Gray v. Staley

140 F. Supp. 3d 84, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 143611, 2015 WL 6406288
District Court, District of Columbia·Decided October 22, 2015·No. Civil Action No. 2014-0937·Published·Cited by 4 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION

AMIT P. MEHTA, District Judge

On August 10, 2015, the court dismissed Plaintiff Linwood Gray’s Complaint with prejudice on the ground that his claims were barred by the applicable statute of limitations. See Gray v. Staley, 310 F.R.D. 32, 37-39 (D.D.C.2015); Order, ECF No. 33 (hereinafter Dismissal Order). Plaintiff has filed a motion to alter or amend the court’s judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), asking the court to vacate its Dismissal Order. Mot. to Alter or to Amend,. ECF No. 35 1 [hereinafter Mot. to Alter]. Plaintiffs motion advances two arguments. First, he contends that the court clearly erred when it failed to apply the “mailbox rule” in fixing the date on which he filed his Complaint. See id. at 2-9. Under that rule, Plaintiffs Complaint would have been deemed filed as of the date he delivered it for mailing to prison authorities. Second, he argues that the court clearly erred in not finding that his claim under the District of Columbia Uniform Partnership Act was a “continu *86 ing tort.” If viewed as a continuing tort, Plaintiff contends, the claim, would fall within the relevant statute of limitations and remain viable. See id. at 9-15. Neither argument warrants altering, amending, or vacating the Dismissal Order.

“A Rule 59(e) motion is discretionary and need not be granted unless the district court finds that there is an intervening change of controlling law, the availability of new evidence, or the need to correct a clear error or prevent manifest injustice.” Ciralsky v. CIA, 355 F.3d 661, 671 (D.C.Cir.2004) (citations omitted). Such motions are “disfavored and relief from judgment is granted only when the moving party establishes extraordinary circumstances.” Niedermeier v. Office of Max S. Baucus, 153 F.Supp.2d 23, 28 (D.D.C.2001) (citations omitted).

Mailbox Rule. Although Plaintiff asserts that the court’s failure to apply the mailbox rule was “clear error,” Mot. to Alter at 2, 9, that asserted error, at least in this jurisdiction, is far from “clear” — if it even constitutes error. The Supreme Court held in Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266, 270, 108 S.Ct. 2379, 101 L.Ed.2d 245 (1988), that a pro se inmate’s notice of appeal was deemed filed at the moment he delivered it to prison authorities for mailing to the district court. In announcing what is colloquially referred to as the “mailbox rule,” the Court emphasized that, unlike other litigants, pro se prisoners cannot personally travel to the courthouse'to timely file a document, but instead must entrust filings to prison officials “whom [they] cannot control or supervise and who may have every incentive to delay.” Id. at 271, 108 S.Ct. 2379.

Our Court of Appeals, however, has not expressly applied the mailbox rule- to the filing of complaints. The closest it has come to addressing the question was in Anyanwutaku v. Moore, 151 F.3d 1053, 1057 (D.C.Cir.1998), in,.which the court considered the timeliness of a pro se prisoner’s Rule 59(e) motion and commented that the date “when [the plaintiff] gave his motion to prison officials for delivery to the district court” was “the key date under the ‘mailbox rule’ for pro se prisoner pleadings.” The district courts in this jurisdiction have taken different approaches to applying the mailbox rule to complaints. Compare Earle v. Holder, 815 F.Supp.2d 176, 179 n. 3 (D.D.C.2011) (applying mailbox rule to fix date of filing of complaint), and Rush v. FBI, No. 09-CV-0955, 2009 WL 1438241, at *1 (D.D.C. May 21, 2009) (same), with Kareem v. FDIC, 811 F.Supp.2d 279, 283 (D.D.C.2011) (rejecting application of mailbox rule to a complaint and stating that “[i]t is well settled that ‘the date on which the complaint was received by the clerk of court filing is the critical date for statute of limitations purposes”) (citation omitted). By contrast, courts in other jurisdictions typically have applied, the mailbox rule to pro se prisoner complaints. See Sierra v. Ramirez, No. CV 07-75-CL, 2007 WL 4150965, at *2 & n. 2 (D.Or. Nov. 19, 2007) (observing that “[ajlmost every other circuit has applied the mail box rule to the. filing of civil rights complaints under § 1983 by pro se inmates” and collecting cases).

This court need not resolve whether the “mailbox rule” was applicable in this case, because even if it did apply, the court still would have dismissed the Complaint with prejudice. Plaintiff signed his Complaint on May 21, 2014. Compl., ECF No. 1, at 18. Assuming May 21, 2014, to be the formal filing date — instead of May 28, 2014, the Complaint’s filed-stamped date cited in the court’s Memorandum Opinion, see Gray, 310 F.R.D. at 37-38 — for Plaintiffs claims to have been timely, he would have had to have been on inquiry notice about his claims no earlier than May 21, *87 2011. But as the court’s opinion makes clear, Plaintiff was on inquiry notice of his claims well before May 21, 2011, and thus all of his claims are time-barred. See id. (concluding that “the Staleys’ ownership of McDonald’s franchises was not difficult to discover before May 2011” and that “Gray would have been on inquiry notice of the property’s foreclosure sale in 1985,” during the pendency of Gray’s and Defendant Harry Staley’s criminal case). Accordingly, even if the court had applied the mailbox rule and deemed the Complaint formally filed as of May 21, 2011, the court still would have dismissed it with prejudice.

Violation of the D.C. Uniform Partnership Act as a Continuing Tort. Plaintiffs second ground for vacating the Dismissal Order — that his claim under the D.C. Uniform Partnership Act was a continuing tort — fares no better. As a threshold matter, Plaintiff cannot satisfy the Rule 59(e) standard because he could have made that argument in opposing Defendants’ motion to dismiss, but failed to do so. A “Rule 59(e) motion is not ... a means to bring before the Court theories or arguments that could have been advanced earlier.” Niedermeier, 153 F.Supp.2d at 28 (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Moreover, Plaintiff has failed to demonstrate clear error by the court. Plaintiff contends that his Complaint sufficiently establishes that he and Harry Staley had an “ongoing legal business relationship” and that his accusations against Harry Staley “constitute[ ] continuing torts and the statute of limitations should be tolled due to the overwhelming facts.” Mot. to Alter at 15. Even if violation of the D.C. Uniform Partnership Act could be considered a continuing tort, however, “the statute of limitations period for continuing torts begins to run once a plaintiff has inquiry notice of a potential cause of action.” Jung v. Mundy, Holt & Mance, P.C.,

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Gray v. Staley, 140 F. Supp. 3d 84, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 143611, 2015 WL 6406288 (D.D.C. 2015).

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