Court Opinion

ID: 9481589
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:24:59.65714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:26.678849
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
A reasonable Indiana lawyer reading this court’s decision in Blake v. Katter, 693 F.2d 677, 680 (7th Cir.1982), would have concluded that the five-year statute of limitations for actions against public officers applied to section 1981 claims against public officers. While that decision involved a section 1983 claim rather than a section 1981 claim, this court’s opinion in Blake makes clear that the five-year statute of limitations applies to all actions against public officers. It reaches that conclusion not by relying on any analogy between section 1983 and section 1981 but by relying on the plain wording of the Indiana statute; it applies to “ ‘[a]ll actions’ ” against a public officer. Id. (quoting Ind. Code § 34-1-2-2 (1976)).
Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 271-75, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 1944-47 (1985), held that, with respect to section 1983 cases, one statute of limitations ought to govern all such actions arising in one state. However, that part of the Supreme Court’s holding is sufficiently grounded in a discussion of the characteristics of section 1983 to give no significant guidance with respect to section 1981 eases. It was therefore quite appropriate for Indiana lawyers to continue to believe, after Wilson, that section 1981 cases were controlled by the five-year statute of limitations. This court’s post- Wilson decision in Nazaire v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 807 F.2d 1372, 1380 n. 5 (7th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 481 U.S. 1039, 107 S.Ct. 1979, 95 L.Ed.2d 819 (1987), certainly reinforced that view. Accordingly, I conclude that the Supreme Court’s decision in Goodman v. Lukens Steel Co., 482 U.S. 656, 107 S.Ct. 2617, 96 L.Ed.2d 572 (1987), ought not be applied retroactively in Indiana, as this court has already concluded in Bailey v. Northern Indiana Public Service Co., 910 F.2d 406, 411-12 (7th Cir.1990). The plaintiff was required to file within the shorter of five years from the date his action accrued or two years after Goodman. See Smith v. Firestone Tire and Rubber Co., 875 F.2d 1325, 1328 (7th Cir.1989).