Ratzel v. Marinette County

694 F. Supp. 606, 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10447, 1988 WL 94941
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Wisconsin
DecidedSeptember 16, 1988
DocketCiv. A. No. 88-C-529
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 694 F. Supp. 606 (Ratzel v. Marinette County) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Wisconsin primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ratzel v. Marinette County, 694 F. Supp. 606, 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10447, 1988 WL 94941 (E.D. Wis. 1988).

Opinion

ORDER

TERENCE T. EVANS, District Judge.

On May 17, 1988, Robert Allen Ratzel initiated this pro se suit against Marinette County and one of its sheriff’s deputies, alleging excessive force in arrest and possibly an unlawful arrest as well. Mr. Ratzel has since filed something that resembles a motion to compel discovery; he wants to see a copy of the report that was prepared by the officers who arrested him. The defendants have moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim and because the applicable statute of limitations has expired with regard to Mr. Ratzel’s possible claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

I believe that Mr. Ratzel’s suit is timely. However, I agree with the defendants that the complaint, as it stands, does not state a claim against Marinette County. Moreover, it is not evident from the complaint that Sheriff Larson had any role whatsoever in the events described therein.

Thus, I will dismiss this suit with two provisos: First, Mr. Ratzel shall have thirty days from the date of this order in which to rectify the shortcomings of his complaint, as described below. Second, the defendants shall send Mr. Ratzel a copy of the arrest report within ten days, so that he may have the benefit of its contents as he attempts to replead.

Mr. Ratzel should pay close attention to the ground rules laid out in the last three pages of this order.

FACTS

On a motion to dismiss, I am required to accept the complaint’s allegations as being true. Because Mr. Ratzel is proceeding pro se, I have endeavored liberally to interpret his complaint and his rather disjointed letters. The following is my best reconstruction of what Mr. Ratzel says gave rise to this lawsuit.

On or around May 18, 1985, Mr. Ratzel arrived at his vacation cottage at Lake Hilbert. As was his custom, he fired a gun [607]*607shot into the air to inform area farmers that he was in the area. That night, while asleep in his cottage, members of the Marinette County Sheriff’s Department surrounded the house and ordered Mr. Ratzel to “come out of the building through the back door.” Mr. Ratzel woke up and saw through his window that the police were aiming guns his way. He asked whether the police had either an arrest or search warrant, and the officer in command said “no.”

At some point, the police asked Mr. Ratzel to identify himself. He stuck his arm out the bedroom window and displayed various forms of identification. A deputy grabbed his arm and tried to pull Mr. Ratzel out the window. At the same time, other officers burst through the cottage’s locked oak door. Mr. Ratzel contends that the police “trespassed and harassed me and without sound reason.” He seeks redress for injuries to himself and damage to the door.

The police apparently thought that Mr. Ratzel was behaving strangely, so they conveyed him to the Brown County Mental Health Center for examination. According to medical records, doctors at the center found that Mr. Ratzel was cooperative, and they determined that an involuntary commitment was not warranted. The center’s records show that Mr. Ratzel was admitted on May 18 and discharged on May 20,1985. The Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services later sent Mr. Ratzel a bill of $450 for his two-day stay at the center. He seems to want the defendants to pay that bill.

DISCUSSION

Based on his complaint and accompanying screeds, it appears that Mr. Ratzel is attempting to invoke federal jurisdiction under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which permits lawsuits against those who deprive others of rights “under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State____” In such a case, the district court must borrow from the host state “the one most appropriate statute of limitations for all § 1983 claims.” Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 275, 280, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 1946, 1949, 85 L.Ed.2d 254 (1985) (emphasis added).

The defendants contend that this case is governed by § 893.57, Wis.Stat., which imposes a two-year deadline on lawsuits “to recover damages for libel, slander, assault, battery, invasion of privacy, false imprisonment or other intentional tort to the person____” By this standard, Mr. Ratzel’s lawsuit was filed almost a year too late. But another potentially applicable statute is § 893.54(1), Wis.Stat., which imposes a three-year deadline on lawsuits “for injuries to the person.” If this latter statute is the right one, then Mr. Ratzel filed his case one day before the deadline.

As the defendants point out, Mr. Ratzel has articulated claims that are analogous to claims for intentional torts — harassment and trespass, and arguably false imprisonment and battery, too. Therefore, the defendants say, the correct limitations period is two years, not three.

But this argument calls for me to do exactly what the Supreme Court in Wilson told district courts not to do. There, the Court stated:

Almost every § 1983 claim can be favorably analogized to more than one of the ancient common-law forms of action, each of which may be governed by a different statute of limitations. In the case before us, for example, the respondent alleges that he was injured by a New Mexico State Police officer who used excessive force to carry out an unlawful arrest. This § 1983 claim is arguably analogous to distinct state tort claims for false arrest, assault and battery, or personal injuries____
... If the choice of the statute of limitations were to depend upon the particular facts or the precise legal theory of each claim, counsel could almost always argue, with considerable force, that two or more periods of limitations should apply to each § 1983 claim. Moreover, under such an approach different statutes of limitations would be applied to the various § 1983 claims arising in the same State, and multiple periods of limi[608]*608tations would often apply to the same case. There is no reason to believe that Congress would have sanctioned this interpretation of its statute.

Wilson, 471 U.S. at 272-75, 105 S.Ct. at 1945-46 (footnotes omitted). To ensure the vitality of section 1983, and to promote uniformity within each state, the Court concluded that “§ 1983 claims are best characterized as personal injury actions,” id. at 280, 105 S.Ct. at 1949.

In the spirit of Wilson, I will not look into the theories behind Mr. Ratzel’s claims, although defendants’ counsel urges me to do so “with considerable force.” Rather, I will heed the Court’s admonition that section 1983 is “a uniquely federal remedy,” id. at 271-72, 105 S.Ct. at 1944, and I find that Wisconsin’s general personal injury limitation of three years best advances the remedial purposes of section 1983. Thus, I will apply § 893.54(1), Wis. Stat.

The defendants maintain that two Supreme Court cases handed down after Wilson militate against borrowing the three-year limitation period. To be sure, language in Felder v. Casey could be construed as a Supreme Court blessing of the two-year intentional torts limit in Wisconsin section 1983 actions. — U.S. -, 108 S.Ct. 2302, 2308, 2310 n. 3, 101 L.Ed.2d 123 (1988).

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
694 F. Supp. 606, 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10447, 1988 WL 94941, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ratzel-v-marinette-county-wied-1988.