Court Opinion

ID: 9471753
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:40:18.694207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:33.702062
License: Public Domain

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL,
Chief Judge (dissenting).
I disagree with my colleagues because I believe the stipulation signed by the two attorneys — saying only “that the time within which defendant may respond to plaintiff’s Complaint be extended .... ” — was, at best, ambiguous as to whether it waived the statute of limitations applicable to defendant’s independent cause of action under the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act which defendant eventually pleaded as a counterclaim.1 On its face, the stipulation seems only to have waived the 20-day period for answering provided by Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(a). Because the stipulation was ambiguous in this regard, I believe the district court was exactly right in holding that the ambiguity should be held against the lawyer who drafted it.
This court begins by stating that there was no burden on defendant “to show an affirmative intent to waive the statute, but merely to show conduct leading defendant to believe there would be no consequences from a late filing.” Perhaps so. But I can’t discern any “conduct” by plaintiff’s lawyer that might arguably have led defendant “to believe there would be no consequences from a late filing” other than his joining in the stipulation. If so, I do not see what the cases on estoppel add to my brothers’ position, since the only question is what is a reasonable construction of the stipulation: either it reasonably implies a waiver of the statute of limitations relative to defendant’s separate cause of action against plaintiff (as well as a waiver of the 20-day period for filing an answer under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(a)) or it does not. Judge Keeton thought it was uncertain what the stipulation meant, and therefore held that the defendant’s attorney, who drafted the document and failed to make the parties’ intentions clearer, must bear the onus of the omission.
The court cites various cases in support of its estoppel theory, but I see no connection between the facts in a case like Bergeron v. Mansour, 152 F.2d 27 (1st Cir.1945), and this one. In Bergeron a claims adjustor engaged in a course of conduct which misled unsophisticated people causing them to fail to pursue their claim until after it was time barred. (The adjustor’s misconduct included encouraging the victims not to hire a lawyer). Here the imputed “victim” is a lawyer himself. There is no evidence the plaintiff’s lawyer gave assurances beyond those reflected in the language of the stipulation. The question is simply, what did the parties reasonably understand — a question of interpretation, not estoppel.
My colleagues would apparently read the language extending the time for response as not only extending the 20-day period for answering, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(a), but as implying a guarantee to hold defendant harmless against any separate time-bars— like the statute of limitations applicable to defendant’s maritime claim — which might *5create a separate impediment to the late filing of a particular affirmative claim. My colleagues, indeed, reflect a sense of outrage — they seem to believe defendant’s attorney was led down the garden path. But I see no justification for the latter assumption.
First, since defendant’s attorney drafted the stipulation, which omitted any reference to the unrelated statute of limitations relative to the subsequent counterclaim, it is hard to accuse plaintiff’s attorney of having misled him.
Second, there is no evidence that plaintiff’s attorney was any more aware of the potential statute of limitations problem when the stipulation was executed and renewed than was defendant’s attorney. When first executed, the extension did not go beyond the limitations period. Both attorneys were seemingly thinking only in terms of an extension of the Rule 12(a) time for filing responsive pleadings. Later, after defendant filed his counterclaim, the statute of limitations problem became apparent.2 When this occurred, plaintiff’s attorney could not take the generous stance my colleagues adopt. He had an ethical obligation to his client to plead the statute. Under Ethical Consideration 7-7, which supplements Canon 7 of the Rules of Professional Responsibility, a lawyer may not on his own waive affirmative defenses. The ethical consideration provides,
In certain areas of legal representation not affecting the merits of the cause or substantially prejudicing the rights of a client, the lawyer is entitled to make decisions on his own. But otherwise the authority to make decisions is exclusively that of the client ... As typical examples in civil cases, it is for the client to decide whether he will accept a settlement offer or whether he will waive his right to plead an affirmative defense.
The statute of limitations (as opposed to the ordinary time limits for filing pleadings) is such a defense. Accordingly I think my colleagues sense of outrage is misplaced. Both lawyers were, at that moment, in a vise.
An argument can doubtless be made, as my colleagues do, for deriving from the stipulation’s wording an implied waiver of the statute of limitations. But I think a more powerful argument can be made the other way. Extending the time to “respond to plaintiff’s Complaint” seems obviously directed towards extending the rules’ period for filing pleadings; it is not an appropriate way of saying that one is also tolling the statute of limitations on any independent lawsuit defendant may have against plaintiff. Nor is it an open-ended promise, as my brothers would have it, to relieve defendant from all “consequences from a late filing.” The stipulation was between attorneys, and, as noted, while an attorney may grant courtesy extensions of time for filing pleadings, he may not, on his own initiative, grant extensions of the statute of limitations. This cuts against our giving the stipulation the broad construction my colleagues prefer, for if we construe professional courtesy to encompass such an implied waiver, we are undermining the Canons. Moreover, my brothers’ construction raises real problems as to how far they want to go: surely every courtesy extension of the time to plead does not imply a waiver of the statute of limitations with respect to any and all affirmative claims the defendant thinks he has against the plaintiff. Yet all such claims might be pleaded as permissive counterclaims. Fed.R.Civ.P. 13(b).
Given the ethical problem from implying a waiver, and the potential difficulty of *6knowing which statutes should be deemed waived in situations like this, it would seem more sensible to find a waiver of the statute of limitations only when the agreement is reasonably explicit. This is especially true where, as here, defendant’s lawyer drew the stipulation. Why is not defendant’s lawyer, who drafted the stipulation, in the best position to anticipate his own statute of limitations problem associated with the bringing of what is, in essence, a separate lawsuit? Why should not he, rather than plaintiff’s lawyer be expected to anticipate the issue by appropriate language? Had he done so here, plaintiff’s lawyer, duly alerted, might well have refused to sign. Today’s holding places plaintiff’s lawyer in the unfair position of having, perhaps unwittingly and perhaps in violation of ethical canons, surrendered his own client’s rights under the statute of limitations.3 If one must choose between the two lawyers, surely it is defendant’s lawyer who should have foreseen the statute and taken steps to deal with it. What the court is doing, in my view, is to hold the most culpable actor blameless.
I do not disagree that the word “respond” in the stipulation encompasses all responsive pleadings including counterclaims. Since the stipulation was intended to do no more than extend the Rule 12(a) period for filing responsive pleadings, it of course extended the 20 days as to all matters which defendant was entitled to file as part of his answer, including under present day rules, permissive counterclaims. But that is not the issue.4 The issue is whether the lawyers also meant to waive the separate statute of limitations which had the effect, quite apart from Rule 12(a), of barring defendant’s independent maritime claim — a claim which while it could be filed as a permissive counterclaim was, in fact, an independent cause of action, with its own statute of limitations. Defendant could be entirely timely vis-a-vis the Federal Rules but still be out of court with respect to that independent cause.
I think the district court put its finger on the dispositive issue — the fact that it was defendant’s lawyer who drafted the stipulation. He, not plaintiff’s lawyer, was being paid by his client to protect that client’s rights. If someone must suffer, he or his client should be the one. Under the court’s disposition, it is plaintiff’s lawyer who suffers — for what misconduct I am at a loss to fathom. It may be unfortunate that no one pointed out the statute of limitations problem until too late, but plaintiff’s lawyer should not be blamed — he did not draft the stipulation nor did he do anything improper nor did he necessarily even identify the problem before the time had run. I dissent because, in its zeal to do justice, I think the court has done the reverse. I would affirm the district court.

. The counterclaim, being permissive, could of course have been brought by defendant as a separate action anytime within the limitations period. The statute of limitations, established by 46 U.S.C. § 1303(6), limited the bringing of such an action to within one year. Whether defendant brought this action within the one-year statute is, of course, a separate issue from whether the defendant complied with Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(a), which prescribes that an answer (and associated responsive pleadings) be served within 20 days. A counterclaim might be barred by the statute of limitations even though timely pleaded under the rules, and vice versa.

. My brothers go so far as to suggest that no “waiver” as such of the statute of limitations need be implied here because the statute of limitations defense had not yet accrued when the relevant stipulation was entered into. I find this distinction extraordinarily refined. The statute gives the client the right to expect repose after the expiration of one year. When lawyers grant courtesies to one another, no one would have thought, until today, that potentially they were also altering clients’ rights which the ethical considerations deem too important for a lawyer to alter on his own initiative.

. The difference between granting an extension of time to file pleadings under the federal rules and waiving statutes of limitations which may apply to particular affirmative claims that a defendant may wish to file as permissive counterclaims, is highlighted by the general rule that a permissive counterclaim, which arises out of a different transaction than the one sued on, will not defeat the plaintiff’s recovery where the claim alleged as set off is barred by a statute of limitations. This is so even if the original complaint was filed before the statute had run; unlike a compulsory counterclaim the filing of a permissive counterclaim is not deemed to relate back. See, e.g., 3 Moore, Federal Practice 13.11 (2d ed. 1983).

. The absence of any explicit reference to counterclaim is relevant when one comes to the different question whether the parties intended to waive the statute of limitations material only to the counterclaim. Had the stipulation specifically mentioned “counterclaim” it would at least have called attention to the possibility that something besides the usual time periods applicable to all responsive pleadings were being waived. Its failure to do so is, therefore, a further reason for not implying a waiver of the statute of limitations from the general extension.