First Circuit Tolls Claim for Maine Jail Death from Date of Detainee’s Injury, Rather Than When He Died
by Douglas Ankney
Of the many hurdles prisoners and jail detainees face, the statute of limitations for a civil rights claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is among the first. Now the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has made it even harder to clear, with a decision on November 21, 2023, in a suit filed over the death of a Maine jail detainee. The Court ruled that the statute of limitations did not start ticking when Paul McDonald died but was tolled instead with his injury and the alleged constitutional violation by officials at Somerset County Jail (SCJ) that caused it.
Like far too many people who die in jail, McDonald was not arrested for a crime in July 2015 but a probation violation. SCJ staff identified him as a “high suicide risk” with “over a dozen recorded suicide attempts,” the First Circuit recalled. On July 6, 2015, Cheryll Needham of MedPro Associates—SCJ’s contracted health care provider—made a suicide risk assessment that put McDonald in a suicide smock and subjected him to special oversight. But the following day, Needham again examined McDonald and recommended letting him wear regular clothing. A day after that, the Court continued, “Needham cleared McDonald for release into the jail’s general population and recommended no further follow-up risk assessments.”
She turned out to be spectacularly wrong; less than 24 hours later, McDonald was found hanging from a window in his cell with a sheet around his neck. He was transported to a hospital, where he remained in a coma until his death days later on July 16, 2015. Six years later to the day, Yvonne Martin filed a § 1983 suit as personal representative of McDonald’s estate on July 16, 2021, blaming his death on violations of McDonald’s Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by Somerset County and its sheriff, several SCJ employees, MedPro and Needham. MedPro and Needham moved for dismissal under Fed. R. of Civ. Proc. 12(b)(6), arguing that the claim was time-barred. Remaining Defendants advanced the same argument in a motion for judgment on the pleadings. The district court granted both motions, and Plaintiff appealed.
The First Circuit began by noting Maine’s six-year statute of limitations for civil actions, which governed this case. Plaintiff argued that the limit tolled from the date of McDonald’s death. Defendants argued that the claim accrued either when Needham made the negative suicide risk assessment on July 8, 2015, or when McDonald hanged himself on July 9, 2015. The Court observed that while the limitations period was taken from state law, the accrual date was not. Rather this “is a question of federal law that is not resolved by reference to state law,” the Court continued, pointing to Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384 (2007). Under federal law, a “cause of action becomes complete and present on the date of knowledge of the injury,” as held in Nieves v. McSweeney, 241 F.3d 46 (1st Cir. 2001). In § 1983 suits, “plaintiff is deemed to know or have reason to know [of the injury] at the time of the act itself and not at the point that the harmful consequences are felt,” per Vega v. Cruz-Burgos, 537 F.3d 14 (1st Cir. 2008).
Thus, the Court concluded, Plaintiff’s “knowledge of the injury took place at the time of the decedent’s suicide attempt,” not when “the harmful consequences came to full fruition” at “the time of the decedent’s demise.” Since Plaintiff’s suit was filed more than six years after McDonald’s suicide attempt, it was time-barred by Maine’s statute of limitations. Judgment of the district court was thus affirmed. Before the Court, Plaintiff was represented by attorneys with Garmey Law, along with attorney Kristine C. Hanley, all in Portland. See: Martin v. Somerset Cty., 86 F.4th 938 (1st Cir. 2023).
While a statute of limitations may seem simple, it takes time to find a competent attorney and work out compensation for the years that a suit may last. It then takes the lawyer more time to research the facts of the case and the law to draft a civil rights complaint. Further complicating the matter, federal statute adopts whatever time limitation is established in the state. As strange as it sounds, First Circuit survivors of a dead prisoner or jail detainee must also now beware of tolling their claim from the date of the death itself.
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