Court Opinion

ID: 9464103
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:25:09.811075+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:27.631574
License: Public Domain

McGOWAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring separately:
To affirm the dismissal by the District Court of the complaint in this case, it is enough for me to recognize, as has the Ninth Circuit, Werner v. United States, 188 F.2d 266, 268 (1951) (and see Screven v. United States, 207 F.2d 740, 741 (5th Cir. 1953)), that 28 U.S.C. § 2401(a) constitutes a time bar uniformly applicable to both equitable and legal claims. The purpose of Congress to interpose this statute of limitations against all claims, legal and equitable, seems clear to me from the fact that the statutory predecessor of § 2401(a) referred to “suits” against the United States. The shift to the phrase “civil action” was obviously intended to reflect the merger of law and equity which had been a central objective of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure promulgated by the Supreme Court a decade earlier. When, in the wake of that significant simplification of legal doctrine, Congress in 1948 commanded that “[ejvery civil action commenced against the United States shall be barred unless the complaint is filed within six years after the right of action first accrues,” there can be no mistaking its purpose to lay to rest the ancient distinctions.