Marlon Eaglin v. Eunice Police Department

STATE OF LOUISIANA
COURT OF APPEAL, THIRD CIRCUIT

17-127

MARLON EAGLIN

VERSUS

EUNICE POLICE DEPARTMENT, ET AL.

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APPEAL FROM THE
TWENTY-SEVENTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT
PARISH OF ST. LANDRY, NO. 16-C-1766-A
HONORABLE JAMES PAUL DOHERTY JR., DISTRICT JUDGE

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ULYSSES GENE THIBODEAUX
CHIEF JUDGE

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Court composed of Ulysses Gene Thibodeaux, Chief Judge, Phyllis M. Keaty, and
Candyce G. Perret, Judges.

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

Harold Dewey Register, Jr.
216 Rue Louis XIV
Lafayette, LA 70598-0214
Telephone: (337) 981-6644
COUNSEL FOR:
Plaintiff/Appellant - Paul Powell

Taylor Stover
Borne, Wilkes & Rabalais, L.L.C.
P. O. Box 4305
Lafayette, LA 70502-4305
Telephone: (337) 232-1604
COUNSEL FOR:
Defendants/Appellees - City of Eunice, Eunice Police Department, and
Chief Randy Fontenot

THIBODEAUX, Chief Judge.

Marlon Eaglin filed a petition against the Eunice Police Department,

the City of Eunice, and Chief Randy Fontenot, in his official capacity as chief of

police for the City of Eunice (defendants), seeking damages for his claims of false

arrest and false imprisonment. When Mr. Eaglin attempted to amend his petition

to add Paul Powell as a party plaintiff, the defendants filed a peremptory exception

of prescription, alleging Mr. Powell’s claims of false arrest and false imprisonment

had prescribed on the face of the amended petition. Mr. Powell now appeals the

trial court’s judgment, which granted the exception and dismissed his claims with

prejudice. We reverse the judgment of the trial court and conclude that

prescription on a claim of false imprisonment begins to run on the date of release

from imprisonment.

I.

ISSUES

The court must decide:

(1) whether the trial court erred in granting the
defendants’ exception of prescription based on its
finding that the prescriptive period for a claim of
false imprisonment begins to run on the date of
arrest and not on the date of release; and

(2) whether the trial court erred in finding the
amended petition did not relate back to the date of
filing of the original petition.

II.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

This civil matter arises out of attempted murder charges brought

against Mr. Eaglin, Mr. Powell, and two other suspects, Deontrey Moten and

David Little, by the Eunice Police Department. Neither Mr. Eaglin nor Mr. Powell

was identified as perpetrators of the alleged crime by either the victim or the

victim’s girlfriend, who witnessed the shooting. They were, however, implicated

as participants to the alleged shooting by Mr. Moten and Mr. Little. All suspects,

including Mr. Eaglin and Mr. Powell, were then arrested on May 4, 2015, pursuant

to arrest warrants and remained imprisoned until August 21, 2015.

On April 29, 2016, Mr. Eaglin filed a petition for damages against the

defendants, raising claims of false arrest and false imprisonment. He subsequently

filed an amended petition on May 9, 2016, in which he attempted to bring Mr.

Powell into the suit as an additional party plaintiff advancing similar claims for

false arrest and false imprisonment against the defendants arising from the same

attempted murder charges. In response, the defendants filed, inter alia, an

exception of prescription, claiming Mr. Powell’s claims prescribed on May 4,

2016, one year after the date of his arrest.1 Mr. Powell opposed the exception by

arguing that the amended petition related back to Mr. Eaglin’s original, timely-

filed petition and that his claim for false imprisonment had not prescribed as

prescription did not commence to run until the date he was released from prison.

The trial court granted the defendants’ exception of prescription,

finding (1) the amendment did not relate back as “there is no legal relationship or

1
In their answer, the defendants raised the exceptions of (1) lack of personal and subject
matter jurisdiction; (2) lack of conformity; (3) vagueness and ambiguity; (4) lack of procedural
capacity; (5) improper cumulation of actions; (6) no cause of action; and (7) no right of action.

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family relationship between Powell and Eaglin to allow the relating back,” and (2)

the running of prescription on a claim for false imprisonment begins on the date of

arrest and not on the date of release. Accordingly, the trial court dismissed Mr.

Powell’s claims with prejudice.

III.

STANDARDS OF REVIEW

A peremptory exception of prescription must be specially pleaded and

must ordinarily be proven by the exceptor at trial on the exception. La.Code Civ.P.

art. 927(B); Campo v. Correa, 01-2707 (La. 6/21/02), 828 So.2d 502. However, if

prescription is evident on the face of the pleadings, the burden shifts to the plaintiff

to show the action has not prescribed. Campo, 828 So.2d 502. Evidence may be

introduced to support or controvert the objection, but in the absence of such

evidence, the objection must be decided upon the facts alleged in the petition, with

all allegations accepted as true. La.Code Civ.P. art. 931; Cichirillo v. Avondale

Indus., Inc., 04-2894, 04-2918 (La. 11/29/05), 917 So.2d 424. If evidence is

introduced at the hearing, the trial court’s findings of fact are reviewed under the

manifest error-clearly wrong standard of review. Stobart v. State, Dep’t of Transp.

and Dev., 617 So.2d 880 (La.1993). However, when the trial court is not called

upon to exercise its fact-finding function and the matter involves the determination

of purely legal issues, reviewing courts apply a de novo standard of review. Kem

Search, Inc. v. Sheffield, 434 So.2d 1067 (La.1983).

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IV.

LAW AND DISCUSSION

The correct prescriptive period to be applied in any action depends

upon the nature of the action itself. Roger v. Dufrene, 613 So.2d 947 (La.1993).

Under our default provision, personal actions are “subject to a liberative

prescription of ten years,” unless otherwise provided by law. La.Civ.Code art.

3499. Delictual actions are subject to a one-year prescriptive period which

“commences to run from the day of injury or damage is sustained.” La.Civ.Code

art. 3492.

“The fundamental purpose of prescription statutes is only to afford a

defendant economic and psychological security if no claim is made timely, and to

protect him from stale claims and from the loss of non-preservation of relevant

proof.” Giroir v. S. La. Med. Ctr., Div. of Hosps., 475 So.2d 1040, 1045

(La.1985). Nevertheless, jurisprudence has long required strict construction of

prescriptive periods in favor of maintaining, rather than barring, a plaintiff’s cause

of action because liberative prescription extinguishes a person’s right to assert his

action merely upon the passage of time. Williams v. Jackson Parish Hosp., 00-

3170 (La. 10/16/01), 798 So.2d 921; La.Civ.Code art. 3447.

Citing jurisprudence from both the supreme court and this court, Mr.

Powell first argues that the trial court erred in finding prescription on his claim for

false imprisonment began to accrue on the date of arrest. After extensively

researching this issue, we agree.

In De Bouchel v. Koss Const. Construction, Inc., 177 La. 841, 847,

149 So. 496, 497 (1933), our supreme court held that the plaintiff’s cause of action

for false imprisonment arose “the day on which plaintiff was both falsely

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imprisoned and then released from prison” and was subject to liberative

prescription of one year. Applying the De Bouchel holding, this court in Murray v.

Town of Mansura, 06-355, p. 7 (La.App. 3 Cir. 9/27/06), 940 So.2d 832, 838, writ

denied, 06-2949 (La. 2/16/07), 949 So.2d 419, cert. denied, 552 U.S. 915, 128

S.Ct. 270 (2007), then found the prescriptive period for a claim of false arrest and

imprisonment begins to accrue on the date of release:

a claim for false arrest and imprisonment arises the day
the false arrest and imprisonment occurs. In De Bouchel,
177 La. 841, 149 So. 496, the plaintiff asserted claims for
false imprisonment and malicious prosecution. The
supreme court held that the false imprisonment cause of
action, which includes a claim of false arrest, arose on
the day the plaintiff was imprisoned and that the cause of
action was subject to a one year prescriptive period.
Prescription on such a claim begins to run no later than
the date on which the imprisonment is terminated. Id.
Thus, prescription on Plaintiffs’ false arrest and
imprisonment claim began accruing no later than March
22, 1999, the date Mr. Murray was released from jail.

Even more recently, this court in Godfrey v. Reggie, 11-1575, p. 8 (La.App. 3 Cir.

5/2/12), 94 So.3d 82, 89 (quoting Matthews v. City of Bossier City, 42,202

(La.App. 2 Cir. 8/15/07), 963 So.2d 516), again recited both the day of

imprisonment as well as the day of release for the commencement of prescription

in holding: “A cause of action ‘for false imprisonment, which includes a claim for

false arrest, arises on the day upon which the plaintiff is imprisoned and released.’”

The Supreme Court explained the reasoning behind this “distinctive

rule” that recognizes that, while a cause of action for false arrest and imprisonment

may arise on the day of arrest and confinement, prescription does not commence

until the day of release, in Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 388-89, 127 S.Ct. 1091,

1095-96 (2007) (citations omitted) (first alteration in original):

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it is “the standard rule that [accrual occurs] when the
plaintiff has ‘a complete and present cause of action,’ ”
that is, when “the plaintiff can file suit and obtain relief.”
There can be no dispute that petitioner could have filed
suit as soon as the allegedly wrongful arrest occurred,
subjecting him to the harm of involuntary detention, so
the statute of limitations would normally commence to
run from that date.

There is, however, a refinement to be considered,
arising from the common law’s distinctive treatment of
the torts of false arrest and false imprisonment. . . . False
arrest and false imprisonment overlap; the former is a
species of the latter. “Every confinement of the person is
an imprisonment, whether it be in a common prison or in
a private house, or in the stocks, or even by forcibly
detaining one in the public streets; and when a man is
lawfully in a house, it is imprisonment to prevent him
from leaving the room in which he is.” We shall thus
refer to the two torts together as false imprisonment. . . .

The running of the statute of limitations on false
imprisonment is subject to a distinctive rule—dictated,
perhaps, by the reality that the victim may not be able to
sue while he is still imprisoned: “Limitations begin to
run against an action for false imprisonment when the
alleged false imprisonment ends.” Thus, to determine the
beginning of the limitations period in this case, we must
determine when petitioner’s false imprisonment came to
an end.

As evidenced in Wallace and acknowledged by our courts in De

Bouchel, Murray, and Godfrey, claims for false arrest and false imprisonment,

when incidental to each other, are often referred to and treated as a single claim for

prescriptive purposes. And although damage is sustained on the date of arrest and

imprisonment, prescription on such claims does not commence until the

imprisonment ends most likely due to the reality that the tort victim may not be

able to sue while he is still imprisoned. In this manner, De Bouchel and its

progeny, Murray and Godfrey, align with the reasoning in Wallace.

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Pursuant thereto, a cause of action for false imprisonment, which

includes a claim for false arrest, does not begin to accrue until the date of release.2

It follows, therefore, that prescription on Mr. Powell’s claim for false arrest and

imprisonment did not commence until the date of his release, August 21, 2015, and

did not toll until August 21, 2016, one year later. Accordingly, we find his claim

for false arrest and imprisonment, filed on May 9, 2016, was timely, and we

reverse the trial court’s judgment holding to the contrary.3

V.

CONCLUSION

For these reasons, we find the trial court erred in granting the

defendants’ exception of prescription. We reverse the trial court’s judgment and

remand for consideration of the defendants’ remaining exceptions.

Costs of this appeal are assessed to the Defendants/Appellees.

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

2
Both the defendants and the trial court relied upon Buvens v. Buvens, 286 So.2d 144
(La.App. 3 Cir. 1973), in which a panel of this court found the prescriptive period on the
plaintiff’s false imprisonment claim commenced on the date of arrest. Our review of the
jurisprudence reveals, however, that Buvens is an anomaly that does not follow along the De
Bouchel continuum and cannot be reconciled with the predominant and more recent
jurisprudence from this circuit. Therefore, we refuse to follow and expressly disavow it.
3
Finding that Mr. Powell’s claim for false arrest and imprisonment was timely filed, we
need not determine whether the amended petition relates back to the date of filing of the original
petition and pretermit any further discussion of this issue.

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