Fallin v. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation

675 F. App'x 197
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedJanuary 12, 2017
Docket16-2062
StatusUnpublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 675 F. App'x 197 (Fallin v. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Fallin v. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, 675 F. App'x 197 (3d Cir. 2017).

Opinion

OPINION *

PER CURIAM

Glen M. Fallin challenges the orders of the District Court dismissing his complaint on statute of limitations grounds and declining to reconsider that ruling. We will affirm.

I.

Fallin filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and several of its former officials and employees (collectively, “PennDOT”). His claims arose from Penn-DOT’s alleged failure to register a trailer that he used to haul goods for a trucking company that he owned.

According to Fallin’s allegations, he attempted to register the trailer in May of 2007 and believed he had done so. When he later attempted to deliver goods to a military base in December of 2007, however, military personnel turned him away because PennDOT’s database did not show his trailer as registered. Fallin’s efforts to rectify the situation led a PennDOT employee to provide him with forms that he was “unable to understand.” (ECF No. 1 at 7-8 ¶ 18.) Fallin encountered a second problem when, in April of 2008, a police officer detained him for approximately two hours, again on the basis of PennDOT’s alleged failure to register the trailer.

Fallin did not allege that he took any further action regarding the registration for over four and a half years until, on December 21, 2012, he visited a PennDOT office, reviewed his file, and spoke with a supervisor. According to Fallin, his file contained no record of PennDOT having notified him- that his registration had *199 failed, and the supervisor told him that PennDOT does not provide such notice.

Fallin filed his complaint two years and one day later. Fallin alleged that Penn-DOT deprived him of due process by failing to provide him with notice of the failure of his registration and a meaningful opportunity to be heard on that issue. He asserted claims for monetary damages against the individual defendants and claims for declaratory and injunctive relief against PennDOT itself.

PennDOT filed a motion to dismiss Fal-liris complaint under Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. PennDOT argued both that Fallin lacked standing and that his claims are barred by the two-year statute of limitations that applies to § 1983 claims arising in Pennsylvania. See Kach v. Hose, 589 F.3d 626, 634 (3d Cir. 2009). The District Court did not address the issue of standing, but it agreed that Falliris complaint is barred by the statute of limitations and dismissed it on that basis. Fallin filed a motion for reconsideration and requested leave to amend his complaint, which the District Court denied. Fallin now appeals. 1

II.

Dismissal of a complaint on statute of limitations grounds is appropriate when the defense is apparent on the face of the complaint. See Stephens v. Clash, 796 F.3d 281, 288 (3d Cir. 2015). We agree with the District Court that such is the case here. As the District Court explained, Fallin clearly was aware of his injuries by April of 2008 at the very latest because he knew at that time that PennDOT had neither registered his trailer nor provided him notice of that fact. Thus, Falliris claims accrued at least by April of 2008, see Kach, 589 F.3d at 634, and the two-year statute of limitations expired in April of 2010, over four and a half years before Fallin filed suit.

Fallin does not contest that he knew of his alleged injuries in April of 2008. Instead, he argues that he did not know the cause of those injuries until later and that, under the discovery rule, his claims did not accrue until them. See id. at 635, 642. Fallin argues that he did not know that PennDOT never sent him notice until he reviewed his file and spoke with a Penn-DOT supervisor on December 21, 2012. According to Fallin, although he knew before then that he had not received notice, he did not know that PennDOT had not provided notice and instead had assumed that PennDOT did but that he either did not receive it or had overlooked it. Thus, he argues, his claims did not accrue until he actually learned the cause of his alleged injuries on December 21, 2012.

PennDOT argues that, even if that were true, Falliris complaint remains untimely because he spoke with the PennDOT supervisor on December 21, 2012, the two-year statute of limitations as measured *200 from that date expired on December 21, 2014, and Fallin did not file his complaint until one day later on December 22, 2014. December 21, 2014, however, was a Sunday. Under both federal and Pennsylvania law, and with exceptions not relevant here, statutory time limits that would expire on a non-business day are deemed to continue running until the next business day. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(a)(1)(C); 1 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 1908. Thus, Fallin’s complaint would be timely if his arguments concerning the discovery rule had merit.

Unfortunately for him, they do not. Application of the discovery rule requires that a plaintiff exercise reasonable diligence in discovering his or her injury and its cause. See Kach, 589 F.3d at 642. That means that a plaintiff must “exhibit!] those qualities of attention, knowledge, intelligence and judgment which society requires of its members for the protection of their own interests and the interests of others.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). In this case, Fallin knew in April of 2008 that his trailer was not registered and that he had not received notice of that fact. Fallin, however, did not take any further action regarding his registration until speaking with the PennDOT supervisor over four and a half years later on December 21, 2012. That is not reasonable diligence.

Fallin raises three arguments to the contrary, but they lack merit. First, he argues that he was entitled to rely on the presumption of regularity afforded to the performance of official duties. See Nat’l Archives & Records Admin. v. Favish, 541 U.S. 157, 174, 124 S.Ct. 1570, 158 L.Ed.2d 319 (2004). According to Fallin, this presumption entitled him to assume—apparently indefinitely—that PennDOT had sent him constitutionally adequate notice until he happened to learn otherwise. We are not persuaded. The discovery rule requires reasonable diligence. Applying the presumption of regularity in this manner would require no diligence, even as to an injury of which the plaintiff already is aware. Fallin has cited no authority applying the presumption of regularity to relieve a plaintiff of the burden of exercising reasonable diligence for statute of limitation purposes, and we are aware of none.

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675 F. App'x 197, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fallin-v-pennsylvania-department-of-transportation-ca3-2017.