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Christensen v. Philip Morris USA Inc.6/8/2005
point, class members may choose to file their own suits or to intervene as plaintiffs in the pending action.
In this case, respondent clearly would have been a party in Pendleton if that suit had been permitted to continue as a class action. The filing of the Pendleton action thus tolled the statute of limitations for respondent and other members of the Pendleton class. Since respondent did not receive his Notice of Right to Sue until after the Pendleton action was filed, he retained a full 90 days in which to bring suit after class certification was denied. Respondent's suit was thus timely filed.
One week after Crown, the Supreme Court decided Chardon v. Soto, 462 U.S. 650 (1983). In that case, school employees filed a class action against Puerto Rican school officials, asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 based on their demotions for alleged political reasons. Id. at 651-52. The class action was filed shortly before the expiration of the one-year statute of limitations applicable under Puerto Rican law. Id. at 651, 654. After the district court denied class certification, on the ground that the proposed class was not sufficiently numerous to qualify under FRCP 23, the school employees filed individual § 1983 actions in federal court. Id. at 652-53. Those suits, however, were filed more than one year after the claims accrued, "even excluding the period during which the class action was pending, but less than one year after the denial of class certification." Id. at 653. Accordingly, if limitations was merely suspended during the pendency of the class action, the suits were time-barred. On the other hand, if limitations "began to run anew" after the class certification was denied, the suits were timely. Id.
The federal appeals court looked to Puerto Rican law to resolve the tolling issue, because of the absence of a federal statute of limitations for § 1983 claims. Id. at 654. It concluded that, under Puerto Rican law, the statute of limitations began to run anew when the tolling ceased upon denial of class certification. Therefore, it ruled that the actions were timely filed. The Supreme Court agreed, stating, id. at 661-62:
In a §1983 action ... Congress has specifically directed the courts, in the absence of controlling federal law, to apply state statutes of limitations and state tolling rules unless they are "inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States." 42 U.S.C. § 1988. American Pipe does not answer the question whether, in a § 1983 case in which the filing of a class action has tolled the statute of limitations until class certification is denied, the tolling effect is suspension rather than renewal or extension of the period. American Pipe simply asserts a federal interest in assuring the efficiency and economy of the class action procedure. After class certification is denied, that federal interest is vindicated as long as each unnamed plaintiff is given as much time to intervene or file a separate action as he would have under a state savings statute applicable to a party whose action has been dismissed for reasons unrelated to the merits, or, in the absence of a statute, the time provided under the most closely analogous state tolling statute.
. . . . The Court of Appeals applied the Puerto Rican rule that, after tolling comes to an end, the statute of limitations begins to run anew. Since the application of this state law rule gives unnamed class members the same protection as if they had filed actions in their own names which were subsequently dismissed, the federal interest set forth in American Pipe is fully protected.
The Court of Appeals correctly rejected the argument that American Pipe establish
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