOUISIANA TORT LAW § 10.04 (2012) (“[I]f both the tortious conduct and the damages continue, the tort may be deemed a ‘continuing’ one and prescription may not begin to run until the wrongful conduct ceases.”) (emphasis added). 6 Case: 13-30094 Document: 00512349949 Page: 7 Date Filed: 08/21/2013 No. 13-30094 We are guided primarily by those two Louisiana Supreme Court opinions, which delineate the contours of Louisiana’s continuing-tort doctrine. In Hogg, the plaintiffs’ land was contaminated by the migration of gasoline from formerly leaking underground storage tanks located on neighboring property. At the time of the suit, the leaked gasoline remained on the plaintiffs’ property, but the operating cause of the contamination had abated ten years earlier when the leaking tanks were removed.18 The Hogg plaintiffs contended that the presence of the gasoline on their property constituted a continuing trespass, so that prescription would not begin to run until the gasoline was removed.19 The Louisiana Supreme Court disagreed, holding that the operating cause of the plaintiffs’ injuries was the leaking underground storage tanks, and that prescription began to run when the tanks were removed and the leaking stopped.20 The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ contention that the failure to contain or remediate the leakage constituted a continuing wrong, suspending the commencement of the running of prescription. Citing Crump, the court explained that “the breach of a duty to right an initial wrong simply cannot be a continuing wrong that suspends the running of prescription, as that is the purpose of every lawsuit and the obligation of every tortfeasor.”21 Crump, too, is illustrative. There, the plaintiff contended that a canal built on neighboring property caused an ox-bow portion of a bayou on her land 18 45 So. 3d at 995. 19 Id. at 1002. 20 Id. at 1004-06; see also Marin v. Exxon Mobil Corp., 48 So. 3d 234, 253-55 (La. 2010) (oilfield waste was deposited into unlined pits and migrated onto plaintiffs’ property over time; court found no continuing tort because the tortious conduct ceased when the pits were closed more than a decade before plaintiffs filed suit). 21 Hogg, 45 So. 3d at 1007 (citing Crump, 737 So. 2d at 729). 7 Case: 13-30094 Document: 00512349949 Page: 8 Date Filed: 08/21/2013 No. 13-30094 to dry up, depriving her of access through the bayou to a nearby lake.22 The Louisiana Supreme Court held that the continued presence of the canal was not a continuing tort: “[T]he actual digging of the canal was the operating cause of the injury[, and t]he continued presence of the canal and the consequent diversion of water from the ox-bow [were] simply the continuing ill effects arising from a single tortious act.”23 Refusing to suspend the running of prescription, the court concluded that plaintiff’s negligence action had prescribed before she filed suit.24 Taking direction from Hogg and Crump, we conclude that the operating cause of the damage alleged in this case was the USGS’s furnishing of the two allegedly negligent reports which resulted in a highway design that did not allow sufficient flow of water during periods of heavy rainfall. The USGS’s conduct was not perpetuated through overt, persistent, and ongoing acts: Its only involvement with the Tangipahoa River crossing (at least of which plaintiffs have made us aware) ended forty years before plaintiffs filed suit. And, to the extent that federal maintenance of the I-12 highway could be considered a “continuing” series of acts, such maintenance is not “wrongful,”25 and does not continue to harm plaintiffs. Unlike the wrongful acts in Cooper v. Louisiana Department of Public Works26—the only Louisiana case that plaintiffs cite for 22 Crump, 737 So. 2d at 723. 23 Id. at 727-728 (emphasis added). 24 Id. at 731. 25 See, e.g., id. at 728 (assuming, arguendo, that the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty not to dig the canal, and concluding that this duty was breached only during the time that the digging occurred). 26 870 So. 2d 315 (La. App. 3rd Cir. 2004). In Cooper, plaintiffs sued the state after its construction of locks and dams interfered with their servitudes of drainage and caused permanent flooding to their lands. Id. at 319-20. Analogizing to other cases in which “courts held that debris and other objects placed on another’s property constituted a continuing 8 Case: 13-30094 Document: 00512349949 Page: 9 Date Filed: 08/21/2013 No. 13-30094 support—the harm occasioned by the wrongful acts here ended when the flooding subsided, decades before plaintiffs sued under the FTCA. Case law from both Louisiana27 and federal28 courts supports the district court’s conclusion that plaintiffs have not alleged a continuing tort under Louisiana law. As we agree, we hold that plaintiffs’ claims accrued, and the FTCA’s two-year limitations period expired, long before plaintiffs brought their claims before the DOI. The district court correctly found itself without jurisdiction and correctly dismissed accordingly.