FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
March 10, 2008
PUBLISH Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT
CHRISTOPHER MONDRAGÓN,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 06-2358
JAMES WILLIAM THOMPSON and
JOSÉ LEON FLORES,
Defendants-Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW MEXICO
(D.C. NO. CIV-05-1037 RLP/LFG)
Dennis W. Montoya, Montoya Law, Inc., Rio Rancho, New Mexico, for Plaintiff-
Appellant.
Luis Robles, Robles, Rael & Anaya, P.C., Albuquerque, New Mexico, for
Defendants-Appellees.
Before McCONNELL, BALDOCK, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.
McCONNELL, Circuit Judge.
Christopher Mondragón claims that Officer James Thompson forged an
arrest warrant and illegally imprisoned him in New Mexico for three months. He
filed suit against Officer Thompson and his supervisor exactly three years (the
length of the statute of limitations) after he was released on a state writ of habeas
corpus. The district court dismissed this suit as untimely, concluding that any
constitutional claims Mr. Mondragón had must have accrued sometime before he
was released from jail. We conclude that this is not necessarily so. After the
district court’s decision, but before briefing and argument, the Supreme Court
handed down its decision in Wallace v. Kato, 127 S. Ct. 1091 (2007), which
clarifies (and perhaps even changes) the law in this area. In their briefs, the
parties did not address Wallace, nor did they discuss this Court’s decision in
Pierce v. Gilchrist, 359 F.3d 1279 (10th Cir. 2004), which is also relevant. We
vacate the district court’s decision and remand the case for a determination under
these, and any other relevant, precedents.
I. BACKGROUND
We confront this case because the district court granted a motion for
summary judgment, which had been converted from a motion to dismiss by
reference to documents outside the pleadings. Most of the facts are undisputed.
According to the complaint, Edward Catanach, an employee of the New Mexico
Department of Corrections, and Mr. Mondragón “had a history of interpersonal
tension between them as the result of Catanach’s being the father of a daughter
from an earlier relationship with Plaintiff’s wife, Diana Mondragón.” App. 9.
Mr. Catanach claimed (falsely) that his daughter had been abused by Mr.
Mondragón and convinced a co-worker, Officer Thompson, to concoct an arrest
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warrant for Mr. Mondragón by forging the signature of his supervisor, José
Flores. On the basis of this forged warrant, Mr. Mondragón was jailed for
approximately three months, starting June 26, 2002. 1 During this time, Officer
Thompson apparently communicated with state courts in both New Mexico and
Texas, telling the New Mexico courts (falsely) that Texas had an arrest warrant
for Mr. Mondragón, and attempting to get the Texas courts to issue one by telling
them (falsely) that Mr. Mondragón had been convicted of child molestation in
New Mexico. It is not clear why Texas was involved, nor why Officer Thompson
thought a second warrant was needed when Mr. Mondragón was already in jail,
and he apparently did not procure one.
At some point in mid-August 2002, Officer Thompson appeared at some
sort of hearing in New Mexico court relevant to Mr. Mondragón’s detention. The
record does not reveal—and neither party was able to tell us at oral
argument—what kind of hearing this was, what its legal basis was, or who was
present. In any event, that hearing did not result in Mr. Mondragón’s release.
Eventually, on September 16, 2002, he filed a petition in state court for a writ of
habeas corpus. On September 25, the writ was granted and he was released from
jail.
1
The record contains a New Mexico “booking authority form,” signed by
Officer Thompson, that suggests that Mr. Mondragón was accused of a probation
violation. App. 51 (citing N.M. Stat. § 31-21-15).
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On September 26, 2005, Mr. Mondragón sued Officer Thompson and his
supervisor, José Flores, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging “wrongful detention”
that “was unlawful, unnecessary, in excess of all authority granted or delegated to
the Defendants, and effected a deprivation upon the Plaintiff of rights and
privileges secured to him by the Constitution and laws of the United States of
America.” App. 10–11. The complaint did not specify which laws or which
provisions of the Constitution were violated. The statute of limitations for § 1983
claims in New Mexico is three years, and because September 25, 2005 was a
Sunday, Mr. Mondragón’s filing is deemed to be within three years of his release
date. Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(a)(3). 2
At this stage of the litigation the defendants do not dispute these facts, nor
dispute that if they are true Mr. Mondragón’s constitutional rights were violated.
However, they argue that his claim was not filed within the statute of limitations
because all of his constitutional claims accrued sometime before he was released
from jail. The district court agreed, and dismissed Mr. Mondragón’s suit as
untimely. Taking the undisputed facts as true and considering them in light of the
Supreme Court’s decision in Wallace v. Kato, 127 S. Ct. 1091 (2007) and our
decision in Pierce v. Gilchrist, 359 F.3d 1279 (10th Cir. 2004), we conclude that
2
At oral argument, Officer Thompson’s lawyer raised for the first time the
possibility that Sunday filing in § 1983 claims might be governed by state law,
and that New Mexico’s rule might be less generous than the federal one. We do
not address arguments, or even intimations of the possibility of an argument, first
raised this late in the appeal.
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at least part and possibly all of Mr. Mondragón’s suit is likely to be timely, but
that the record is inadequate for us to make a determination.
II. ANALYSIS
A. Appellate Jurisdiction
At the outset, we must determine whether we have jurisdiction to hear this
appeal. The district court’s opinion dismissing Mr. Mondragón’s claims was
issued on June 13, 2006, and the notice of appeal was not filed until December 4,
2006. A party has only thirty days after the entry of a final judgment against him
to appeal. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(A). Thus, argues Officer Thompson, the
appeal is too late and the case is closed.
This argument confuses an opinion with a judgment. The formalism of the
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires every judgment (with exceptions not
relevant here) to be “set out in a separate document,” not made part of the opinion
and order. Fed. R. Civ. P. 58(a). If this rule is not obeyed, the judgment is
entered by legal fiction 150 days after the issuance of the opinion it should have
accompanied. Fed. R. Civ. P. 58(c)(2)(B). The 30-day time limit for filing a
notice of appeal begins only after that later date. In Mr. Mondragón’s case, the
district court entered a single document styled a “Memorandum Opinion and
Order Granting Summary Judgment and Judgment,” rather than keeping the
opinion and the judgment separate, as the rule requires. App. 57. That means
that the final judgment was entered on November 10 (150 days after June 13) and
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the notice of appeal due on December 11 (December 10 was a Sunday), making
this appeal timely.
B. The Legal Framework for Wrongful Detention
A hodgepodge of state and federal law governs the timeliness of claims
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The statute of limitations is drawn from the personal-
injury statute of the state in which the federal district court sits. Wilson v.
Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 269 (1985). Federal law, however, determines the date on
which the claim accrues and the limitations period starts to run. Wallace, 127 S.
Ct. at 1095. State law governs any tolling of that period, Wilson, 471 U.S. at 269,
except that federal law might also allow additional equitable tolling in rare
circumstances, Wallace, 127 S. Ct. at 1099–1100. Neither party has provided a
tolling argument to this court, and the New Mexico statute of limitations is three
years. N.M. Stat. Ann. § 37-1-8. The issue left for this appeal is the date that
Mr. Mondragón’s claims for wrongful detention accrued, a question of federal law
“conforming in general to common-law tort principles.” Wallace, 127 S. Ct. at
1095.
We have held that a plaintiff who claims that the government has
unconstitutionally imprisoned him has at least two potential constitutional claims.
“The initial seizure is governed by the Fourth Amendment, but at some point after
arrest, and certainly by the time of trial, constitutional analysis shifts to the Due
Process Clause.” Pierce v. Gilchrist, 359 F.3d 1279, 1285–86 (10th Cir. 2004).
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If he has been imprisoned without legal process he has a claim under the Fourth
Amendment analogous to a tort claim for false arrest or false imprisonment. If he
has been imprisoned pursuant to legal but wrongful process, he has a claim under
the procedural component of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause
analogous to a tort claim for malicious prosecution. 3 These torts are only
analogies because § 1983 suits ultimately rest on the Constitution, not on state (or
federal) common law. Pierce, 359 F.3d at 1285–88. However, these analogies
guide us in applying rules for the accrual of a cause of action.
Both Fourth Amendment claims and due process claims for unconstitutional
imprisonment are subject to special federal rules of accrual. As the Supreme
Court explained in Wallace, the statute of limitations for a Fourth Amendment
claim for false arrest or imprisonment “begin[s] to run . . . when the alleged false
imprisonment ends.” 127 S. Ct. at 1096 (internal quotation marks omitted). The
false imprisonment ends for these purposes either when the victim is released or
when the victim’s imprisonment becomes “pursuant to [legal] process—when, for
example, he is bound over by a magistrate or arraigned on charges.” Id.
(emphasis omitted). Thus, either the date of release or the date of sufficient legal
process starts the statute of limitations running for the Fourth Amendment claim.
3
In a technical sense, a Fourth Amendment claim against New Mexico
officers is also a Fourteenth Amendment claim, because that is the amendment
that incorporates the Fourth Amendment’s protections against the states. Mapp v.
Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). We avoid this terminology here to reduce confusion.
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After the institution of legal process, any remaining constitutional claim is
analogous to a malicious prosecution claim. The Supreme Court has not yet
explicitly decided whether such a claim exists in these circumstances under the
Fourth Amendment or the procedural component of the Due Process Clause. See
id. at 1096 n.2 (citing Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266, 270–71, 275 (1994)
(plurality opinion)); see also Albright at 275–76 (Scalia, J., concurring). This
Circuit, however, has held that the Constitution permits due process claims for
wrongful imprisonment after the wrongful institution of legal process. 4 Pierce,
359 F.3d at 1285–86. We also held that a due process claim for malicious
prosecution arises only once “the original action,” whatever form it has taken, has
“been terminated in favor of the plaintiff.” Id. at 1294. Because the statute of
limitations does not start running before the elements of a claim are satisfied, the
statute of limitations for this due process claim cannot start until the plaintiff has
achieved a favorable result in the original action. 5
In summary, two claims arise from an allegedly unconstitutional
imprisonment as analysis “shifts” from the Fourth Amendment to the Due Process
4
We do not foreclose the additional, though unlikely, possibility of a
second Fourth Amendment claim, arising after the first one ends. See Wallace,
127 S. Ct. at 1096 n .2.
5
Because the only issue on this appeal is the timeliness of Mr.
Mondragón’s claim, not its merits, we do not decide whether additional
requirements, such as the existence of adequate state law remedies, might apply to
a procedural due process claim. See Becker v. Kroll, 494 F.3d 904, 917–22 (10th
Cir. 2007).
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Clause. Pierce, 359 F.3d at 1285–86. The period of time between an unlawful
arrest and the institution of legal process forms one constitutional claim, arising
under the Fourth Amendment. That claim accrues when the plaintiff is released
or legal process is instituted justifying that imprisonment. The period of time
between the institution of that process and its favorable termination— through
acquittal, habeas corpus, voluntary dismissal, etc.—forms a second claim, arising
under the Due Process Clause. That claim accrues, at the earliest, when favorable
termination occurs.
C. Mr. Mondragón’s Claims
On this record, we cannot apply these two settled rules to Mr. Mondragón’s
complaint because we do not know whether he was ever given legal process
justifying his detention. The record does not reveal what kind of hearing he
received in August or what its legal status was, and we do not decide (although
we doubt) that a forged arrest warrant functions as legal process that terminates a
Fourth Amendment claim and starts a due process claim. 6 If Mr. Mondragón
never received legal process justifying his imprisonment, then he has a
straightforward claim under the Fourth Amendment for his entire time in jail.
6
In Pierce, we did not decide what kind of legal process caused the Fourth
Amendment claim to end and the Due Process claim to begin, id. at 1286, though
we suggested that being held for seven weeks and then “exonerated before trial,”
raised only Fourth Amendment issues, not due process issues. Id. at 1287 n.5
(citing Taylor v. Meacham, 82 F.3d 1556 (1996)). We do not decide that issue
here, either.
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Such a claim does not accrue until the false imprisonment ends. On the other
hand, if Mr. Mondragón did at some point receive legal process for his
imprisonment (as a result either of the arrest warrant or of the mysterious mid-
August hearing), he has a potential due process claim from that period until his
release. 7 This claim does not accrue until the process terminates in his favor,
which presumably is the date his habeas corpus petition was granted. These
accrual dates may be within the limitations period.
We therefore remand the case to the district court to sort out the
significance, if any, of the mid-August hearing and to determine the termination
date of any Fourth Amendment claim and the accrual date of any due process
claim, based on Wallace and Pierce. On remand, the parties are free to make
arguments relating to other timeliness issues not barred by law of the case, such
as equitable tolling.
7
The complaint does not explicitly plead a claim of malicious prosecution,
though it pleads facts that could support such a claim. As we held in Pierce,
however, it is not essential that the plaintiff use the words “malicious
prosecution” to describe his due process claim:
Plaintiff's actual cause of action is for a constitutional violation
under § 1983; the common law tort of malicious prosecution is
relevant only as an analogy that is helpful in structuring the legal
analysis. Plaintiff's failure to plead malicious prosecution as a cause
of action is therefore not fatal to his action.
359 F.3d at 1286 n .3. Officer Thompson’s attorney conceded at oral argument
that Mr. Mondragón’s complaint, properly read, includes a due process claim
analogous to malicious prosecution.
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III. CONCLUSION
The judgment of the district court is VACATED and the case is
REMANDED for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.
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