UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 06-1484
ANGELA WILMINK,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
versus
KANAWHA COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, an
instrumentality of the State of West Virginia;
DAVID GILLISPIE, as an agent of Kanawha County
Board of Education and in his individual
capacity,
Defendants - Appellees,
and
DENNIS OSBORNE, as an agent of Kanawha County
Board of Education and in his capacity as an
individual,
Defendant.
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PROSECUTING ATTORNEY, Kanawha County,
Movant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern
District of West Virginia, at Charleston. John T. Copenhaver, Jr.,
District Judge. (2:03-cv-00179)
Submitted: December 5, 2006 Decided: January 17, 2007
Before WILKINSON, NIEMEYER, and MOTZ, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
William V. DePaulo, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. Jan
L. Fox, Hannah B. Curry, STEPTOE & JOHNSON, Charleston, West
Virginia, for Appellees Kanawha County Board of Education, an
instrumentality of the State of West Virginia, and David Gillispie,
as an agent of Kanawha County Board of Education and in his
individual capacity; George J. Joseph, BAILEY & WYANT, P.L.L.C.,
Charleston, West Virginia, for Dennis Osborne, as an agent of
Kanawha County Board of Education and in his individual capacity.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
Plaintiff Angela Wilmink filed suit to recover for injuries
caused eighteen or nineteen years earlier by the alleged sexual
misconduct of her Washington Junior High School teacher, Dennis
Osborne.1 Because plaintiff has not produced any evidence that her
principal or her school board had any reason to know that Osborne
might assault plaintiff or any evidence that the defendants
fraudulently concealed any material facts preventing plaintiff from
knowing of her cause of action, we affirm the district court’s
dismissal of this action on statute of limitations grounds.
I.
This case arises out of an alleged sexual assault. In her
complaint, Wilmink claimed that the defendants -- Dennis Osborne,
her former teacher and an athletic coach; David Gillispie, her
former principal; and the Kanawha County Board of Education --
violated 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2000), Title IX of the Education Act of
1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681 et. seq. (2000), and various provisions of
state law. Defendants moved to dismiss on the ground that
plaintiff’s claims were barred by the statute of limitations.
Wilmink responded by arguing that, because the defendants had
1
In her complaint, plaintiff states that the assault occurred
in 1984. In her deposition, however, plaintiff maintains that the
assault occurred in the spring of 1985. This discrepancy does not
affect the statute of limitations issue or this court’s
disposition.
3
fraudulently concealed facts supporting her claim, the discovery
rule tolled the applicable statute of limitations.
The district court treated defendants’ filings as summary
judgment motions. It granted summary judgment in favor of Osborne
because “from the very moment of assault” plaintiff had “possessed
all information necessary to hold Osborne accountable.”2 With
respect to plaintiff’s claims against the Board and Gillispie, the
court found that plaintiff had “adequately alleged” fraudulent
concealment of material facts and that such allegations merited
investigation through discovery. The court thus denied defendants’
motion for summary judgment and ordered a 120-day discovery period.
Following discovery, defendants renewed their motion for summary
judgment again arguing that plaintiff’s claims were barred by the
statute of limitations. The district court granted summary
judgment in favor of Gillispie and the Board. Plaintiff appeals.
II.
Under West Virginia law, a personal injury action must be
brought within two years. W. Va. Code § 55-2-12 (2000). Where, as
here, the injured party is a minor, West Virginia Code § 55-2-15
2
Plaintiff’s notice of appeal indicates her intention to
pursue an appeal against all parties, including Dennis Osborne.
Because plaintiff has not raised any claim with respect to Osborne
on appeal, however, those arguments are waived. See Carter v. Lee,
283 F.3d 240, 252 (4th Cir. 2002) (“[T]his Court normally views
contentions not raised in an opening brief to be waived.”).
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(2000), tolls the limitations period until plaintiff reaches
majority. Under these provisions, Wilmink was required to file her
petition in 1991, two years after she turned eighteen.3 Under the
“discovery rule,” however, a statute of limitations is tolled until
a claimant knows or “should know that he has been injured and who
is responsible.” Cart v. Marcum, 423 S.E.2d 644, 647 (W. Va.
1992).
West Virginia’s highest court recognizes two variants of the
discovery rule. Merrill v. W. Va. Dep’t of Health & Human Res.,
632 S.E.2d 307, 312 (W. Va. 2006). In Gaither v. City Hosp., Inc.,
487 S.E.2d 901, 909 (W. Va. 1997), the court held that “the statute
of limitations begins to run when the plaintiff knows, or by the
exercise of reasonable diligence, should know (1) that the
plaintiff has been injured, (2) the identity of the entity who owed
the plaintiff a duty to act with due care, and who may have engaged
3
Plaintiff’s federal claims are appropriately decided with
reference to the state statute of limitations. It is well-settled
that “the statute of limitations for a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
is borrowed from state law.” Nasim v. Warden, Maryland House of
Corrections, 64 F.3d 951, 955 (4th Cir. 1995). Likewise, because
Title IX does not contain an express statute of limitations, “every
circuit to consider the issue has held that Title IX also borrows
the relevant state’s statute of limitations for personal injury.”
Stanley v. Trustees of California State Univ., 433 F.3d 1129, 1134
(9th Cir. 2006) (citing Curto v. Edmundson, 392 F.3d 502, 503-04
(2d Cir. 2004); Bougher v. Univ. of Pittsburgh, 882 F.2d 74, 77-78
(3d Cir.1989); Lillard v. Shelby County Bd. of Educ., 76 F.3d 716,
729 (6th Cir. 1996); Egerdahl v. Hibbing Cmty. Coll., 72 F.3d 615,
618 (8th Cir. 1995); M.H.D. v. Westminster Schs., 172 F.3d 797, 803
(11th Cir. 1999)). In any case, plaintiff has never argued it is
inappropriate to borrow West Virginia’s statute of limitations with
respect to her federal claims.
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in conduct that breached that duty, and (3) that the conduct of
that entity has a causal relation to the injury.” And, in Cart v.
Marcum, the court recognized a second discovery rule: fraudulent
concealment. 423 S.E.2d at 648. Because the fraudulent
concealment doctrine operates “where a plaintiff does or should
reasonably know of the existence of an injury and its cause,”
Gaither, 487 S.E.2d at 908, it “applies only when there is a strong
showing by the plaintiff that some action by the defendant
prevented the plaintiff from knowing of the wrong at the time of
the injury.” Merrill, 632 S.E.2d at 318 (quotation omitted). We
consider each of these standards in turn.
A.
Plaintiff has failed to establish the existence of a genuine
issue of material fact with respect to any of the Gaither factors.
First, it is beyond dispute that plaintiff knew she had been
injured in 1984. She immediately reported the incident to her
aunt, and her mother found her sobbing the evening of the assault.
Moreover, according to plaintiff’s deposition testimony, she
avoided any further contact with Osborne -- she stopped taking
classes from him and quit as manager of the boy’s basketball team,
which he coached.
Second, plaintiff knew “the identity of the entity who owed
the plaintiff a duty to act with due care, and who may have engaged
in conduct that breached that duty.” Gaither, 487 S.E.2d at 909.
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As West Virginia’s highest court has instructed, the second Gaither
factor is a limited inquiry into “the identity of the wrongdoer,
not knowledge of the duty owed.” Merrill, 632 S.E.2d at 313.
Here, plaintiff clearly knew the identity of her principal and her
school board by the time she reached majority.
The third and final element of Gaither requires plaintiff to
establish she “neither knew nor by the exercise of reasonable
diligence, should have known that the conduct of [defendants] had
a causal relation” to her injury. Id. at 315. Plaintiff’s failure
to direct our attention to any evidence justifying her delay in
discovering the causal connection between her injuries and
defendants’ actions defeats her claim here. See Merrill, 632
S.E.2d at 316. As West Virginia’s high court noted recently in
Merrill -- a case where plaintiff similarly alleged that a
supervisory authority had failed to prevent sexual abuse -- to
survive a motion for summary judgment with respect to knowledge of
a causal connection between an alleged injury and a defendant’s
conduct, a plaintiff must “identify specific facts in the record
and articulate the precise manner in which that evidence supports
[her] claims of delay in discovering the causal connection between
[her] injuries and the [defendant’s] actions.” Id. at 317
(quotation omitted). Here, plaintiff points to no “specific facts”
that excuse her delay in discovering the causal connection, and, as
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noted below, there is no evidence that defendants concealed their
involvement in this case. See id. at 316 n.16, 317.
In short, by the time plaintiff reached her eighteenth
birthday she knew, or reasonably should have known, all the
elements of her cause of action. See Keesecker v. Bird, 490 S.E.2d
754, 771 (W. Va. 1997). Accordingly, she “is not entitled to the
protection of the discovery rule” announced in Gaither. Id.
B.
Plaintiff’s claim also fails under the fraudulent concealment
standard of Cart v. Marcum, 423 S.E.2d at 648. To create a triable
issue of fact, plaintiff was required to produce some evidence
tending to show that Gillispie or the Board had notice that Osborne
might sexually abuse students and that these school authorities
fraudulently concealed facts which prevented Wilmink from knowing
that she had a cause of action against Gillispie and the Board.
Plaintiff in this case has done neither.
The record is devoid of any fact which indicates that school
authorities had any reason to know that Osborne would engage in
offensive sexual conduct toward students prior to 1984. Implicitly
conceding as much, plaintiff argues that this knowledge was somehow
“imputed” to the Board by the “observations” of Linda Nelson, an
admittedly “non-supervisory” reading teacher. Plaintiff contends
that when her mother reported her daughter’s assault to Linda
Nelson, Nelson told her of a prior occasion in which Nelson saw
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Osborne try to slide his hand up the back of a female student’s
shorts. Nelson now denies ever witnessing Osborne touch a female
student in an inappropriate manner. Even assuming the truth of
plaintiff’s contentions, however, there is no evidence to suggest
that Nelson ever reported the incident to Principal Gillispie, the
School Board, or anyone else. In short, as the district court
found, “plaintiff has failed to produce a shred of evidence that
the Board or Gillispie had any reason to believe that Osborne would
engage in inappropriate sexual conduct with minor female school
children before the plaintiff’s alleged sexual assault in 1984.”
Plaintiff has not only failed to show that school authorities
had any reason to suspect that Osborne would engage in
inappropriate behavior but also failed to produce any evidence that
these defendants actively concealed facts which prevented plaintiff
from knowing of her claim. At its most basic, “[f]raudulent
concealment requires that the defendant commit some positive act
tending to conceal the cause of action from the plaintiff.” Miller
v. Monongalia County Bd. of Educ., 556 S.E.2d 427, 431 (W. Va.
2001) (citation omitted). Here, after 120 days of discovery, “the
record shows no competent evidence by the [plaintiff] that [the
defendants] did anything to hide [their] actions” from the
plaintiff. Keesecker, 490 S.E.2d at 771. Accordingly, plaintiff
has failed to make the requisite “strong showing” that “some action
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by the defendant prevented the plaintiff from knowing of the wrong
at the time of the injury.” Id. (quotation omitted).
III.
We in no way make light of plaintiff’s claims or the injuries
she may have suffered. We must, however, affirm the district
court’s grant of summary judgment since any cause of action which
Wilmink may have had against the defendants is barred by the
statute of limitations. Our disposition based on West Virginia’s
statute of limitations dispenses with all of plaintiff’s claims,
and we need not, therefore, address her other arguments. We
dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions
are adequately presented in the materials before the court and
argument would not aid in the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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