Court Opinion

ID: 9477247
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:18:20.247033+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:46.570939
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur fully in the court’s opinion, except insofar as the first paragraph of Part II might lend itself to the interpretation that we are saying the EEOC is automatically foreclosed from taking any further action once it has started the 90-day clock running, under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(f)(l), by giving notice that the government has neither filed a civil action nor entered into a conciliation agreement. If, as Judge Merritt believes, the notice given by the EEOC in April of 1974 was such a notice1 — an issue that has not been briefed by the parties and that I would prefer not to decide without the benefit of full briefing — it seems to me that even though the EEOC did not consider itself foreclosed from going forward with the administrative proceedings, and probably was not foreclosed from doing so, the Plain Dealer might very well have had a statute of limitations defense against the private action once the 90 days had run without the Guild having filed suit.
In light of Zipes v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 455 U.S. 385, 102 S.Ct. 1127, 71 L.Ed.2d 234 (1982) — a decision handed down seven years after the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued its decision in De Matteis v. Eastman Kodak Co., 511 F.2d 306 (2d Cir.1975) — it appears probable that the 90-day filing period operates as a statute of limitations and not as a jurisdictional requirement. A statute of limitations defense is subject to waiver (Zipes, 455 U.S. at 393, 102 S.Ct. at 1132), and because that defense does not clearly appear on the face of the complaint and has never been raised in the answer or by motion to dismiss, I assume it has been waived. See Crawford v. Zeitler, 326 F.2d 119 (6th Cir.1964), and Pierce v. County of Oakland, 652 F.2d 671 (6th Cir.1981). Again, however, this is an issue that I would prefer not to decide without the benefit of full briefing.
I agree with Judge Edwards that the case before us is essentially a suit in equity. Accordingly, I see nothing novel in applying the equitable defense of laches here. Cf. Occidental Life Insurance Co. v. EEOC, 432 U.S. 355, 373, 97 S.Ct. 2447, 2457, 53 L.Ed.2d 402 (1977), and Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 424-25, 95 S.Ct. 2362, 2374-75, 45 L.Ed.2d 280 (1975). It is true that courts of equity will not normally apply the doctrine of laches before a limitations period prescribed by the legislature has expired, but there is nothing inequitable about resorting to lach-es after the statute of limitations has run, where the defendant has pleaded the eq-j uitable defense and not the legal one. i
In holding that the district court did nof abuse its discretion in applying the doctrin¿ of laches under the particular facts of this case, we are not deciding, I take it, whether the notice issued by the EEOC in April of 1974 started the running of a 90-day limitations period that the Plain Dealer could have raised as an affirmative defense in its answer to the complaint. The answer contains no such defense, so the issue is not before us.

. Cf. New York Gaslight Club, Inc. v. Carey, 447 U.S. 54, 65 n. 5, 100 S.Ct. 2024, 2031 n. 5, 64 L.Ed.2d 723 (1980): "As we read the statute, the Commission was required to issue that letter after 180 days_” (emphasis supplied).