Court Opinion

ID: 9492631
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:45:37.924649+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:23.909561
License: Public Domain

MORAN, District Judge,
dissenting:
While I agree with a great deal of the majority’s thorough and thoughtful opin*433ion, I must dissent. Even if we accept that the Diocese had a duty to inquire further into Brett’s misconduct and thus charge the defendant with an awareness of Martinelli’s cause of action based on earlier “storm warnings,”1 the fact remains that the Diocese’ knowledge of Martinelli’s trauma is still imputed knowledge. Bar-tone, the last word from the Connecticut Supreme Court, is very clear on this point: imputed knowledge is insufficient to toll the statute of limitations.
Under our case law, to prove fraudulent concealment, the plaintiffs were required to show: (l)[the] defendant’s actual awareness, rather than imputed knowledge, of the facts necessary to establish the plaintiffs’ cause of action; (2)[the] defendant’s intentional concealment of these facts from the plaintiffs; and (3)[the] defendant’s concealment of the facts for the purpose of obtaining delay on the plaintiffs’ part in filing a complaint on their cause of action.
Bartone v. Robert L. Day, Co., 232 Conn. 527, 533, 656 A.2d 221 (Conn.1995) (emphasis added) (citations omitted).
The majority contends that the actual knowledge requirement can be met here by showing that the Diocese knew of the essential facts giving rise to Martinelli’s claim of “breach of duty to investigate and warn.” In other words, the first Bartone prong is satisfied if the Diocese had actual knowledge that it failed to investigate hints that Father Brett abused at least one other parish boy. The majority speculates, at 40-41, that on different facts involving an unknown victim the Bartone court would not have stated the test to require defendant’s knowledge of the “facts necessary to establish plaintiffs cause of action,” and that this second clause “was beside the point that the Bar-tone court was making.”
The hypothesis does not take into account that this formulation of the test was previously stated by the high court in 1986 in a case involving an alleged duty to investigate and warn unidentified victims. In Bound Brook Associates v. City of Norwalk, 198 Conn. 660, 504 A.2d 1047 (Conn.1986), arguably the closest analog to the case at hand, subdivision residents sought damages from the City, its chief building inspector, and other city officials for latent damage to their homes. Part of the subdivision had been constructed on a swamp with a fluctuating water table and settlement problems resulted when the untreated wood pilings on which the homes were built began to decay. All parties agreed that absent a finding of fraudulent concealment, the suits would be time-barred. The Supreme Court set aside the judgment for the homeowners after finding insufficient evidence that the building inspectors intended to conceal information regarding potential piling defects with an intent to delay the plaintiffs’ discovery of their cause of action. The Court consequently declined to decide whether the defendants had a duty to investigate and warn (although it is obvious that investigation and enforcement of standards was a core purpose of the municipal department) or whether an intentional failure to act in such circumstances would be sufficient to establish fraudulent concealment. Bound Brook, 198 Conn. at 669-70 & nn.12, 13, 504 A.2d 1047. It is instructive, however, that despite plaintiffs’ argument that defendants owed a duty to investigate and warn other homeowners after the inspectors learned of the first three homes needing repiling, the Court did not reassign the burden of proof or reformulate the actual knowledge requirement to focus on defendants’ knowledge of the red flags.
“Knowledge” is imputed where it is reasonable to charge a party with information it should know whether by agency, respon-deat superior, or breach of a duty to investigate. In this last category, the defen*434dant can always be said to have actual knowledge of the “warning” facts that make imputing knowledge of the ultimate facts a reasonable thing to do. The majority’s theory would effectively eliminate the actual knowledge requirement any time there is an allegation that the defendant had a duty to investigate. There is no indication that the Legislature or the Supreme Court of Connecticut would favor liberalizing the limitations period for such claims. On the contrary, by refusing to allow imputed knowledge to satisfy the first prong, the Connecticut Supreme Court has implicitly rejected the theory on which the majority relies. Furthermore, breach of a duty to disclose is foreseeably implicated by Conn. Gen.Stat. § 52-595, which by its terms involves concealment of actionable information. Breach of a duty to warn or investigate, on the other hand, is more tenuously connected to the purposes of the statute.2
Father Brett’s conduct was reprehensible and, assuming Martinelli’s account is accurate, I don’t doubt that it has caused him significant pain. This is not a claim against Brett, however; nor is it a claim against the parish leadership. It is actually a rather remote claim against the regional diocese. The result here will mean that if an organization may owe a fiduciary duty to someone, anyone, it must investigate any possible source of harm and disclose the details to all potential plaintiffs. If it does not, the statute of limitations will offer no protection when the unknown claim ripens years later. Given that the source of the duty to investigate here is not the master-servant relationship with Brett but the Diocese’ relationship with Martinelli, what new obligations does this holding impose on boys and girls clubs, and YMCAs, and other organizations who regularly shelter children at risk? Moreover, if awareness that someone might or would be harmed is the standard, then anyone injured in an auto accident who claims defective design can now argue that the manufacturer knew of the potential for injury, if not the victim, and the statute will be tolled. Back pains may materialize years after a collision.
We should not let this sad case disrupt the carefully balanced tolling framework established by the State of Connecticut. As the United States Supreme Court explained in Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc.:
Any period of limitation ... is understood fully only in the context of the various circumstances that suspend it from running against a particular cause of action. Although any statute of limitations is necessarily arbitrary, the length of the period allowed for instituting suit inevitably reflects a value judgment concerning the point at which the interests in favor of protecting valid claims are outweighed by the interests in prohibiting the prosecution of stale ones. In virtually all statutes of limitations the chronological length of the limitation period is interrelated with provisions regarding tolling, revival, and questions of application.
421 U.S. 454, 468-464, 95 S.Ct. 1716, 44 L.Ed.2d 295 (1975). See also Spinozzi v. ITT Sheraton Corp., 174 F.3d 842, 848 (7th Cir.1999) ((“[A]ccrual and tolling rules ... are reciprocals of the length of the period. A short limitations period can be offset by generous accrual and tolling rules, and a long limitations period offset by miserly ones”)). The Connecticut legislature gave victims an extraordinary 17 year period after the age of majority in which to bring claims regarding sexual abuse. In doing so, it has rendered its “value judgment concerning the point at which the interests in favor of protecting valid claims are outweighed by the interests in prohibiting the prosecution of stale ones.” Johnson, 421 U.S. at 463-464, 95 S.Ct. 1716. I do not *435share the majority’s belief that the State Supreme Court would follow such an attenuated path to release Martinelli from his obligation to timely file his claim or to prove tolling by “clear, precise, and unequivocal evidence.” Bartone, 656 A.2d at 224.
As a federal court sitting in diversity, we should be circumspect with our predictions, particularly if they expand the scope of liability. See Guaranty Trust Co. of N.Y. v. York, 326 U.S. 99, 105, 65 S.Ct. 1464, 89 L.Ed. 2079 (1945) (“In giving federal courts ‘cognizance’ of equity suits in cases of diversity jurisdiction, Congress never gave, nor did the federal courts every claim, the power to deny substantive rights created by State law or to create substantive rights denied by State law.”); Todd v. Societe Bic, S.A., 21 F.3d 1402, 1412 (7th Cir.) (“When given a choice between an interpretation of Illinois law which reasonably restricts liability, and one which greatly expands liability, we should choose the narrower and more reasonable path (at least until the Illinois Supreme Court tells us differently).”), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 947, 115 S.Ct. 359, 130 L.Ed.2d 312 (1994). If we guess wrong, and we sometimes do,3 we “inevitably skew the decisions of [those] who rely on [our opinion] and inequitably affect the losing federal litigant who cannot appeal the decision to the state’s supreme court; [we] may even mislead lower state courts that may be inclined to accept federal predictions as applicable precedent.” Sloviter, supra, 78 Va.L.Rev. at 1681, quoted in Lexington Ins. Co. v. Rugg & Knopp, Inc., 165 F.3d 1087, 1092-93 (7th Cir.1999). Worse, we will have intruded on the exclusive prerogative of the State to control the development of its laws. See Factors Etc., Inc. v. Pro Arts, Inc., 652 F.2d 278, 282 (2d Cir.1981) (noting that courts sitting in diversity should seek to minimize any “interruption of the orderly development and authoritative exposition of state law.”); Torres v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Inc., 857 F.2d 1293, 1296 (9th Cir.1988) (“We hesitate prematurely to extend the law of products liability in the absence of an indication from the Arizona courts or the Arizona legislature that such an extension would be desirable. We have limited discretion in a diversity case ‘to adopt untested legal theories brought under the rubric of state law.’ ”). Given my belief that the majority has guessed wrong, I must respectfully dissent.

. See Dodds v. Cigna Securities, Inc., 12 F.3d 346, 350 (1993) (2d Cir.1993) (noting that sufficient "storm warnings" of fraud will trigger a duty of inquiry and knowledge will be imputed to an investor who does not make such an inquiry), cert. denied, 511 U.S. 1019, 114 S.Ct. 1401, 128 L.Ed.2d 74 (1994).

. See, e.g., Lippitt v. Ashley, 89 Conn. 451, 94 A. 995, 1005 (Conn.1915) (no fraudulent concealment where directors of bank failed to discover treasurer's ongoing embezzlement). We can find no case from Connecticut (or any other jurisdiction) in which defendant's breach of a duty to investigate was sufficient to meet the actual knowledge requirement for fraudulent concealment.

. See, e.g., Dolores K. Sloviter, A Federal Judge Views Diversity Jurisdiction through the Lens of Federalism, 78 Va.L.Rev. 1671, 1679-80 & nn.48-51 (1992) (collecting erroneous "Erie guesses” in the 3rd Circuit); Poindexter v. Armstrong, 934 F.Supp. 1052, 1056 (W.D.Ark.1994) (noting that 8th Circuit Court of Appeals was "apparently mistaken” in light of subsequent decision by Arkansas Supreme Court); DeWeerth v. Baldinger (DeW-eerth II), 38 F.3d 1266, 1272 (2d Cir.1994) (acknowledging that New York Court of Appeals subsequently applied a different standard on applicable statute of limitations from the one predicted by the Second Circuit, but refusing any post-judgment relief for the plaintiff because the doctrine of finality of judgments outweighed "any injustice DeW-eerth believes she has suffered by litigating her case in the federal as opposed to the state forum.”). In DeWeerth II, at least, the plaintiff had chosen the federal forum. Here, the Diocese never had the opportunity to secure a state court interpretation of Conn. Gen.Stat. § 52-595.