Varnell v. Dora Consolidated School District

756 F.3d 1208, 2014 WL 2937039, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 12383
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
DecidedJuly 1, 2014
Docket13-2135
StatusPublished
Cited by162 cases

This text of 756 F.3d 1208 (Varnell v. Dora Consolidated School District) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Varnell v. Dora Consolidated School District, 756 F.3d 1208, 2014 WL 2937039, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 12383 (10th Cir. 2014).

Opinion

HARTZ, Circuit Judge.

Amber Shaw coached Plaintiff Tori Var-nell in several sports while she was a student in the Dora Consolidated School District (Dora Schools). According to Plaintiff, Shaw sexually abused her for more than a year, ending while she was in the ninth grade, sometime in late 2006 or early 2007. On May 24, 2012, when Plaintiff was 20, she sued Ms. Shaw, Dora Schools, and Dora Schools Superintendent Steve Barron under the New Mexico Tort Claims Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1871, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. She later sought to amend her complaint to add an additional party and additional claims. On Defendants’ motion the district court granted summary judgment on the federal claims as untimely, denied the proposed amendment to the complaint as futile, and dismissed the state tort claims without prejudice.

Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm. We hold as follows: The applicable statute of limitations on the federal claims is New Mexico’s general three-year statute for tort claims; New Mexico’s special statute for child sexual abuse does not apply as a statute of limitations or tolling provision because it is not generally applicable. Although the limitations period was tolled by Plaintiffs minority, it was not further tolled by her alleged incompetence because she produced no evidence of incompetence. Plaintiffs contention on appeal that the period was tolled by fraudulent concealment from her mother was not preserved in the district court. And Plaintiffs federal claims accrued when she could file suit and obtain relief, which was no later than when the abuse stopped, not when she allegedly learned the full extent of the resultant emotional injury. In addition, the district court properly dismissed Plaintiffs state-law claims without prejudice once it had dismissed with prejudice her federal claims. Finally, we affirm the district court’s denial of Plaintiffs motion to amend because she presents no argument why her new federal claims would not be barred as untimely on the same grounds as her original claims, and it would be futile to proceed with state-law claims that would be dismissed upon rejection of the federal claims.

I. BACKGROUND

We summarize the record in the light most favorable to Plaintiff. See SEC v. Thompson, 732 F.3d 1151, 1157 (10th Cir. 2013) (in reviewing a grant of summary judgment, “a court views the evidence and draws reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party” (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted)).

Ms. Shaw was coaching Plaintiff in volleyball, track, and basketball when she repeatedly sexually abused Plaintiff. The period during which the abuse occurred is unclear but apparently lasted from January 2005, when Plaintiff was in the seventh grade, until late 2006 or early 2007, when Plaintiff was a ninth grader. Plaintiff “hated every minute of the sexual encounters,” Aplt. App., Vol. I at 12, and “wanted to kill herself as she did not see a way out,” id. at 11. But she did not report the misconduct because Ms. Shaw instructed her not to tell anyone and she feared social *1211 repercussions. The abuse ended when Ms. Shaw resigned.

After graduating from high school in 2010, Plaintiff told a spiritual mentor about the alleged abuse. The mentor told her that Ms. Shaw’s conduct was criminal and other girls could be abused if she did nothing. At this point Plaintiff “realized for the first time that [Ms. Shaw] could and probably would molest other girls and that what happened was not [her] fault and that [she] had a duty to try to protect others and to tell the people who loved [her] the truth about what had happened with [Ms.] Shaw.” Id. at 78. She told her mother on July 12, 2010, that she had been sexually molested by Ms. Shaw. Her mother told Superintendent Barron and he reported the abuse to the local authorities. A state grand jury indicted Ms. Shaw for the abuse.

Plaintiff was examined by psychiatrist Gilbert Kliman on May 7, 2012. Dr. Kli-man opined that up to the date of the evaluation Plaintiff did not realize that she was being “emotionally manipulated” and did not appreciate the “consequences to her of this two-year training epoch during her years of adolescent personality and sexual identity formation, or upon her anxiety level.” Id. at 80. Further, Plaintiff did not comprehend how the abuse had “troubled and quietly damaged her,” and she only began recognizing the harm done to her after speaking to her spiritual mentor in 2010. Id. at 81. Dr. Kliman also said that Plaintiff did not fully comprehend the emotional and physical damage she had suffered and would suffer because of the abuse.

About two weeks after the psychiatric examination, on May 24, 2012, Plaintiff sued Dora Schools, Mr. Barron, and Ms. Shaw in New Mexico state court. At the time, she was 20 years old and in college, pursuing a biology degree. The 16-page complaint raised a claim under the New Mexico Tort Claims Act; civil-rights claims under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (for violations of substantive due process, equal protection, and the Fourth Amendment); and a claim under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681 (prohibiting discrimination based on sex in federally funded educational programs). Defendants removed the case to the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico. Plaintiff later moved to amend her complaint to add additional claims and an additional defendant (the head coach at her school).

Defendants filed a motion to dismiss under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1) on the ground that all claims were time barred. The district court adopted a magistrate judge’s recommendation to convert Defendants’ motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment. It granted summary judgment on the federal claims and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state claims, dismissing them without prejudice. Plaintiff did not object to the magistrate judge’s recommendation to deny as futile her motion to amend the complaint, and the district court adopted the recommendation.

After the district court dismissed the action, Plaintiff moved under Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(a) to have the state claims remanded to the state court instead of dismissed. The motion was denied.

On appeal Plaintiff contends that (1) her federal-law claims are timely (a) because the limitations period was tolled by (i) N.M. Stat. Ann. § 37-1-30 (a child-sexual-abuse statute), (ii) her mental incapacity, and (iii) fraudulent concealment, and (b) because her claims did not accrue until 2010 when she first understood the injury she had suffered; (2) the district court erred by refusing to remand her state-law claims to state court instead of dismissing *1212 them; and (3) the court erred in denying as futile her motion to amend the complaint.

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756 F.3d 1208, 2014 WL 2937039, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 12383, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/varnell-v-dora-consolidated-school-district-ca10-2014.