United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 10-1020
BETHZAIDA CINTRÓN-LORENZO,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
FONDO DEL SEGURO DEL ESTADO ET AL.,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Camille L. Velez-Rive, U.S. Magistrate Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Souter, Associate Justice,*
and Stahl, Circuit Judge.
Nicolás Nogueras Cartagena, with whom Maria Teresa Figueroa
Colón was on brief, for appellant.
Irene S. Soroeta-Kodesh, Solicitor General, with whom Leticia
Casalduc-Rabell, Deputy Solicitor General, Susana I. Peñagarícano-
Brown, Assistant Solicitor General, Carlos George-Iguina, and
Joanna Matos Hicks, were on briefs, for the appellees.
February 4, 2011
*
The Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the
Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
SOUTER, Associate Justice. The plaintiff, Bethzaida
Cintrón-Lorenzo, alleges sexual harassment and discrimination by
her employment supervisor, Orlando Aldebol-Borrero, at a Puerto
Rican government insurance fund, Fondo del Seguro del Estado, and
she has complained of this sexual misconduct in statutory and
constitutional claims against them and others over the course of
nearly eight years. This appeal challenges the district court’s
dismissal of equal protection claims brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
and supplementary complaints under Puerto Rican statutes, the
former found to have been filed after the statute of limitations
had run. We affirm.
On the face of the pleadings and documents before the
trial court, the § 1983 action is patently untimely. The most
recent instance of allegedly forbidden action is said to have
occurred on June 19, 2003 (identified in a 2003 administrative
complaint of a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42
U.S.C. § 2000e et seq., filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission). It is undisputed that the limitation period for an
equal protection claim under § 1983 is borrowed from local law and
is one year in Puerto Rico. This action was not filed until July
10, 2007.
Cintrón-Lorenzo contends that the running of the one-year
statute was tolled, first by filing her administrative complaint
with the EEOC, then by filing an earlier judicial action
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(mentioning no § 1983 claim and eventually dismissed voluntarily
without prejudice), an argument that all agree turns in part on the
Puerto Rican tolling rule, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 31 § 5303 (Official
translation 1990).1 Many pages of briefing address the question
whether the first judicial action stated non-§ 1983 causes of
action similar enough to the later equal protection claim to toll
the running of the one-year statute under the Puerto Rican rule.
See, e.g., Cintrón v. E.L.A., 127 P.R. Dec. 582 (1990). This issue
is irrelevant, however, for the one-year period had run before the
first judicial action was filed.
Although there are no translated cases from the Supreme
Court of Puerto Rico, and no cases from this circuit or from the
Supreme Court determining whether filing a Title VII complaint with
the EEOC can affect the limitation period for a related § 1983
action, cases addressing § 1981 have held the answer to be no. See
Johnson v. Ry Express Agency, Inc., 421 U.S. 454, 466 (1975); Leon-
Nogueras v. Univ. of P.R., 964 F. Supp. 585, 589 (D.P.R. 1997).
But even if we treat the issue as undecided, the Puerto Rican rule
would apparently, at best, reset the commencement of the one-year
period at the date of filing the EEOC complaint; it would not
suspend the running of the period during pendency of the complaint
before the EEOC. Leon-Nogueras, 964 F. Supp. at 589 (an
1
"Prescription of actions is interrupted by their institution
before the courts, by extrajudicial claim of the creditor, and by
any act of acknowledgment of the debt by the debtor."
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extrajudicial claim may serve to "restart[] the running of the . .
. statute of limitations" on the § 1983 judicial claim, but it
does not preserve the judicial claim "in a state of suspended
animation"). In this case the administrative complaint was filed
on July 10, 2003; the first judicial complaint was filed over one
year later, on August 13, 2004. Thus, giving Cintrón-Lorenzo every
possible indulgence, the § 1983 limitation period had expired
before she entered federal court the first time.
As to the local statutory actions, even if timely, the
district court was of course acting with reasonable discretion to
dismiss them without prejudice once the federal claim was out of
the case.
Affirmed.
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