Court Must Raise Statute of Limitations Despite Government Waiver

Although the government waived its challenge to the timeliness of an action in the Court of Federal Claims, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit properly raised the issue on its own, because the absolute, jurisdictional, nature of the statute of limitations prevented an equitable tolling of the limitations period and could not be waived by the parties, according to the United States Supreme Court. The contractor brought suit in the CFC, alleging various government activities on leased land amounted to an unconstitutional taking of its leasehold rights. The government initially challenged the claims as untimely under the CFC's six-year statute of limitations (28 USC 2501), but subsequently conceded the issue and won on the merits. The contractor appealed the adverse judgment to the Federal Circuit, which addressed the statute of limitations issue sua sponte, finding the action untimely. Generally, the law treats limitations as an affirmative defense the defendant must raise at the pleading stage, and this defense is subject to the rules of waiver. Besides protecting a defendant's case-specific interest in avoiding stale claims, some statutes of limitations seek to achieve a broader system-related goal, such as limiting the scope of a governmental waiver of sovereign immunity. In precedential opinions going back to 1883, the Supreme Court had read the time limits of these statutes as more absolute, requiring a court to decide the timeliness question despite a waiver. In these situations, the statute's limitations period is "jurisdictional" and not susceptible to equitable tolling.

Given the precedent, the contractor could succeed only by convincing the Court to overturn prior rulings, which the contractor failed to do. Although the Supreme Court previously applied equitable tolling to a limitations statute governing employment discrimination claims (Irwin v. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, 498 US 89 (1990)), the limitations period in that case differed from the CFC statute at issue here because the Court had not previously provided a definitive interpretation. In addition, the Irwin court did not overturn prior rulings on the jurisdictional nature of the CFC's statute of limitations. Rather, Irwin recognized a general prospective rule, but it did not imply revisiting past precedents. Despite the contractor's reliance on recent cases that interpreted statutes of limitations in actions against the government as treating the government like other litigants, basic principles of stare decisis required the Court to reject this line of reasoning as the earlier cases did not produce "unworkable" law. According to the Court, a "reexamination of well-settled precedent could nevertheless prove harmful," and a decision overturning a settled matter because it was no longer "right" would "threaten to substitute disruption, confusion, and uncertainty for necessary legal stability."

In dissent, Justice Stevens challenged the majority opinion's reliance on stare decisis, arguing the older cases cited by the Court were "no longer good law," and if there is any ambiguity in those cases, the Court should have resolved the matter in favor of clarifying the law, "rather than preserving an anachronism whose doctrinal underpinnings were discarded years ago." Justice Ginsburg also dissented, contending the majority's decision not to reconcile older rulings with more recent opinions damages "the coherence of the law" by adhering to "outworn precedent" at odds with "more enlightened decisions." According to her, it would have been appropriate to overrule precedent that had become a "positive detriment to coherence and consistency in the law." (John R. Sand & Gravel Co. v. U.S., US SCt, 52 CCF ¶78,875)

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